Final - Readings Flashcards
Social norms can be a highly effective agent of influence for what both types of behaviours?
antisocial behaviour (ex. excessive alcohol consumption)
prosocial actions (ex. pro-environmental behaviour)
What is the difference between social influence and conformity?
Social influence = psychological change that happens as a result of the behavior of other people. (“secret” agents of influence!)
Conformity= changing one’s behavior to more closely approximate the behavior of other people
- does not involve an explicit request (unlike compliance) & can be conscious or unconscious
What is the social-norms marketing approach?
public factual information about the true norm, with the aim to correct the misperception and promote positive behavioral change.
*research clearly establishes that presenting normative messages can influence behaviour (such as domains like alcohol and environmental protection)
How is personalized normative feedback used as a approach to reduce alcohol consumption?
For example…
College students complete an online form indicating how much they drink and how much they think other students drink.
The personalized normative feedback response would be: “You said you drink 10 drinks per week and that you think the typical UBC student drinks 15 drinks per week… The actual average number of drinks per week for UBC students is 4.6 drinks”
By comparing the norm with the persons actions, they are influenced by the norm to reduce alcohol consumption
What are some of the largest domains of research on descriptive norms influencing behaviour?
- alcohol
- environmental protection (2nd largest)
Within the environmental protection domain, what area has seen to be most impacted by descrptive norms?
ENERGY CONSERVATION
Research Finding:
when residents were provided with a message comparing their energy consumption with that of similar households in their neighborhood, their consumption over the next week decreased (especially households who were high consumers)
Some evidence suggests that social norms are more effective at influencing ——– behaviours more than influencing ——– behaviours
desirable behaviours more than avoidable behaviours
AKA: normative social influence may be better at encouraging a behavior than at preventing one!!
List the 7 personal and contextual variables that moderate the impact of normative social influence
1. Magnetic middle
- boomerang effect
2. Deviation from the norm
- individuals are more tolerat of norm deviations that are socially approved
- ex. Green smiley faces for households with low water consumption and red sad faces for households with high water consumption
3. Personal Values
- Social norms work best when they target individuals who are NOT personally invested in the topic.
- ex. households that have less strong beleifs about water consumption will change behaviour more
4. Culture
- Social norms influence behavior in both individualistic and collectivistic cultures → BUT people in individualistic cultures tend to discount their influence.
5. Norm Activation
- influence of social norms are enhanced when they are made salient by a contextual cue.
- ex. “Please don’t litter” sign in a park can decrease littering in clean park, but can increase littering in dirty park (sign serves to activate the norm → which can be either against or for littering)
6. Reference to changing frequency
- When a behavior is becoming more common/trending, it can be more influential.
- Ex. individuals making an effort to reduce meat is influencial even though the percentage of them is low.
7. Social identity
- Normative information is more influential when it pertains to an ingroup, rather than an out-group.
What is the boomerang effect with normative messaging?
A normative message can BOTH increase frequency of behavior for people BELOW the norm and decrease the frequency of behavior for people ABOVE the norm.
Making not that much of a change overall.
Tightness-looseness is a shared construct. What does this mean?
Means that people generally agree about the level of tightness or looseness that is in their nations.
List some of the tightest and some loosest countries
Tightest nations include → Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea
Loosest nations include → Ukraine, Estonia, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Brazil
Explain the difference between tightness and collectivism
they are not the same!!
Collectivism is related to the activation of the collective self and concern with harmony with one’s ingroup.
VS
Tightness is related to the activation of the public self and compliance with social norms/expectations in one’s society.
(Tightness is also distinct from other cultural values like power distance and avoidance of uncertainty)
Why do certain nations have greater levels of tightness?
Tightness-looseness is related to ecological and human-made societal threats that nations have (or have not) encountered. →
Threats increase the need for strong norms and the sanctioning of deviant behavior, which help humans coordinate their social action for survival!
Nations with higher degrees of ecological and historical threat had greater ———!
tightness
What are the challenges of societal institutions in tight nations?
- less people participate in collective action
- citizens feel that significant change can only happen with very revolutionary actions (change in tight nations may be more catestrophic than linear!)
Lower crime rates, more police, less openness in media, and stricter punishments are all things that align with what type of culture?
a tighter culture
has very restricted acceptable behaviours by the government, media, and justice system.
Research has shown that tightness-looseness is related to the strength of ——— ————.
social situations
Strong social situations = create predictability (limits the behavioral patterns that are appropriate)
Weak social situations = place few constraints on individuals (less of a script is expected)
People in the same nation usually have the same perceptions of situational strength…
- strongest being job interviews, funeral ceremonies, visits to libraries
- weakest being time spent in one’s bedroom, visits to public parks, and parties.
HOWEVER…Situations are generally stronger in tight nations and generally weaker in loose nations!
What 4 things do individuals in tight nations with stronger social situations dend to develop psychologically?
1. Distinct self-guides (increases focus that is more oriented towards prevention and cautiousness)
2. Self-regulation strategies (helps individuals avoid being shamed for inappropriate behavior)
3. Psychological needs (have a much greater need for structure!)
4. Abilities (greater ability to monitor and adjust one’s behavior to a given context)
What is ingroup favoritism?
people cooperate more with those from their own group than those from different groups.
What are two possible reasons for why ingroup favoritism occurs?
1. Reputational Concern
- People decide who they interact with/ how to behave towards based on what that persons reputation is (avoid those with bad reputation, interact with those with a good reputation).
People experience heightened concern about their reputation when paired with an ingroup member (ex. neighbor) rather than an outgroup member (person in another country), → leading to ingroup favoritism.
2. Expected Cooperation
- People might cooperate with others only when you can expect them to also cooperate
- People automatically assume that ingroup members are more cooperative than outgroup members → leading to ingroup favoritism.
Does reputational concern or expected cooperation account for more explaination for why ingroup favoritism happens?
Expected cooperation accounts for larger amounts of ingroup favoritism!
Ex. evidenced in findings where college students give more money to and expect more cooperation from in-group members to give the same amount of money to them.
Expecting ingroup members to be more cooperative than outgroup members creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. How?
The more favorable the expectations are of ingroup members, the more people favor their ingroup more, making the expectation come true!!
Trying to encourage more cooperation with outgroup members could start to change expectations
What are examples of obvious vs ambiguous markers for social categories?
obvious = age, race, sex
ambigous = political affiliation, sexual orientation
Age, race, and sex are the three main ——– categories
social
people acheive high rates of accurately categorizing people into groups when viewing faces that combine these features.
Perceivers categorize others into social groups unintentionally upon seeing —————-.
their faces!!
Do people categorize ambigous groups into social categories better conciously or unconciously?
unconciously!
Just like in obvious social categories, people categorize members of ambiguous groups with very little effort!!
(categorization is no different when making snap judgements vs deliberate decisions)
People’s performance in categorizing others as members of perceptually ambiguous groups is significantly better than chance → with an average overall accuracy rate of ——-
65%
People often underestimate their beliefs about their own accuracy → suggests that people are not conscious of the extent to which they categorize others.
Ex. “gaydar” or ability to identify someone’s political leanings at a glance.
When categorizing perceptually abiguous social categories, people also use categories that are not necessarily relevant. What is an example study of this?
Participants tasked with identifying men’s race and judging their likeability of their faces
The ratings of likeability diverged not only to the target’s race but also their sexual orientation (even though it was never mentioned).
What 3 things underlie social categorization?
- People’s ability to learn the features that best indicate group membership
- Various motivations support categorizations → ex. drive to learn valuable info, use cognitive resources efficiently, and simplify the world.
- Individual experience interacting with members of a given category (more time to learn facial features relevant for distinguishing the group’s boundaries)
Do people learn the statistical regularities that seperate members of their in group or their outgroup?
in group!!
Ex. Black perceivers pay greater attention to features that vary more among Black individuals (ex. hairstyle), and White perceivers pay greater attention to features that vary more among White individuals (ex. iris color)
What is the categorization-individuation model?
helps explain how categorization and experience interact to explain differences in memory for in-group vs. out-group faces.
People first look at the facial features that differnciate categories, and only sometimes do people individuate others and pay attention to their specific features.
We pay attention to people’s features when they belong to our in group and also when that group membership is especially relevant (ex. gay men have a better memory for other gay men)
How does a stronger need for structure impact categorization of people?
People with stronger need for structure and certainty tend to organize social information into categories with simpler internal structures.
Also may be uncomfortable when there are no clear social categories.
What is the main consequence of social categorization?
People use the same facial features to stereotype and form prejudiced beliefs about others as they do to categorize them!
Affects behavioural inferences like hiring decisons and court verdicts:
Ex. because of pervasive stereotypes that construe African Americans as dangerous, judges and juries deliver more severe criminal sentences to individuals with more Afrocentric facial features
———- often leads to people assuming category properites are in inherent and stereotype attiributions are fixed. What is an example of this?
ESSENTIALISM
Ex. an uncle observing his nephew smiling while doing math homework may infer that boys like math.
People do more than make inferences about the group members’ attributes when this information reaches the category level (e.g., inferring that an unfamiliar boy also likes math), they also draw conclusions regarding how these traits came about (e.g., boys like math because they have a natural aptitude for numbers)
Thus, people often come to believe that an “essence” shared by all category members causes these properties
What is the behavioural immune system?
Serves as the first line of defense against pathogens with mechanisms that detect the presence of pathogens in the immediate environment and we avoid.
The system is overly sensitive to cues, which can cause aversive responses to things (including people) when there is actually no pathogen threat.
System is also flexible → more strong avoidance responses happen when perceivers are (or perceive to be) more vulnerable to pathogen infection.
The behavioural immune system consists of many psychological machanisms that….
- Detect cues from the presence of infectious pathogens in immediate environment
- Trigger disease-relevant emotional and cognitive responses
- Facilitate behavioural avoidance of pathogen infection
What is the “smoke detector principle”? How is it related to the behavioural immune system?
“Smoke detector principle” = smoke detectors are sensitive to anything that superficially resembles smoke from fire - prone to lots of false-positive errors (annoying, but not fatal) to “protect us” from false-negative errors (alarm not going off, could be fatal)
**The behavioural immune system is oversensitive just like a smoke detector, by making lots of false-positive errors. **
What is functional flexibility
*think of behavioural immune system
Some individuals are especially vulnerable to pathogen infection and will pay more attention to cues, triggering more aversive responses.
Behavioural avoidance of pathogens also creates a cost/benefit problem. Explain.
There are functional benefits associated with detection and avoidance of things, there are also costs.
The ratio of costs to benefits is a function of an individual’s vulnerability to infection:
* When relatively invulnerable to infection, benefits from behavioral avoidance may be outweighed by its costs.
* When highly vulnerable to infection, those costs may be outweighed by the benefits of behavioral avoidance.
^characterized by functional flexibility!
Disgust is a key component of the behavioural immune system and manifests in what certain ways?
- Evoked from behaviours that violate normative expectations in areas associated with disease transmission (ex. Food preparation, personal hygiene, sexual interaction).
- Disgust responses are based on basic principles of contagion (the role of physical contact in the spread of disease)
People experience disgust like the smoke detector by being overly sensistive to stimuli. What is an example of this?
People are disgusted by things that pose a real risk of infection (ex. Dog feces), but also disgusted by things that pose no risk but resemble a risk of infection (ex. Chocolate fudge sculpted to look like dog feces).
*disgust is also consistent with funtional flexibility (stronger disgust-eliciting cues when more vulnerable to infection)
People who have chronically higher levels of “germ aversion” also report lower levels of ———-.
EXTRAVERSION
People who have a higher sensitivity to disgust experience the cost of engaging in less social interaction
Study: pathogen salience caused participants to report lower levels of extraversion and engage in avoidance motor movements when presented with pictures of people.
The behavioural system is a contributor of ——— against people who have anomalous physical apperences
PREJUDICES
Because of the smoke-detector principle → prejudicial responses rise from perceiving people, who arent actually sick, but who are characterized by some superficial anomaly in physical appearance.
Therefore, reason for more prejudice againt people with disabilities, obese people and the elderly, also contributes to ethnocentrism and xenophobia
Women in their first trimester of pregnancy exhibited heightened ethnocentric and xenophobic attitude. What phenomenon explains this?
the behavioural immune system due to functional flexibility
being more vulnerable to sickness when pregnant causes prejudices against people who pose a risk of disease, which are usually people with different norms/look different (people from other cultures)
What were the findings of the study on Canadians choice of government spending for foreign immigrants or immigrants from familiar places?
When pathogens were salient (more pronounced), Canadian participants were more inclined to spend government money to recruit immigrants from familiar places, to exclude those from foreign (and perceived to be more “diseasey”) places.
How does risk of pathogen infection contribute to individualistic and collectivistic cultures?
Individualistic values are associated with increased risk of pathogen infection as there is a tolerance for deviance from norms!
Therefore,
- Collectivistic value systems are especially likely to occur under ecological circumstances where there is high pathogen prevalence
- Individualistic value systems are more likely to occur under ecological circumstances characterized by relatively lower pathogen prevalence.
How does risk of pathogen infection influence extraversion levels in populations?
Extraversion is associated with social benefits but also with disease-specific costs
So… in countries characterized by relatively higher prevalence of pathogens, the population is likely to be characterized by lower levels of extraversion.
How does risk of pathogen infection influence openess to experience in populations?
Openness to experience is associated with risk-taking and willingness to deviate from social norms, causes more opportunity for pathogen transmission.
So… in countries characterized by relatively higher prevalence of pathogens, the population is likely to be characterized by relatively lower levels of openness
What is the stereotype content model?
a model that explains the two dimentions that persist in social cognition when making sense of individuals/groups
- perceived warmth (trustworthiness, friendliness)
- perceived competence (capability, assertiveness)
When people meet others, they want to know their individual or collective intent towards them and their groups which SCM calls ———-. And also wants to know whether people can enact that intent which SCM calls ————.
warmth (who is friend or foe)
competence (capable, agentic)
Explain the table of the Stereotype Content Model (SCM)
All-good in groups = high-high
all-bad outgroups = low-low.
Two additional intergroup stereotypes (ambivalent quadrants) where groups are warm and incompetent, or cold and competent.
What is the default group stereotype for middle class people, citizens, etc.?
The default of society is people that are both high in warmth and competence
→ people report pride and admiration for these groups.
(usually people in US or Canadians)
What is the group stereotype for homeless people, refugees, or drug addicts?
The group stereotype for low competence and low warmth is the lowest in society → report disgust and contempt from these groups.
Often Mexicans and Africans fit into this stereotype group
What is stereotype ambivalence?
stereotypes that are high on one dimension and low on the other.
Ex. warm but incompetent (irish, italians) or cold but competent (Asians, Jews, British, Germans)
How is stereotypic warmth and competence measured?
Stereotypic warmth → based on a group’s perceived cooperativeness and competitiveness
- Often measured as both economic interdependence (zero-sum resources) and symbolic values (shared vs. conflicting).
Stereotypic competence → based on perceived status
- Often measured by items like “How prestigious are the jobs generally held by….?” and “How economically successful have…been”
What descriptive research methods have been used to support the stereotype content model?
Surverys
Comparisions
(comparing SCM among countries)
Labratory
(irl lab encounters support SCM labels/categories of competence)
Behavioural Approaches
(ex. various biobehavioral data converge for the envy quadrant - rich people and business people).
Countries with moderate to high income inequality have more stereotypical groups of people in ————————.
the ambivalent quadrents
(high competence, low warmth OR low competence, high warmth)
Ex. United States, Latin America, South Africa
Countries with moderate to high income equality have stereotypical groups that are —————-.
either all-good insiders (high warmth, high competence), or all-bad outsiders (low warmth, low competence)
Ex. Scandinavia, Australia, much of Europe.
Have a larger inclusive in-group (all-good) and one smaller cluster of out-groups (all-bad).
Also affects peaceful countries as well → extreme conflict also creates a simple us/them dynamic
Countries that are intermediate on peace conflict (like the US) have the most stereotype ————–.
Ambivalence!
How do Asian Nations differ in warmth-competence correlations?
Show out-groups similar to Western ones → but the societal in-groups (citizens, members of one’s hometown) appear in the moderate middle, which is consistent with Asian cultural modesty norms.
In-groups (perceived high warmth and competence) are not praised as much in Asia, but more expected as the norm!
Perceivers’ smile muscles typically respond to other people’s good events over bad ones, but this is not so for the ———- quadrant of the SCM
envy quadrant (high competence, low warmth)
(as demonstrated in behavioural approaches)
What do studies reveal that look at the brain’s different reactions to photographs of groups in each SCM quadrent?
Homeless people and drug-addicted people (the low competence, low warmth contempt quadrant) fail to activate the brain’s medial prefrontal cortex (that is implicated in social cognition)
Disgust ratings and insula activation also fit this quadrant.
People at the bottom of the competence-status dimension are devalued as expendable, especially if also viewed as having low warmth
Which SCM quadrent has grown more prominent over time?
the “pity” quadrent
(high warmth, low competence)
This category did not use to occur –> century-old Italian Fascist magazines revealed this.
SCM data distinguish stereotypic ——- of societal groups
subgroups
subtypes of men and women, ethnic subtypes, and LGBTQ+ subtypes
Ex. the overarching category of Indigenous Peopls is spread across the SCM, with different dimensions arising for different people/groups.
What is a parallel to warmth and competence in the context of self-concept?
communion and agency
Communion = warmth and morality
Agency = competence and assertiveness
→ they separately and together show the influence of communion (morality) in impressions of others and the importance of agency to self concept
The total explanatory value of both communion and agency account for over —-% of the variance in individual impressions.
80%
Communion and agency and warmth and competence frameworks both show a ———– effect
compensation effect!!
when one group is seen as high in one dimension (competence or warmth), the other group is stereotypically assumed to be high in the opposite dimension (warmth or competence).
This comparison creates a balancing act and contributes to ambient stereotypes within the SCM (high on one, low on the other)
What is an example of the compensation effect based on the SCM?
As women are stereotyped as warm but not competent, the compensation effect leads to the stereotype that men are competent but less warm, as men often are stereotyped as more authoritative and less emotionally expressive.
This creates ambient stereotypes where women are expected to be more warm and not competent (pity quadrent), and men are expected to be more competent and less warm (envy quadrent).
When making sense of groups, competence seems more objective and warmth is more subjective. Why?
Status readily translates into competence, as the SCM predicts.
But a group’s beliefs do not translate directly into warmth but instead appear subjectively better or worse via the lens of perceivers’ own beliefs.
Stereotype content predicts ———— ————– on the basis of social comparison and attributions for outcomes.
emotional prejudices
Ex: A cooperative in-group’s outcome evokes pride, while a competitive out-group’s positive outcome provokes envy.
Ex: An ally’s negative outcome evokes pity, whereas a competitor’s negative outcome provokes contempt.
These prejudiced emotions predict behaviour towards others better than stereotypes do!!
What implies other people’s intent for good or evil (warmth)?
Perceived social structural interdependence (cooperation-competition)
What implies other people’s ability to act on their intentions? (competence)
their status
(prestige and power).
What is the main hypothesis for why stereotype threat occurs?
when individuals feel that they might be judged through the lens of a negative stereotype, they experience reduced working memory which hinders their ability to focus attention on goal-relevant tasks.
Who is most susceptible to stereotyoe threat?
People who care the most about doing well in the area that the task involves (such as acedemics)
Stereotype threat makes people who associate themselves strongly in an area question their self-perceptions:
Ex. highly math-identified women and men completed a quick categorization task where they had to decide if they could see themselves in certain occupations → wanted to see how fast they responded to math careers, as those who said yes quickly likely have the strongest math self-concept.
FINDING: Women became less confident in judgements when they were waiting to take a math test that would be graded by a male.
(women felt uncertain about who they were and what they could do)
Stereotype threat makes someone search more for evidence that they could be confirming the stereotype.
Where do people search for this evidence?
This evidence could be from:
- their own behaviour (Am I making mistakes?)
- internal experiences (Am I too anxious?)
- other people’s reactions (do they think I’m stupid?)
Stereotype threat increases sensitivity to one’s —— states.
INTERNAL
Feeling anxiety itself during performance can be readily interpreted as evidence of failure.
Ex. women under stereotype threat were more likely to have their attention drawn toward anxiety-related stimuli than were women in a neutral condition (which lowered their working memory on a task).
Stereotype threat activates negative thoughts that can bias the interpretation of what one is thinking, feeling, doing, etc. How would this apply to a test taking context?
Feeling anxiety during a test when confident is fine, but when anxiety is experienced with feelings of doubt, it causes a distraction.
Example Finding →
- Anxiety about an upcoming test predicted lower working memory, but only for those who were primed with thoughts of doubt.
- When primed with thoughts of confidence, anxiety was unrelated to working memory.
Stereotype threat cues more self-doubt for minorities more than White people, but both groups still had performance deficits when doubt was primed.
The cycle of stereotype threat creates a mentally taxing process of performance and regulating emotions. How can this cycle be broken?
It can be broken when one’s internal expereince is reappraised
Ex. internal expereinces impacting performance can be limited if people are told that anxiety will not harm their performance –> helps to restore working memory
GENERALLY: by reappraising emotions in general, the higher the sympathetic activation is going into the test, making people perform better.
What is prosocial behaviour?
a social behaviour that benefits other people or society as a whole (helping, donating, cooperating, volunteering, etc.).
What are the two categories of prosociality?
1. Prosocial behaviours = any act designed to increase other’s well-being (cooperating with or sharing resources)
2. Prosocial preferences = people’s preference for outcomes that benefit others or align with prosocial norms.
What three categories challenge the reflective model of selfishness and support the intutive model of prosocial behaviour?
- Behavioural signs of automaticity
- Neural signatures of value
- Early development
—— is one of the most vital, defining features of humans.
Prosociality
It’s widespead, nearly universal across cultures, and humans demonstrate prosociality greater than any other species.
How do behavioural signs of automaticity support an inutive model of prosocial behaviour?
Recent studies support an intuitive model of prosocial choices in the following ways:
- People make prosocial decisions more quickly than selfish ones
- Experimental manipulations known to reduce participant’s ability to exert control (ex. Time pressure, distraction), increase cooperative and prosocial behaviour.
- Orienting people towards intuitive thinking and away from the exertion of reflective control increases cooperation.
All demonstrate that prosociality represents an intuitive, not effortfully controlled, form of decision-making.
When people engage in reflective (selfish) behaviour, what brain areas are activated?
lateral prefrontal cortex & anterior cingulate cortex
Prosocial choices FAIL to engage with these regions associated with control
How does brain activity reveal that prosociality reflects a form of reward seeking (not selfishness)?
One prototypical behaviour that does not require control is the pursuit of rewards like money or food → which produce activity in the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (associated with relatively intuitive reward seeking)
Ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex are reliably engaged by a number of prosocial outcomes → suggests that experience of reward may underlie prosocial preferences.
The same regions are activated when people make prosocial choices
How does child development support the intuitive model for prosociality?
Child development supports the intuitive model of prosocial behaviour as children produce fair choices before they are able to exert reflective control over their behavior.
Prosocial behaviours occur even when behaviour is costly and children are not rewarded for doing so (providing rewards for prosociality can actually REDUCE helping behaviour)
The idea that prosociality can be intuitive does not imply that ———–.
it always is!
People may intuitively tend towards selfishness and have to exert control to act prosocially (like the reflective model)
What is prosocial spending? What are the benefits?
prosocial spending = spending money on other people
People who prosocially spend more report more happiness, likely because it satisfies one or multiple core human needs (relatedness, comptetence, and autonomy)
Study: University students either given $5 or $20 to spend by the end of the day and either told to spend it on themselves or others. What did this study reveal?
People who spent the money on others reported happier moods over the course of the day than those who spent the money on themselves
(the amount of money, $5 or $20, did not have an effect on this happiness)
When the study was described to others they predicted people who spent the money on themselves would be happier → suggests that people’s daily spending choices may be influenced by flawed intuitions about the relationship between money and happiness.
Does the correlation between prosocial spending and happiness occur in countries other than in North America?
Yes
A study tested this in 136 countries.
In 120 of them, there was a positive relationship between giving and happiness.
Tthe emotional rewards of prosocial spending in an economically diverse group of countries was studied in both Canada and South Africa with a goody bag. What were the findings? Why are they so important?
Participants told to spend money on a “goody bag”:
- Half of the participants were told that they themselves would receive it (personal spending)
- Other half were told that a sick child in a local hospital would receive it (prosocial spending).
FINDING: participants in both countries reported a happier mood if they bought the goody bag for the sick child → specifically notable as more than 20% of the South African sample reported not having enough money to buy food themselves.
Children exhibited more happiness when they gave treats away to a puppet than when they ate the treats themselves. What idea does this demonstrate?
The emotional benefits of prosocial spending!
What theory can explain why giving leads to happiness?
Self-determination theory = human well-being depends on the satisfaction of three basic needs: relatedness, competence, and autonomy.
*Prosocial spending is most likely (over personal spending) to produce happiness under conditions that satisfy these 3 needs.
How does prosocial spending meet self-determination’s theory of human’s three basic needs: relatedness, competence, and autonomy
1. Relatedness
Individuals experience the most happiness from prosocial spending when giving provides the opportunity to connect with others.
2. Competence
Prosocial spending is more likely to satisfy the need for competence if people can see how their generous actions made a difference.
3. Autonomy
The emotional benefits of prosocial spending are stronger when people have a choice about whether to give.
(people happier when they gave money away, but only if they had a choice of how much to donate)
People get more happiness when they spend money on close others rather than acquaintances. What core human need might explain why this is?
Relatedness
(individuals feel the happiest from prosocial spending when giving provides the opportunity to connect with others)
Ex. participants who received a $10 starbucks gift card were happier if they spent it on a friend over themselves, BUT only if they took the time to go with their friend.
Individuals may experience more happiness from giving to charities that make it easy to see the positive impact of donations (ex. for every $10 donated, the charity will provide a bed net to protect a child at risk of malaria).
What core human need might explain why?
Competence
People are happier from prosocial spending if they feel like effective, competent helpers whose actions have made a real difference.
How does prosocial spending produce independent positive effects on overall health, like emotional and physical vitality?
Prosocial spending can increase physical strength
- Ex. participants who donated to charity had more hand strength
Not prosocially spending when there is an opportunity to can increase shame/stress:
- Ex. Gave students $10 and they could donate as much as they wanted to another student. The more money students gave away, the happier they were. BUT the more money students kept for themselves, the more shame they experienced (increasing their cortisol)
What are wise interventions?
interventions using psychological mechanisms that are aimed to alter self-reinforcing processes over time and improve people’s outcomes in diverse circumstances in the future.
Can have a large influence on social problems.
What does this wise intervention on growth mind-set intelligence reveal?
This intervention conveys that intelligence is not fixed but can expand with effort and help from others; it can help struggling students perform better in school for months after the intervention!
How long can wise interventions improve outcomes for?
For years (if not for a lifetime)
Example Study = a brief exercise, lasting an hour or less, can raise ethnic-minority students’ school achievement for as long as 3 years later.
Which two interventions improved the ways others interacted with others the most?
perspective-taking and social-belonging interventions both generated the largest benefits
How do wise interventions change patterns for the psychology of individuals given this example?
In this wise intervention, students learning that worries are common and improve with time takes the edge off of negative experiences.
Minority students in the intervention condition no longer saw their daily experiences as if they had a global lack of belonging.
Wise interventions will not always produce the same effects.
In what 3 ways must a wise intervention meet the context and population to maximize its impact?
1. A wise intervention will be effective only if the process it targets matters in the setting at hand.
Ex. if people with high self-esteem readily accept compliments, interventions that address self esteem will not improve their relationships
2. Wise interventions will be effective only if they change the targeted psychological process
(Interventions need to be adapted to make the message clear in the current setting.)
3. Wise interventions will affect long-term outcomes only if they alter critical recursive processes
Ex. brief value-affirmation interventions delivered early in the school year can prevent downward cycles of psychological threat among ethnic-minority adolescents for years, but if delivered after such cycles are established in the middle of the year, the same intervention is less effective.
The article on wise interventions listed examples in what 5 domains?
- civic behaviour
- close relationships
- education
- health
- intergroup relationships
