H 13 Social Psychology Flashcards
Focus 1: 1. In what sense are people natural psychologists?
Natuurlijke of naïeve psychologen. Wij zijn beoefenaars van volkspsychologie, waarmee mensen “van nature” de psychologische wereld begrijpen. In overeenstemming met de opvatting van Heider hebben onderzoekers ontdekt dat mensen die niet geschoold zijn in psychologie vaak opmerkelijk nauwkeurige observaties en beoordelingen maken over het gedrag van andere mensen (Carney et al., 2007). Maar zoals Heider zelf opmerkte, lijden onze oordelen over anderen soms aan bepaalde consistente fouten of vooroordelen - biases.
13.494 Waarom zijn sociaal psychologen geïnterseerd in de vooroordelen / biases?
- Ten eerste geven deze biases aanwijzingen over de mentale processen die bijdragen aan zowel accurate als onnauwkeurige percepties en oordelen.
- Ten tweede kan inzicht in vooroordelen / biases sociale rechtvaardigheid bevorderen. Door mensen te helpen de psychologische neigingen te begrijpen die bijdragen aan vooroordelen en oneerlijke behandeling van andere mensen, kunnen sociaal psychologische bevindingen mensen helpen dergelijke vooroordelen te overwinnen.
13.494 Attribution
Vb. iemand lacht en je veralgemeent dat het een vriendelijke persoon is.
Of dat ze je om de tuin leiden… of…
In common English usage, any claim about causation is called an attribution. In the study of person perception, an attribution is a claim about the cause of someone’s behavior. We naturally make judgments about others’ personalities on the basis of their behavior, but for these judgments to be meaningful we must distinguish actions that tell us something lasting and unique about the person from those that do not.
13.494 Person Bias
De neiging om het gedrag van een persoon te veel toe te schrijven aan de innerlijke kenmerken (persoonlijkheid) van de persoon en te weinig aan de omgevingssituatie
Heider (1958) merkte op dat mensen de neiging hebben om te veel gewicht toe te kennen aan persoonlijkheid en niet genoeg aan de omgevingssituatie wanneer ze attributies/ gevolgtrekkingen maken over de acties van anderen. Stel je bijvoorbeeld voor dat we in de file staan en Susan, onze chauffeur, uit veel woede. Vertelt haar woede ons iets bruikbaars over haar als persoon? De meeste mensen hebben de neiging om de file als oorzaak te negeren en Susans woede grotendeels toe te schrijven aan haar karakter. Veel onderzoekers hebben het bestaan van deze persoonsbias in attributie bevestigd.
13.495 Fundamental attribution bias
Fundamental attribution bias = de neiging van mensen om een handeling toe te schrijven aan de persoonlijkheid van het individu en de beperkingen te negeren die de rol of situatie stelt aan hoe de persoon kan of moet handelen.
Tegen midden van de jaren zeventig was er zoveel bewijs verschenen om de persoonsbias te ondersteunen dat Lee Ross (1977) het de fundamentele attributiefout noemde, een label dat is ontworpen om de alomtegenwoordigheid en kracht van het vooroordeel aan te duiden en om te suggereren dat het ten grondslag ligt aan veel andere sociale psychologische verschijnselen. Dat label is nog steeds in gebruik ondanks groeiend bewijs dat de bias misschien niet zo fundamenteel is als Ross en anderen dachten.
Focus 3:
- Why is the person bias often called the “fundamental attribution error”?
- In what conditions does the bias most often occur?
Fundamental attribution bias = de neiging van mensen om een handeling toe te schrijven aan de persoonlijkheid van het individu en de beperkingen te negeren die de rol of situatie stelt aan hoe de persoon kan of moet handelen.
- Tegen midden van de jaren zeventig was er zoveel bewijs verschenen om de persoonsbias te ondersteunen dat Lee Ross (1977) het de fundamentele attributiefout noemde, een label dat is ontworpen om de alomtegenwoordigheid en kracht van het vooroordeel aan te duiden en om te suggereren dat het ten grondslag ligt aan veel andere sociale psychologische verschijnselen. Dat label is nog steeds in gebruik ondanks groeiend bewijs dat de bias misschien niet zo fundamenteel is als Ross en anderen dachten.
- Mensen maken veel meer kans om deze fout te maken als hun geest bezet is door andere taken of als ze moe zijn dan wanneer ze hun volledige aandacht aan de taak besteden. Ook kunnen in veel gevallen de demands / eisen van het experiment de persoonsbias kunstmatig produceren. Proefpersonen die te horen krijgen dat het hun taak is om iemands persoonlijkheid te beoordelen, vertonen veel vaker de persoonsbias dan degenen aan wie wordt gevraagd het waargenomen gedrag in bewoordingen uit te leggen
13.499 Self concept
Er zijn maar weinig concepten die belangrijker zijn voor mensen dan het persoonlijke zelfgevoel (personal sense of self), of zelfconcept. Zelfconcept verwijst naar de manier waarop een persoon zichzelf definieert. Veel psychologen en sociologen hebben betoogd dat het zelfconcept in weze een sociaal product is. Om je bewust te worden van jezelf, moet je je eerst bewust worden van anderen van jouw soort en je er dan bewust van worden, misschien door de manier waarop anderen je behandelen, dat je een van hen bent. Zelfbewustzijn omvat niet alleen bewustzijn van het fysieke zelf, maar ook van de eigen persoonlijkheid en karakter, wat psychologisch weerspiegeld wordt door de reacties van andere mensen.
Focus 8: According to Cooley, what is the “looking glass” with which we evaluate ourselves?
Vele jaren geleden bedacht de socioloog Charles Cooley (1902/1964) de term spiegelend zelf (looking-glass self) om te beschrijven wat hij beschouwde als een zeer groot aspect van ieders zelfconcept. Cooley’s “kijkglas” is geen echte spiegel; het is een metafoor voor andere mensen die op ons reageren. Hij suggereerde dat we allemaal uit de reacties van anderen afleiden wat ze van ons denken. We gebruiken die gevolgtrekkingen om onze eigen zelfconcept op te bouwen. Cooley’s basisidee werd onderbuwd door veel onderzoek waaruit blijkt dat de meningen en houdingen van mensen over zichzelf sterk worden beïnvloed door de meningen en houdingen die anderen over hen hebben.
13.499 Self-fulfilling prophecies or Pygmalion effects.
The beliefs and expectations that others have of a person—whether they are initially true or false—can to some degree create reality by influencing that person’s self-concept and behavior. Such effects are called self-fulfilling prophecies or Pygmalion effects.
Het fenomeen waarbij overtuigingen en verwachtingen die anderen van een persoon hebben - of ze nu in eerste instantie waar of onwaar zijn - tot op zekere hoogte de realiteit kunnen creëren door het zelfconcept en het gedrag van die persoon te beïnvloeden. Ook wel Pygmalion-effecten genoemd.
Hebben kritische mensen een sterkere of een minder sterke neiging tot maladaptieve dissonantie (reductie)?
Ik heb geen precies antwoord gevonden op deze vraag. Persoonlijk vermoed ik inderdaad dat het twee kanten op kan gaan, afhankelijk van de situatie. Als ‘een kritisch denker met goede, weloverwogen standpunten zijn’ belangrijk is voor iemands zelfbeeld, zou dit wellicht tot ironische effecten kunnen leiden. Mensen zijn namelijk met name sterk gemotiveerd om dissonantie te reduceren als hun zelfbeeld wordt bedreigd.
Wat kan je doen om partijdige mensen toch van mening te laten veranderen op basis van nieuwe informatie?
Bij deze vraag moest ik nog denken aan een artikel van Hall en collega’s uit 2018: Is belief superiority justified by superior knowledge? (kan je vinden in de OU online bibliotheek). Dit artikel laat zien dat mensen die denken dat ze superieure ideeën hebben over een bepaald onderwerp vaak helemaal geen superieure kennis hebben en ook geneigd zijn om informatie te selecteren die consistent is met hun ideeën. Experimenteel gemanipuleerde feedback op groepsniveau had enig effect op belief superiority en de selectie van nieuwe informatie (ik denk overigens niet dat je dit rechtstreeks naar alle situaties kunt vertalen).
Wat kan je doen om vijandigheid tussen concurrerende teams in organisaties te verminderen?
Zoals ik al aangaf, is het ook in organisaties belangrijk om ervoor te zorgen dat verschillende afdelingen/teams denken in overkoepelende doelen en elkaar niet als concurrentie zien. Soms wordt competitie tussen teams georganiseerd met het idee dat dit performance kan verbeteren. Terwijl competitie in sommige gevallen tot betere performance kan leiden, lijkt de manier waarop over competitie gecommuniceerd wordt belangrijk te zijn. Als er op een positieve manier gecommuniceerd wordt over competitie (bijv. het beste team krijgt een bonus), dan leidt dit eerder tot motivatie, enthousiasme en positieve gedragingen. Als er op een negatieve manier gecommuniceerd wordt over competitie (bijv. het slechtste team verliest zijn bonus), dan leidt dit eerder tot angst en negatieve gedragingen.
13.498 Self esteem
Our self-concepts (definition of us as a person) have a strong evaluative component, which psychologists refer to as self-esteem. Self-esteem, by definition, is one’s feeling of approval, acceptance, and liking of oneself.
We experience self-esteem as being rooted in our own judgments about ourselves, but, according to an influential theory proposed by Mark Leary, these judgments actually derive primarily from our perceptions of others’ attitudes toward us. The theory is referred to as the sociometer theory because it proposes that self-esteem acts like a meter to inform us, at any given time, of the degree to which we are likely to be accepted or rejected by others. According to the sociometer theory, what you experience as your self-esteem at this very moment largely reflects your best guess about the degree to which other people, whom you care about, respect and accept you.
The sociometer theory evolutionary explained: our survival in groups depends for a great deal on the acceptance of others. So if we feel not accepted we will try to change that.
Focus 9 What are Pygmalion effects in psychology, and how were such effects demonstrated in elementary school classrooms?
The beliefs and expectations that others have of a person—whether they are initially true or false—can to some degree create reality by influencing that person’s self-concept and behavior. Such effects are called self-fulfilling prophecies or Pygmalion effects.
In a classic experiment, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968) led elementary school teachers to believe that a special test had predicted that certain students would show a spurt in intellectual growth during the next few months. Only the teachers were told of the supposed test results, not the students. In reality, the students labeled as “spurters” had been selected not on the basis of a test score but at random. Yet, when all the students were tested 8 months later, the “spurter” students showed significantly greater gains in IQ and academic performance than did their classmates. These were real gains, measured by objective tests, not just perceived gains. Somehow, the teachers’ expectations that certain children would show more intellectual development than other children created its own reality.
Compared to their behavior toward non-“spurter” students, teachers became warmer toward the “spurters,” gave them more time to answer difficult questions, gave them more challenging work, and noticed and reinforced their self-initiated efforts. In short, either consciously or unconsciously, they created a better learning environment for the selected students than for other students. Through their treatment of them, they also changed the selected students’ self-concepts. The students began to see themselves as more capable academically than they had before, and this led them to work harder to live up to that perception.
More recently, many experiments have demonstrated the Pygmalion effect with adults in various business and management settings as well as with children in school. When supervisors are led to believe that some of their subordinates have “special promise,” those randomly selected subordinates in fact do begin to perform better than they did before. Again, these effects appear to occur partly from the extra attention and encouragement that the selected subordinates get and partly from the change in the subordinates’ self-concepts in relation to their work.
Focus 7: strangers who meet on the Internet like each other more than do strangers who meet in person - How might this phenomenon be explained?
Researchers have found that get-acquainted meetings over the Internet are more intimate, more revealing of what each person considers to be his or her “true self,” than are such meetings conducted face-to-face. Apparently, the relative anonymity of the Internet, along with the lack of visual and auditory contact, reduces social anxiety and frees people to reveal more about themselves than they would if they met face-to-face. Also, without knowledge of the physical features of the other person, the biasing effects of attractiveness, or lack thereof, are absent. Communication is not shut down by early negative judgments or anxieties based on physical features. When and if the two partners do meet, they already know a good deal about each other and may feel something of an emotional bond, which may lead them to see each other as more attractive than they would have if they were complete strangers.
Focus 10: what is the sociometer theory?
We experience self-esteem as being rooted in our own judgments about ourselves, but, according to an influential theory proposed by Mark Leary, these judgments actually derive primarily from our perceptions of others’ attitudes toward us. The theory is referred to as the sociometer theory because it proposes that self-esteem acts like a meter to inform us, at any given time, of the degree to which we are likely to be accepted or rejected by others. According to the sociometer theory, what you experience as your self-esteem at this very moment largely reflects your best guess about the degree to which other people, whom you care about, respect and accept you.
Focus 10: What evidence supports the sociometer theory (Mark Leary)?
- Individual differences in self-esteem correlate strongly with individual differences in the degree to which people believe that they are generally accepted or rejected by others
- In experiments, and in correlational studies involving real-life experiences, people’s self-esteem increased after praise, social acceptance, or other satisfying social experiences and decreased after evidence of social rejection
- Feedback about success or failure on a test had greater effects on self-esteem if the person was led to believe that others would hear of this success or failure than if the person was led to believe that the feedback was private and confidential. This may be the most compelling line of evidence for the theory because if self-esteem depended just on our own judgments about ourselves, then it shouldn’t matter whether or not others knew how well we did.
How can the sociometer theory be an evolutionary explanation of the function of self - esteem?
The sociometer theory was designed to offer an evolutionary explanation of the function of self-esteem. From an evolutionary perspective, other people’s views of us matter a great deal. Our survival depends on others’ acceptance of us and willingness to cooperate with us. A self-view that is greatly out of sync with how others see us could be harmful. A major evolutionary purpose of our capacity for self-esteem, according to the sociometer theory, is to motivate us to act in ways that promote our acceptance by others.
13.501 Social referencing and reference group
We actively try to influence others views of us and in that way we influence our self perceptions. In addition, we compare ourselves to others as a way of defining and evaluating ourselves, and we often bias those comparisons by giving more weight to some pieces of evidence than to others. For example, to see oneself as tall, or conscientious, or good at math, is to see oneself as having that quality compared with other people. The process of comparing ourselves with others in order to identify our unique characteristics and evaluate our abilities is called social comparison. A direct consequence of social comparison is that the self-concept varies depending on the reference group, the group against whom the comparison is made.
Evidence suggests that people identify themselves largely in terms of the ways in which they perceive themselves to be different from those around them.
13.501 Big fish in small pond effect
Other research conducted in many different countries has shown that academically able students at nonselective schools typically have higher academic self-concepts than do equally able students at very selective schools a phenomenon aptly called the big-fish-in-small-pond effect. The effect reflects the difference in the students’ reference groups, and a change of reference group, therefore, can dramatically affect our self-esteem. Many first-year college students who earned high grades in high school feel crushed when their marks are only average or less compared with those of their new, more selective reference group of college classmates.
Big fish in small pond effect: individuals compare their own self-concept with their peers and equally capable individuals have higher self-concepts when in a less capable group than in a more capable group.
13.502 Positive illusory bias
At least in North America and Western Europe, people tend to rate themselves unduly high on practically every dimension that they value. Adults overestimation of their abilities (which is even greater in children; see Bjorklund, 2007) is termed a positive illusory bias, which is associated with greater psychological well-being, at least in the short term. Although it is useful to have relatively accurate views of ourselves, it feels good to think well of ourselves, so most of us skew our self-evaluations in positive directions. We maintain our unduly high self-evaluations by treating evidence about ourselves differently from the way we treat evidence about others.
Focus 12: What are 2 means by which people build and maintain inflated views of themselves?
- To systematically skew the attributions we make about our successes and failures. The person bias—the general tendency to attribute people’s actions, whether good or bad, to internal qualities of the person and to ignore external circumstances that constrained or promoted the actions. That bias applies when we think about other people’s actions, but not when we think about our own actions. When we think about our own actions a different bias takes over, the self-serving attributional bias, defined as a tendency to attribute our successes to our own inner qualities and our failures to external circumstances.
- Another means by which most of us maintain inflated views of ourselves involves selective memory. Research has shown that people generally exhibit better long-term memory for positive events and successes in their lives than for negative events and failures . The same bias does not occur in memory for the successes and failures of other people. This positivity bias is especially strong in older adults
13.502 Self-serving attributional bias,
The person bias—the general tendency to attribute people’s actions, whether good or bad, to internal qualities of the person and to ignore external circumstances that constrained or promoted the actions. That bias applies when we think about other people’s actions, but not when we think about our own actions. When we think about our own actions a different bias takes over, the self-serving attributional bias, defined as a tendency to attribute our successes to our own inner qualities and our failures to external circumstances.
13.503 Attitude
An attitude is any belief or opinion that has an evaluative component—a judgment or feeling that something is good or bad, likable or unlikable, moral or immoral, attractive or repulsive. Our attitudes tie us both cognitively and emotionally to our entire social world. We all have attitudes about countless objects, people, events, and ideas, ranging from our feelings about a particular brand of toothpaste to those about democracy or religion. Our most central attitudes, referred to as values, help us judge the appropriateness of whole categories of actions.
Implicit versus explicit attitude
13.503 Implicit attitude
Implicit attitudes, by definition, are attitudes that are manifested in automatic mental associations. They are measured by implicit association tests (Greenwald et al., 1998), which are based on the fact that people can classify two concepts together more quickly if they are already strongly associated in their minds than if they are not strongly associated. In such a test—which is administered with a stopwatch or timer—the score is based on the speed of associations.
Implicit attitudes are gut-level attitudes. The object of the attitude automatically elicits mental associations that connote “good” or “bad,” and these influence our bodily emotional reactions. In this sense, implicit attitudes automatically influence our behavior. The less we think about what we are doing, the more influence our implicit attitudes have.
13.503 Implicit association tests
Implicit attitudes are measured by implicit association tests which are based on the fact that people can classify two concepts together more quickly if they are already strongly associated in their minds than if they are not strongly associated. In such a test—which is administered with a stopwatch or timer—the score is based on the speed of associations.
Implicit attitudes, by definition, are attitudes that are manifested in automatic mental associations.
13.503 Explicit attitude
Attitudes are distincted by explicit and implicit attitudes. Explicit attitudes are conscious, verbally stated evaluations. They are measured by traditional attitude tests in which people are asked, in various ways, to state their evaluation of some object or form of behavior. For example, to assess explicit attitudes about eating meat, people might be asked to respond, on a scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree, to items such as “In general, I like to eat meat.”
Focus 13: What is the difference between implicit and explicit attitudes in their manner of influencing behavior?
Implicit attitudes are gut-level attitudes. The object of the attitude automatically elicits mental associations that connote “good” or “bad,” and these influence our bodily emotional reactions. In this sense, implicit attitudes automatically influence our behavior. The less we think about what we are doing, the more influence our implicit attitudes have.
In contrast, our explicit attitudes require thought; the more we think about what we are doing, the more influence our explicit attitudes have.
In many cases, people’s implicit and explicit attitudes coincide, and in those cases behavior generally corresponds well with attitude. But quite often implicit and explicit attitudes do not coincide. Your implicit attitude will win out unless you consciously think about your explicit attitude and use restraint.
What is seen on fMRI regarding implicit and explicit attitudes?
Quite often implicit and explicit attitudes do not coincide. Your implicit attitude will win out unless you consciously think about your explicit attitude and use restraint.
Experiments using fMRI have shown that people’s implicit attitudes are reflected directly in portions of the brain’s limbic system (part of the subcortical areas) that are involved in emotions and drives. In contrast, explicit attitudes are reflected in portions of the prefrontal cortex that are concerned with conscious control.
In cases where an explicit attitude counters an implicit attitude, the subcortical areas respond immediately to the relevant stimuli, in accordance with the implicit attitude, but then downward connections from the prefrontal cortex may dampen that response. If you have a positive implicit but negative explicit attitude about eating meat, pleasure and appetite centers might respond immediately to meat put before you; but then, if you think about your explicit attitude, those responses might be overcome through connections from your prefrontal cortex.
13.504 Cognitive dissonance theory,
Leon Festinger - cognitive dissonance theory, which ever since has been one of social psychology’s most central ideas. According to the theory, we have a mechanism built into the workings of our mind that creates an uncomfortable feeling of dissonance, or lack of harmony, when we sense some inconsistency among the various explicit attitudes, beliefs, and items of knowledge that constitute our mental store. Just as the discomfort of hunger motivates us to seek food, the discomfort of cognitive dissonance motivates us to seek ways to resolve contradictions or inconsistencies among our conscious cognitions.
Such a mechanism could well have evolved to serve adaptive functions related to logic. Inconsistencies imply that we are mistaken about something, and mistakes can lead to danger.
