Midterm 2 Review Flashcards
Examples of persuasion:
Climate change skepticism
Spread of weird beliefs & conspiracy theories
Online reviews
Promotion of healthier living
Example of positive vs negative persuasion:
Education and propaganda, respectively
System 1 is the “fast” system which reacts instantaneously, reflexively and emotionally. This part of the brain is automatic, intuitive and subconscious. System 2 is the “slow” system that is deliberate, controls abstract thinking, and stores memories such as facts and events. The System 2 part of the brain is more rational and reflective
When people hear a persuasive argument, what is crucial is not so much remembering the message as remembering one’s own thoughts, feelings, reactions in response, showing that they are more likely be influenced by the message.
True
Paths that lead to persuasion:
Pay attention, comprehend it, believe it, remember it, behave accordingly, action
Different routes of persuasion:
Central route, peripheral route, different routes for different purposes.
Central route focuses on
Arguments
Peripheral route focus on:
Incidental cues (superficial factors like attractiveness of speaker, credibility, mood or emotions, likability or familiarity, number of arguments, positive or negative images or music.
Different routes for different purposes depending on the context:
Often take peripheral route
The elements of persuasion:
The communicator, message, how message is communicated, the audience
What characteristics of the communicator support persuasion:
Credibility
Perceived trustworthiness
Perceived expertise
Attractiveness, liking, similarity
The six persuasion principles:
Authority
Liking
Social proof
Reciprocity
Consistency
Scarcity (people prize what’s scarce)
Reading while eating increases positive thinking. How?
Reason vs emotion
Linking good feelings with message
Reason vs emotion depends on the audience
Yes
(However, reason vs. emotion will depend on whether the audience is more influenced by emotional states or by logical, factual information).
The effect of good feeling enhances persuasion:
True
Canadian cigarette uses fear arousal and state the benefit:
True
Effective if it can lead people to fear the severity but also realize the solutions and feel empowered implementing it.
Only a highly credible person maintains effectiveness when arguing extreme positions:
True
What values give credibility to a person:
Formal language
Jargon
Statistics
Expert opinion
When evaluating messages:
Does the argument present facts, statistics, evidence or logical reasoning?
Does the info. come from reliabel and credible sources?
Is the argument structured and coherent?
Are there any flaws and inconsistencies?
Soldiers who disagreed were influenced by two-sided argument:
True
Primacy effect vs recency effect:
Primacy effect: two persuasive messages back to back and the audience then responds at a later time, the first message has advantage.
Recency effect: When two messages are separated by time and audience then responds soon after the second message, the second message has advantage
Comprehension and recall best with writing
And more lifelike, more persuasive
True
Most research shows generational effect of persuasion:
True
Our views stay the same as we get older
Life-cycle effect is about changes in beliefs over the course of an individual’s life.
What impacts persuasion of an audience:
Forewarning
Distractions
Uninvolved audience
Need for cognition
How do cults indoctrinate:
Main: Group effects
Communicator - message - channel - audience
75% of Canadians believe global warming is caused by humans.
True
This refers to a tendency to believe and justify the way things are in culture and not want to change familiar status quo
System Justification
How to resist persuasion:
Attitude strength (certainty or subjective confidence)
Information-processing biases
- selective exposure and attention
- selective perception and judgement
Selective memory
Reactance
- protecting sense of freedom
Strengthening personal commitment
- challenging beliefs
- counter-arguments
Attitude inoculation
- children against peer pressure and smoke
- against advertising
Implication of attitude inoculation
- exposure to variety of ideas
A change in believe or behaviour to accord with others:
Conformity
Public compliance vs private compliance
Public compliance: agrees with group or authority to fit in, but not privately only outwardly
Private compliance: both public and private of change in beliefs and attitudes to align with the group views.
Conformity vs obedience
Conformity: changing one’s own beliefs or behaviours to align with the group or social norms.
Obedience: direct commands or instructions from authoritative figure.
Sherif’s studies: of norm formation
Asch’s studies: of group pressure
Milgram’s: obedience studies
What breeds obedience?
Reflections on the classic studies
Sherif’s study of norm formation investigated the autokinetic effect, describe it:
stationary point of light in a dark room appears to move due to visual perception. He was interested in whether people’s perceptions of the light’s movement would change when they were in a group and heard others’ estimates of how much the light was moving.
Over time, participants tended to conform to the group’s estimates, even though the light was not actually moving. This showed how informational influence works: people look to others for guidance when they are uncertain, believing that the group has more accurate information.
While normative influence is about conforming to fit in with the group even if privately disagree. (Adjusting your behaviour ex.)
refers to the extent to which an experiment engages participants and makes them feel involved in the study, often to the point where they behave naturally and take the situation seriously.
Experimental realism
Asch’s Studies: Findings
The experiment showed that conformity decreased when just one person responded correctly, and increasing the number of confederates beyond three didn’t significantly raise conformity levels. Conformity is driven by the desire to fit in, especially when three people give the wrong answer and no one disagrees. Women and more homogenous groups tend to conform at higher rates due to greater similarity among members.
If one acting student responded correctly, the effect of peer pressure decreased significantly.
The oponions of three people is enough to change subject mind.
Milgram’s Obedience Studies: Four prompts (please continue, the experiment requires that you continue, it’s absolutely essential that you continue, you have no other choice, you must go on” were used, authoirity figure,
Component of foot-in the door (when the initial request was a small action (administering mild shocks), which gradually escalated to more extreme actions. Once participants agreed to administer the first mild shock, they were more likely to continue because they had already committed to a course of action).
Also with distance more likely to conform
(When the participant was physically closer to the victim, they were less likely to obey. This shows that the greater the physical or psychological distance from the victim, the easier it was for participants to conform to the authority figure’s commands). Without feeling personal responsibility or discomfort.
When there are external pressures, the link btw. Our attitudes and behavior is weak.
True
Emotional or physical distance will breed obedience and depersonalization.
True
What breeds obedience:
- The victim’s emotional distance (meaning that when the participant (teacher) couldn’t hear or see the person they were suppsedly shocking, level of obedience increased and more likely to continue to administer shocks because the victim’s emotional distance was increased, making it easier for the teacher to disregard the harm they were causing.
- Closeness (closer, more obedience and legitimacy of authority (ex: uniform)
- Institutional authority (like from prestigious university)
- Liberating Effects of Group Influence: being part of a group can either constrain or liberate individual behaviour. Either + or -
1. Group loyalty as constructive or heroic or the opposite if not
2. Witnessing defiance: observing others defy authority can be inspirational
Milgram’s study showed that average individuals could act against their personal morals under the influence of an authoritative figure, highlighting that extreme behaviors can often be attributed to the situation rather than inherent personality traits
True
An individual in a leadership role who exhibits boldness and self-confidence and emphasizes the greatness of the in-group
Charismatic Leader
Characteristics of a charismatic leader:
Takes bold action
Confidently exposes an alternative worldview
Portrays the ingroup as representing the greater good
as the number of people in a group increases, the level of conformity tends to rise—but only up to a certain point. Research, including Asch’s conformity experiments, shows that conformity increases with the number of people in the group, but only until about 3-5 people.
Looking upward example
What predicts conformity:
Unanimity
Cohesion
Status
Public response
No prior commitment
Newly elected politicians may initially want to change the system, but as they work within it, they often conform to its existing rules and behaviors due to the desire to fit in and advance within the system. example of what influence
Normative influence
See examples of normative vs info. influences
what is better predictor of conformity when social influences are weak:
Personality
Who conforms depends on:
Personality
Culture
Gender
Social rules
The process by which dissenters (or numerical minorities) produce attitude change within a group, despite the extraordinary risk of social rejection and disturbance of the status quo and example
minority Influence
2SLGBTQ+
The explanation that people are influenced by a minority because the minority’s distinctive position better captures their attention
Conversion theory
Minorities influence via thoughtful processing; tends to lead to private attitude change that guides behaviour
True
Minority slowness effect: Occurs when people who hold the minority position take longer to express their opinions
Watch video
True
A motive to protect or restore one’s sense of freedom
Reactance
The preference for being moderately unique
Asserting uniqueness
Two or more people who, for longer than a few moments, interact with and influence one another and perceive one another as “us
Group
Social facilitation refers to the idea that people tend to perform tasks better or more efficiently when others are around. The updated definition emphasizes that the dominant response (the behavior a person is most likely to do) is strengthened in the presence of others.
Social facilitation
In the context of social facilitation, Presence of others increases efficiency with easy tasks or well-learned task; increases errors with difficult tasks
Presence of others increases efficiency with easy tasks; increases errors with difficult tasks
Who developed the concept of social facilitation:
Robert Zajonic
Crowding: the presence of many others can intensify positive (enhances arousal) or negative reactions (interfere with well-learned tasks) :
True
What concept refers to a human tendency to try to look better or fear of being evaluated:
Evaluation apprehension
When people wonder how co-actors are doing or how an audience is reacting, they get distracted
Increases arousal
Driven by distraction
Mere presence of others also include non-humans as well.
True
The tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool their efforts toward a common goal than when they are individually accountable
Social loafing
People who benefit from the group but give little in return
Free-riders
Found that the collective effort of tug-of-war teams was but half the sum of the individual efforts
What is the effect known as:
The ringelmann effect
A statistical digest of 49 studies, involving more than 4000 participants revealed that effort decreases (loafing increases) as group size increases
True
When individuals cannot be evaluated or held accountable, loafing becomes more likely
True
Social loafing is less likely to occur when
- The task is challenging, appealing, or involving
- When the group members are friends
- When group members are highly committed to one another and the success of the group
When people lose their sense of self in groups:
Occurs in group situations that fosters anonymity and draw attention away from the individual
Deindividualization
When deindividualization occurs:
We loss self-awareness and evaluation apprehension
Lead us to do things we would normally not do when alone
even affection as much as violence
Factors that contribute to deindivid.
Group size
Physical anonymity
Draw attention away from the individual
Arousing or distracting activities (e.g., chants, clapping, shouting)
Contributing factors to diminished awareness:
- Group experiences that diminish self-consciousness tend to disconnect behaviour from attitudes
- Self-awareness is the opposite of deindividuation
Group discussions can encourage members to take chances or make bold choices “risky shift”
Yes
This refers to group discussion amplifying pre-existing opinions, strengthening not split within the group.
Group polarization
Factors that contribute to group polarization:
Informational influence shapes group dynamics by affecting how individuals process information, make decisions, and adopt behaviors
Normative influence pushes people to conform to what they think the group values or expects
Pluralistic ignorance leads individuals to assume that everyone else is more certain or committed to the group’s opinion than they are
Is a mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for group consensus and conformity becomes so strong in a cohesive group that it overrides careful consideration and realistic appraisal of alternative ideas or solution
Group thinking
Key features of group think:
Concurrence-seeking: desire to agree and avoid conflict
Overriding realistic appraisal: fail to critically evaluate alternative actions leading to less rational decisions.
Cohesiveness; sense of unity encourages conformity, discourages critical thinking
All these create an illusion of invulnerability:
Unquestioned belief in group’s morality, overestimating the group’s might and right, closemindedness (rationalization, stereotyped viewpoint toward others, pressure toward uniformity all represent group think.
True
