L9

Question 1

what is social psychology?

Answer 1

1. to study how individuals’ thoughts, feelings and behaviors influence and are influenced by others
2. it focuses on interpersonal behavior and the role of social forces in governing behavior

Question 2

topics studied by social psychologists

Answer 2

1. person perception: forming impression of others
2. attribution: explaining the causes of events and behaviors
3. close relationship: interpersonal attraction - liking and loving
4. attitudes: make social judgments
5. behaviors in groups: following others
6. conformity and obedience: yielding to others

Question 3

person perception - def

Answer 3

1. person perception
   - a process of forming impression of others
   - e.g how do you think about “KOLs”

Question 4

person perception - factors affecting person perception: physical appearance

Answer 4

1. 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
2. women prefer in man: Prominent cheekbones, large chin, wide smile, eyes are not set too high
   - indicates testosterone, immune system strength and maturity
3. 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

Question 5

person perception: lipstick effect

Answer 5

1. the phenomenon of increased desire for, and use of, appearance-enhancing items during times of economic recession
2. women’s desire for appearance-enhancing items increases when primed with economic-recession cues -> thought to be driven by preference for wealthy partners
3. economic concern, resources through job, resources through partner

Question 6

Stereotype

Answer 6

1. 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

Question 7

content of prejudice and stereotypes

Answer 7

1. accurate or not?
2. 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

Question 8

ABC of Intergroup relationships

Answer 8

1. Affect: prejudice
2. Behavioral: Discrimination
3. Cognitive: stereotyping

Question 9

Attribution theory def

Answer 9

1. 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
2. behavior -> personal/situation

Question 10

Attribution theory: elaborate

Answer 10

1. 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”
2. 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

Question 11

Attribution theory: Internal and external

Answer 11

1. internal
   - personal dispositions, traits, abilities, and feelings
   - under the person’s control
2. external
   - situation demands and environmental constraints (e.g. luck, fate etc)
   - beyond the person’s control

Question 12

Attribution Theory: How we judge others?

Answer 12

1. we attribute a person’s behaviour to their character without taking into account the limitations and constraints within which the person might be operating

Question 13

Biases in Attribution: FAE

Answer 13

1. 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

Question 14

Biases in Attribution: Self-serving bias

Answer 14

1. 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
2. likely due to a tendency to protect self-esteem

Question 15

Biases in Attribution: why do we have this error

Answer 15

1. act as heuristics/ shortcuts
2. for easy and fast judgement
3. effortful in thinking of external(situation) factors
4. research found that FAE happens even when external factors are made salient

Question 16

three stage model of attribution

Answer 16

1. traditional model of attribution
   - behaviour -> personal/situational attribution
2. alternative two-step model of attribution
   - behavior ->(automatic first step) personal -> (effortful second step) situation

Question 17

interpersonal attraction: definitions

Answer 17

1. refers to positive feelings toward another person -> liking and loving
   - physical attractiveness
   - similarity
   - reciprocity
   - proximity
   - above four leads to like and love

Question 18

interpersonal attraction: mate perferences

Answer 18

1. both love and friendship
2. female (r=0.76) > male (r=0.47) in predicting popularity

Question 19

interpersonal attraction: factor in relationship

Answer 19

1. similarity
   - we like those who are like us
   - e.g. interests, values, attachment styles
   - being similar -> liking
   
   • attitude alignment
2. 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)
3. 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)

Question 20

Attitudes: overview (def + components)

Answer 20

1. social judgments: positive or negative evaluations of objects or thoughts
2. A-B-C components
   - affective
   
   • emotions: feelings about something
     - behavioral
   • tendency to act in a certain way
     - cognitive
   • beliefs: ideas about something

Question 21

attitude: example on working women

Answer 21

1. 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

Question 22

attitude: theory of attitude formation and change (hypothesis of exp)

Answer 22

1. Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory
   - “Dissonance”: Frustration or unpleasant psychological tension derived from inconsistencies between your attitude and behavior
2. 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

Question 23

Method of Festinger’s experiment

Answer 23

1. Design
   IV: Dissonance level
   - experimental group: high ($1)
   - control group: low ($20)
   DV: attitude change
2. 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
3. random assignment –> manipulation of independent variable -> measurement of dependent variable -> conclusion: dissonance about counterattitudinal behavior does cause attitude change

Question 24

attitude: Dissonance

Answer 24

1. dissonance motivates us to reduce our inconsistencies by making our beliefs more consistent with each other
2. self-justification
   “drinking may be harmful to my health but i will die having a good time” - people come to believe in their lies
3. 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

Question 25

individual behavior in groups: definitions

Answer 25

1. definition of “group”
   - consist of two or more individuals who interact and are interdependent
   - e.g. people stuck in the elevator getting for help, students working in the project, jury members, sport teams, legislative council etc

Question 26

helping behaviors in group

Answer 26

1. bystander effect
   - people are less likely to offer help in groups as compared to when being alone
   - group size up -> offer help down
2. Darley and Latane: participants seeking help for the confederates declined with group size increased
   - Pluralistic ignorance: everyone in the group misleads everyone else by defining the situation as non-emergent
   - diffusion of responsibility: a reduced sense of one’s own responsibility - “someone else may help”
3. e.g. train station

Question 27

productivity in group

Answer 27

1. social loafing
   - a reduction in effort when working in groups as compared to when working individually
   - free-riding “someone else may do the job”
   2.Latane measured the sound produced by the subjects by subjects who were asked to cheer or clap
   - in a group of 2 or 6
   - individual’s sound production declined when in a larger group
   - individual’s contribution is less accountable

Question 28

1. social influence: conformity (meaning + exp)

Answer 28

1. we perform due to real or imagined social pressure
2. Solomon Asch
   - ask participants to match one of the three comparison lines with the standard line
   - when the participants did it alone, 99% of the time they were correct
   - only about 63% of the time they were correct when several others (who were confederates) gave identical wrong answers
   - no strong pressure to conform

Question 29

social influence: conformity (factors)

Answer 29

Factors influencing conformity
1. critical group size: 3-7 people
2. group unanimity
- dissenter can lower up to about 1/4 of its peak
3. ambiguity or difficulties of the task
4. status of the group
- elevator experiment video (people wear suits in the elevator)
5. perceived competence of the subject

Question 30

two types of social influences

Answer 30

1. normative social influence produces public compliance
   - inner belief that the group is probably wrong, but outwardly going alone with the group
   - e.g. participants’ responses in Asch’s experiment
2. informational social influence produces private acceptance
   - inner belief that others are right, the crowd knows more than you
   - increased by situation ambiguity and crisis
   - e.g. helping behavior in the crowds

Question 31

social influence: obedience + exp bg

Answer 31

1. to perform in response to a command given by the authority
   - an extreme form of conformity (compliance)
2. Milgram “Learning experiment”
   - participants performed as the teachers
   - they were asked to administer shock when a wrong answer was given by the “learner” (confederate)
   
   • escalate the shocks, and implying a deadly shock
     - authority figure was the “experimenter”

Question 32

Milgrams Learning experiment

Answer 32

1. when giving the shock, the teacher could hear the learner shouting and groaning
2. at 300-315 volts the leaner would scream and refuse to answer
3. the experimenter would ask the teacher to continue and treat no answer as a wrong answer
4. results: 25/40 go to 450V
   - most of them experienced agony
   - the experiment requires you to continue
   - “I was just following orders”