FE (3) Social Psychology: Psychological Disorders I

Question 1

What are the 6 Social Infuences

Answer 1

1) Conformity: Going along with the crowd
2) Obedience: Following orders
3) Social facilitation vs. interference: how we perform in a group
4) Bystander nonintervention: Helping in the presence of others
5) Social loafing: Many hands make light the work
6) Deindividuation: Getting lost in the crowd

Question 2

What is attribution

Answer 2

Attribution is what causes certain behaviour

Question 3

how do we make a dispositional attribution

Answer 3

Thinking that certain behaviour is caused by something within the person we observe (like their personality),

which is basically by making an internal attribution
but overall a dispositional

Question 4

how do we make a situational attribution

Answer 4

Thinking that certain behaviour is caused by something outside the person observed ( like their situation)

which makes an external attribution, overall a situation

Question 5

What are the two biases in Attribution

Answer 5

1) Fundamental attribution error
2) Self-serving bias

Question 6

What is Fundamental Attribution Error

Answer 6

The first bias in Attribution. -

This error is explaining someone else’s behaviour ( tendency to overestimate the impact of dispositional influences [ By dispositional influences, we mean enduring characteristics, such as personality traits, attitudes, and intelligence.] on other people’s behavior)

Question 7

What is Fundamental Attribution Error

Answer 7

this term refers to the tendency to overestimate the impact of dispositional influences on others’ behavior. By dispositional influences, we mean enduring characteristics, such as personality traits, attitudes, and intelligence.

Question 8

How does Fundamental Attribution Error see negative and positive behaviour

Answer 8

• neg behaviour as dispositional attribution
• pos behaviour as situational

Question 9

What are some cultural LESS PRONE to the Fundamental Attribution Error and why do such cultural differences exist?

Answer 9

1) Although almost everyone is prone to this error, Japanese and Chinese people seem to be less so

2) That may be because they’re more likely than people in Western cultures to view behaviors in context As a result, they may be more prone to seeing others’ behavior as a complex stew of both disposi- tional and situational influences.

example: after reading newspaper descriptions of mass murderers, Chinese participants are less likely to invoke dispositional explanations for their behavior (“He must be an evil person”) and more likely to invoke situational explanations (“He must have been under terrible stress in his life”). In contrast, U.S. participants show the opposite pattern (Morris & Peng, 1994).

Question 10

What is the difference between how Americans and Japenese individuals perceive behaviour

Answer 10

1) Americans paid more attention to the salient objects
more independent views of self/others (individualism

2) Japanese paid more attention to the relations between the
objects and the field – more interdependent view of
self/others (collectivism

Question 11

What is Self-Serving Bias

Answer 11

The second bias in Attribution.

Explaining one’s own behaviour

Question 12

How dies Self-serving bias explain how we perceive negative and positive behaviour?

Answer 12

it views neg behaviour due to situational attribution and pos behaviour as dispositional attribution

Question 13

(one self) [another person]{Outgroup}
+ (disposition) [Situation] {Situation}
- {Situation) [Disposition] {Disposition}
^ a) ^ b)
Guess thiese biases

Answer 13

a) Self serving bias
b) Fundemntal Attribution error

Question 14

What is an attitude

Answer 14

A belief that includes an emotional component

Question 15

Attitudes are more likely to predict behaviour when:

Answer 15

Attitudes are more likely to predict behaviour when:
* They come to mind easily (accessible).
* The person is a low self-monitor

Question 16

What Influences Our Attitudes?

Answer 16

• Our personality
• Social context
• The recognition heuristic (More likely to believe something that we have heard many times)
• Characteristics of the messenger (Implicit egotism effect)

Question 17

WHats Cognitive dissonance theory

Answer 17

Cognitive dissonance: A feeling of discomfort or tension caused
by an inconsistency between attitude/belief and action. Its an influential model of attitude change. According to this theory, we alter our atti- tudes because we experience an unpleasant state of tension—cognitive dissonance—between two or more conflicting thoughts (cognitions). Because we dislike this state of tension, we’re motivated to reduce or eliminate it.

Question 18

What are two ways we can reduce Cognitive dissonance

Answer 18

1) Change action to justify attitude
2) Change attitude to justify action

Question 19

Explain Changing an attitude to justify an action and what it involves

Answer 19

one of the ways to change attitudes is to
Change an attitude to justify an action. This involves :
1) Insufficient justification
a) The person cannot justify an already completed action
without modifying attitude.
* Festinger & Carlsmith (1959)
* Boring task
* Received $20 or $1 to lie to the next subject
* Rated interestingness of task
2) Justifying effort
a) Alter attitudes to justify suffering
* Example: spent a lot of time or money on something à like it more
than we would have if we had only spent very little time or money
and got the same outcome
3) Justifying difficult decisions
a) Rationalize difficult decisions by exaggerating the positive
features of the chosen & the negative features of the
unchosen

Question 20

Explain the study for the first involvement in changing attitudes to justify

Answer 20

study name: Insufficient Justification
(Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959)

• Each group needed a justification
  for lying
• $20 group: had an external
  justification of money – sufficient,
  no dissonance
• $1 group: not very much money –
  insufficient justification à more
  dissonance à greater change in
  attitudes

Question 21

Where does the cycle of Affect, Behaviour and Cognition fall under in terms of Prejudice and ingroup favouritism, discrimation and stereotyping

Answer 21

1) Affect - Prejudice and ingroup favouritism,
2) Behaviour - discrimination
3) Cognition -stereyotyping

Question 22

What are Stereotypes

Answer 22

• Overgeneralized beliefs about the attributes possessed by
  members of a social group
• Neutral, positive, or negative
• Accurate or inaccurate

Question 23

What are three reasons as to why there Inaccurate Stereotypes?

Answer 23

Due to
1) Confirmation bias: Tendency to selectively search for and
consider information that confirms our beliefs
2) Illusory correlation: A perception of a relationship between
two variables that does not really exist
* Example: Statistical minority group – infrequent (typically
negative) behaviours
3) Ultimate attribution error in causal attributions
* Negative behaviours of outgroup members à Dispositional
attribution
* Positive behaviours of outgroup members à Situational attribution
(e.g., luck or rare exceptions)

Question 24

What are the Three levels of stereotypes in research

Answer 24

1) Public: what we say to others about a group
2) Private: what we consciously think about a group, but don’t say to
others
3) Implicit: unconscious mental associations guiding our judgments and
actions without our conscious awareness
* Implicit Association Test (IAT): -
a) researchers might ask a participant to press a key on the computer keyboard with his left hand if he sees a photograph of an African American or a positive word (like joy) and to press a different key with his right hand if he sees a photograph of a Caucasian or a negative word (like bad). After performing this task for a number of trials, researchers ask participants to again press the left and right keys, but this time for the reverse pairing (that is, to press the left key for a photograph of either an African American or a negative word and the right key for a photograph of either a Caucasian or a positive word)

Question 25

Are we able to suppress stereotypes? What effect can suppressing lead to

Answer 25

The Ironic rebound effect: The suppression of unwanted thoughts causes the subsequent increase in such thought

Question 26

What three elements does Prejudice include

Answer 26

1) Negative feelings toward members of an outgroup
* Not based on reason or evidence
2) Ingroup bias: Preference for ingroup members over outgroup
members
3) Outgroup homogeneity: Tendency to view outgroup members as
similar

Question 27

What are the Roots of Prejudice

Answer 27

1)Scapegoat hypothesis: claim that prejudice arises from a need to blame other groups for our misfortunes
2) Just-world hypothesis: claim that our attributions and behaviors are shaped by a deep- seated assumption that the world is fair and all things happen
for a reason
3) Conformity: tendency of people to alter their behavior as a result of group pressure
4) Possible link to evolutionary past? (

Question 28

Whats Discrimination

Answer 28

• Negative behaviour toward members of out-groups
• Significant real-world consequences
• Blue Eyes–Brown Eyes demonstration (Jane Elliott, 1968

Question 29

Whats the Blue Eyes–Brown Eyes demonstration (Jane Elliott, 1968

Answer 29

“One day in 1968, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a
daring lesson in discrimination. This is the story of that lesson, its lasting impact on the children, and its
enduring power 30 years later.” – Frontline PB

Question 30

How to Combat Stereotypes, Prejudice, Discrimination

Answer 30

1) Contact hypothesis: Under certain conditions, direct contact
between members of rival groups will reduce stereotypes, prejudice,
and discrimination
a) Equal status
b) Personal interaction
c) Cooperative activities
d) Social norms

Question 31

What studies support the the contact hypothesis

Answer 31

1) Robber’s Cave experiment (Sherif et al.,, 1954, 1958, 1961)
2) Jigsaw classrooms (Aronson & Patnoe, 1997)

Question 32

Explain Robber’s Cave Experiment

Answer 32

Competition over resources led to group conflict.
* Simply increasing the contact of the two groups only made
the situation worse.
* Cooperation toward a common goal and assigning two
groups equal status helped reduce prejudice

Question 33

Expalin Jigsaw classrooms

Answer 33

educational approach designed to minimize prejudice by requiring all children to make independent contributions to a shared project
in which teach-ers assign children separate tasks that all need to be fitted together to complete a project.

A teacher might give each student in a class a different piece of history to investigate regarding the U.S. Civil War. One might present on Virginia’s role, another on New York’s, another on Georgia’s, and so on. The students then cooperate to assemble the pieces into an integrated lesson. Numerous studies reveal that jigsaw classrooms result in significant decreases in racial prejudice (Aronson, 2004; Slavin & Cooper, 1999).
The Robbers Cave study and Aronson’s work on jigsaw classrooms underscore a lesson confirmed by many other social psychology studies: Increased contact between racial groups alone is often insufficient to reduce prejudice.