L9 Flashcards
what is social psychology?
- to study how individuals’ thoughts, feelings and behaviors influence and are influenced by others
- it focuses on interpersonal behavior and the role of social forces in governing behavior
topics studied by social psychologists
- person perception: forming impression of others
- attribution: explaining the causes of events and behaviors
- close relationship: interpersonal attraction - liking and loving
- attitudes: make social judgments
- behaviors in groups: following others
- conformity and obedience: yielding to others
person perception - def
- person perception
- a process of forming impression of others
- e.g how do you think about “KOLs”
person perception - factors affecting person perception: physical appearance
- physical appearance
- Halo effect- physically attractive were more likely to be judged as: kind, outgoing, interesting, sexually warm and responsive, more social and professional successes, happier marriage
- physical attractiveness - average faces, symmetrical faces, with features like: large eyes, narrow nose, dark eyebrows, high cheekbones, narrow jaws
- many people prefer average faces
- physically attractive were more likely to be judged as: kind, outgoing, interesting, sexually warm and responsive, more social and professional successes, happier marriage
- women prefer in man: Prominent cheekbones, large chin, wide smile, eyes are not set too high
- indicates testosterone, immune system strength and maturity - men prefer in women: large eyes, small nose and chin, prominent cheekbones, high eyebrows, large pupils, large smile and full lips
- these indicate estrogen, fertility and youth
person perception: lipstick effect
- the phenomenon of increased desire for, and use of, appearance-enhancing items during times of economic recession
- women’s desire for appearance-enhancing items increases when primed with economic-recession cues -> thought to be driven by preference for wealthy partners
- economic concern, resources through job, resources through partner
Stereotype
- widely held beliefs that people have certain characteristics because of their membership in a particular group
- as a heuristic: help us save time to make judgement or simplify the world
- social categorization: sorting people into groups on the basis of common characteristics (e.g. race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion)- gender: women have worse math than men, women is tender
- ethnicity: africans’ athletic ability
- occupation: kol is…
- social class: middle-class drink wine and coffee
content of prejudice and stereotypes
- accurate or not?
- are stereotypes always negative?
- positive stereotypes- asian americans are good at schoolwork; african americans are good at athletics
- negative stereotypes generally present more of a cultural problem than positive ones - e.g. gender stereotype -> stereotype threat
- asian americans are good at schoolwork; african americans are good at athletics
ABC of Intergroup relationships
- Affect: prejudice
- Behavioral: Discrimination
- Cognitive: stereotyping
Attribution theory def
- we explain why things happen (the cause of the event) or why people act in that way
- the explanation is subjective and by no means it is the actual one
- simply an inference - behavior -> personal/situation
Attribution theory: elaborate
- different attributions of an event will lead to different reactions
- we have a tendency to sympathize a person if we have an external attribution (that the person doesn’t have any control of)- “he has a busy work schedule so he could not help me to clean the house”
- we tend to blame a person if we have an internal attribution ( that the person does have control of)
- he didnt do housework because he is lazy
Attribution theory: Internal and external
- internal
- personal dispositions, traits, abilities, and feelings
- under the person’s control - external
- situation demands and environmental constraints (e.g. luck, fate etc)
- beyond the person’s control
Attribution Theory: How we judge others?
- we attribute a person’s behaviour to their character without taking into account the limitations and constraints within which the person might be operating
Biases in Attribution: FAE
- fundamental attribution error (FAE)
- observer’s bias in favor of internal attributions in explaining others’ behavior- an over-estimation of internal factors
- when we observe that peter is arguing with his mother, we tend to make an internal attribution that peter is a quarrelsome person
Biases in Attribution: Self-serving bias
- a tendency to attribute one’s successes to personal factors and one’s failures to situational factors
- e.g. when i got an A in psycho courses, i tend to attribute that I am smart -> internal attribution
- e.g. when i failed in psycho course, i tend to attribute that the test is unreasonably difficult -> external attribution - likely due to a tendency to protect self-esteem
Biases in Attribution: why do we have this error
- act as heuristics/ shortcuts
- for easy and fast judgement
- effortful in thinking of external(situation) factors
- research found that FAE happens even when external factors are made salient
three stage model of attribution
- traditional model of attribution
- behaviour -> personal/situational attribution - alternative two-step model of attribution
- behavior ->(automatic first step) personal -> (effortful second step) situation
interpersonal attraction: definitions
- refers to positive feelings toward another person -> liking and loving
- physical attractiveness
- similarity
- reciprocity
- proximity
- above four leads to like and love
interpersonal attraction: mate perferences
- both love and friendship
- female (r=0.76) > male (r=0.47) in predicting popularity
interpersonal attraction: factor in relationship
- similarity
- we like those who are like us
- e.g. interests, values, attachment styles
- being similar -> liking- attitude alignment
- reciprocity
- we like those who like and care us- helping, listening, praising etc
- liking breeds liking and loving promotes loving
- self-enhancement effect (you help them feel good)
- proximity
- we like those who are near us
- mere exposure effect: increasing exposure of a neutral stimulus enhances liking
- Cristiano ronaldo will rate his mirror image as more attractive than we usually see him (right)
Attitudes: overview (def + components)
- social judgments: positive or negative evaluations of objects or thoughts
- A-B-C components
- affective- emotions: feelings about something
- behavioral - tendency to act in a certain way
- cognitive - beliefs: ideas about something
- emotions: feelings about something
attitude: example on working women
- sexist attitude
- cognitive component (belief)- i believe women should be wives not workers
- affective component (emotions) - i get angry when i see a woman doing a man’s job
- behavioral component (action) - i wouldn’t hire a woman manager
- i believe women should be wives not workers
attitude: theory of attitude formation and change (hypothesis of exp)
- Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory
- “Dissonance”: Frustration or unpleasant psychological tension derived from inconsistencies between your attitude and behavior - hypothesis: participants with higher dissonance would be more likely to change their attitude compared with participants with lower dissonance
- IV: Dissonance level (high vs low)
- DV: attitude change
Method of Festinger’s experiment
- Design
IV: Dissonance level
- experimental group: high ($1)
- control group: low ($20)
DV: attitude change - procedure
participants did a boring task, then were asked to tell another “participants” that they task is enjoyable
experimental group rated the task as truly more enjoyable than control group - random assignment –> manipulation of independent variable -> measurement of dependent variable -> conclusion: dissonance about counterattitudinal behavior does cause attitude change
attitude: Dissonance
- dissonance motivates us to reduce our inconsistencies by making our beliefs more consistent with each other
- self-justification
“drinking may be harmful to my health but i will die having a good time” - people come to believe in their lies - foot-in-the-door technique
- people are more likely to comply with a large request if they have first agreed to a smaller request
- to be consistent in the social impression