Methodology, Social Dissonance, & Social Cognition Flashcards
What is social psychology?
The scientific study of the way people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people.
How is social psychology different from sociology?
It differs from sociology in that its level of analysis is the individual as opposed to the society itself.
How is social psychology different from personality psychology?
It differs from personality psychology in that it emphasizes the psychological processes shared by most people around the world that make them susceptible to social influence.
What is the fundamental attribution error?
The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors.
Why do people explain some behaviors as stemming from internal causes and other behaviors as stemming from external causes?
Internal: attributing behaviors to a person’s disposition or personality traits (e.g. “he’s poor because he is lazy.”)
- done when the situation is ambiguous and there are no clear guidelines for behavior
External: attributing behaviors to the situation that a person is in (e.g. “he’s poor because economy is bad.”)
- done in ambiguous situations w/ clear guidelines for behavior
What is naïve realism?
The human tendency to believe that we see the world around us objectively, and that people who disagree with us must be uninformed, irrational, or biased.
How does our tendency as humans to be naïve realists affect our ability to negotiate in conflicts?
We resist compromise because we think our biased opponent will benefit more than we do, or are effectively trying to cheat us.
What are two primary psychological motives?
- The need to feel good about our sense of self; self-esteem.
- The need to be accurate; how people remember, select, and interpret info accurately.
How do social psychologists study social psychological phenomena?
We use the research processes. We collect data to support or refute our hypotheses and make conclusions according to that data.
The types of data are:
- Descriptive - naturalistic observation, case studies, surveys, archives.
- Correlational - statistically measurement of how closely the independent variable can predict the outcome, or dependent, variable.
- Experimental - uses manipulations and random assignment of participants to different conditions to test hypotheses.
How does the hindsight bias affect our perception of past research?
It can affect our perception of past research b/c we can assume that we already implicitly understood why a certain psychological phenomenon happened. We can overestimate our own ability to have predicted the outcome, or say that we felt that we could have predicted the findings past research confirmed.
Know the difference between independent and dependent variable
Independent variable - the variable that is manipulated by the experimenter.
Dependent variable - the variable that responds to the manipulation; what the manipulation is attempting to manipulate; the variable that is measured.
Understand what a correlation coefficient is, and what signifies a small, medium, or large correlation
The correlation coefficient is a statistical technique that assesses how well you can predict one variable from another. It measures both the direction and the strength of the relationship b/w predictor and outcome variables.
+ correlation = outcome does happen b/c of the predictor variable (predictor causes it to increase)
- correlation = outcome does not happen b/c of the predictor variable (predictor causes it to decrease)
Small - approximately .20 +-
Medium - approximately .40 +-
Large - approximately = or > .60 +-
What’s the difference between internal and external validity?
Internal validity - controlling for extraneous variables and assigning all participants randomly; ensuring that nothing besides the independent variable can affect the dependent variable.
External validity - the extent to which the results of the experiment can be generalized to other situations and people.
What kinds of studies tend to have higher internal validity and lower external validity?
Experimental. Studies in a laboratory setting w/ controlled conditions and manipulated variables.
What kinds of studies tend to have lower internal validity and higher external validity?
Field studies, because less variables can be accounted for and the experimenter has less control over the environment.
What is psychological realism?
The extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an experiment are similar to psychological processes in real life.
What’s the difference between basic and applied research?
Basic research - studies that are designed to find the best answer to the question of why people behave as they do and that are conducted purely for reasons of intellectual curiosity.
Applied research - studies designed to solve a particular social problem.
How are participants’ rights protected in social psychological research?
Studies include informed consent, the right to withdraw from an experiment or have your data removed, debriefing, confidentiality, and debriefing after using a cover story or deception.
Does correlation = causation?
No.
Does causation require correlation?
No.
Why is random selection and random assignment important?
Random selection and random assignment ensure that participants all have an equal chance of being selected AND all have an equal chance of being in any experimental condition. This reduces the likelihood that a result is due to biased sampling and controls for variability within the sample, by evenly distributing it across groups.
What is the Culture of Honor?
The traditional culture of the Southern United States has been called a “culture of honor”, that is, a culture where people avoid intentionally offending others, and maintain a reputation for not accepting improper conduct by others.
What methods were used to study the Culture of Honor?
Experimental - they used an assistant who bumped into the participant on purpose and aggressively. Participants could then wait to move out of the way of the assistant later, knowing that person bumped into them. The longer the participant waited, the more aggressive they were perceived.
Why is there a higher rate of violent crimes in the South than in the other regions of the United States?
The south was settled by the Scottish and the Irish, who were less cooperative and had to defend their lands from outsiders/protect their animals. The north was settled by Anglo-Saxons, who faced religious persecution and relied primarily on farming, which encouraged cooperative behavior.
What is cognitive dissonance?
A drive or feeling of discomfort, caused by holding two or more inconsistent cognitions; caused by performing an action that is discrepant from the normal, particularly in relation to self-esteem.
Why is dissonance a problem?
It results in diminished self-esteem, or a lowered self-image.
What is external justification? Internal justification?
External justification - a reason or an explanation for dissonant behavior that is in the outside environment.
Internal justification - the reduction of dissonance by changing attitudes or beliefs from oneself.
When do people use internal versus external justification?
Internal justification - used when we can not find an external (or outside) reason why we engaged in a specific behavior. This involves changing our attitudes to reflect our behavior.
External justification - when a situation justifies why we behaved in a certain way (e.g., we feel angry because it rained outside and that made us late; we were given 20$ in reward, so we lied).
Why do people tend to come to love the things that make them suffer?
Justification of effort - the tendency to increase the liking of something a person has worked hard to attain. When something is painful or uncomfortable to experience (e.g., a long and grueling initiation into a group), the person reduces dissonance by convincing themselves that they endured the discomfort because the experience was more pleasant, enjoyable, or worthwhile.
- in order to have this thing, they had to work very hard and endure pain
- this makes them feel more attached to the thing
- if they acknowledge it as silly, unlikable, or worthless, that causes dissonance; so they convince themselves of the opposite
How can people reduce dissonance?
- Change our behavior.
- Justify our behavior by changing our attitudes.
- Justify our behavior by adding new beliefs in line w/ the dissonant behavior.
What is self-perception theory?
When our attitudes and feelings are uncertain or ambiguous, we infer these states by observing our behaviour and the situation in which it occurs.
How does self-perception theory differ from cognitive dissonance theory?
Self-perception theory involves inferring our attitudes from our behavior (or changing beliefs based on what behaviors we are engaged in). Our behavior does not conflict with our beliefs because we base our beliefs on what we’re doing.
Cognitive dissonance theory is the opposite: we change our beliefs when our behavior conflicts with what we claim to believe.
When does self-perception theory predict attitudes? When does cognitive dissonance theory predict attitudes?
- Self-perception theory accounts for responses when people’s attitudes are vague or uncertain.
- Cognitive dissonance theory accounts for responses when people have well defined attitudes.
How can you get people to like you more?
The participants asked to do the favor specifically for the experimenter liked him the most over all the other conditions. They convinced themselves the experimenter was a good person, and that was why they decided to give the money upon request.
- this is called the Benjamin Franklin Effect
- doing a favor for someone makes you like them better
What happens to your attitudes toward someone when you treat them poorly?
The person doing the cruel act devalues the other person in order to reduce dissonance; they assume the other person deserved it.
How does this relate to victim-blaming?
The need to reduce dissonance increases the closer a person is to perceive themselves as committing a cruel act. Thus: the likelihood of perceiving the victim as innocent decreases to restore constance.
Is dissonance reduction a conscious and intentional process? How do we know?
Typically it is an automatic process. We know this because in a study of amnesiac versus neurotypical participants, both groups showed the same amount of attitude change in a dissonance reduction task. This implies that even without cognitive awareness (or having no memory of the event), a person still tries to reduce dissonance.
- it is not intentional
- it is not consciously performed
- it is automatic
How can dissonance be used to create long-lasting attitude change (and compliance)?
Dissonance can be used when a punishment is mild rather than severe. A mild punishment causes more dissonance because the person cannot easily justify why their original forbidden behavior, activity, or object was worth such a small punishment.
In order to reduce dissonance, they change their attitudes to reflect that they did not want to do or care about the behavior, activity, or object instead. This creates long-lasting change because there is not sufficient external justification for why they did or avoided something forbidden.
Why is low-balling an effective strategy?
It creates the illusion of irrevocability, which creates dissonance and increases the motivation to decrease dissonance. There are 3 general components to why it works:
- Creates a feeling of commitment by signing for a down payment
- Commitment triggers the feeling of an exciting event
- The price is usually only slightly higher than it would be somewhere else, so the buyer goes with it anyway to reduce dissonance
When do our friends’ successes hurt us and make us distance ourselves from our friends?
- When we are close to the other person.
- When the activity is important to us and our self esteem
- When the performance of other person is higher than ours
What is social cognition?
How people think about themselves and the social world; how people select, interpret, remember, and use social info to make judgments/decisions.
What are the main types of social cognition?
Automatic thinking - unconscious, unintentional, effortless, involuntary.
Controlled thinking - conscious, intentional, effortful, voluntary.
Why are mental structures that people use to organize information about their social world?
Schemas are mental structures that organize our knowledge about the social world.
- Schemas influence the info people notice, think about, and remember.
- Schemas are very general.
- Schemas are used when info is ambiguous and difficult to interpret.
Why do we use these mental structures?
To organize our knowledge about the social world; to reduce cognitive load; to conserve our cognitive resources/energy when assessing social decisions or situations.
When do we use these structures?
Schemas are used when info is ambiguous and difficult to interpret.
Are these structures good? Bad?
Neither; they are good or bad depending on context and the outcomes of their errors.
Do these structures help us to accurately perceive the world around us most of the time?
Yes, both schemas and heuristics are generally very functional and efficient for everyday use. They direct attention and help us interpret ambiguous situations.
When do these structures lead us astray?
When we miss info due to selective attention, or when we misinterpret the information we’ve received by organizing it as a stereotype, using a self-fulfilling prophecy approach, or etc.
What is priming?
The process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept.
