Midterm II Flashcards
What is Short-Term Memory ?
- Information and input that is currently activated and maintained.
- 7 plus or minus two (or maybe 4 plus or minus 1)
- in general ppl can remember 7 pieces of information (+ or - 1) → why phone numbers used to be 7 digits
- Can not be manipulated
- Rehearsal maintains information
- Have to think about it again and again
- 7 plus or minus two (or maybe 4 plus or minus 1)
What is Working Memory?
- Manipulation and attention to activated information.
- Working towards goals: what do I need this information for? How can I achieve that?
What is Long-Term Memory
- Information from past experience that may or may not be currently activated.
- Is stored in some way
How does information get stored into long-term memory?
- Sensory -> 2. Short term memory -> consolidation -> 3 Long term memory (also by rehearsal)
sensory info → maintained via rehearsal → then consolidated into long term memory and then is capable of people retrieved.
What area of the brain is responsible for short-term and working memory?
PFC (prefrontal cortex)
What area of the brain is responsible for Long-term Memory?
Hippocampus
- particularly the consolidation phases → hippocampus important for passing things into long-term memory
What did HM (Henry Molaison (1926-2008) Show?
- Henry Molaison (1926-2008)
- Resected MTL (Hippocampus)
- Unable to form new memories
- Repetition maintained information
- Lost it after stopping
- Could learn new skills through practice
- Got him to draw in a mirror → became very good at it → but did not remember ever doing it before
- Large pieces of his brain dissected
- Large pieces of the temporal lobe
- Left him in a unique state where he was unable to form new memories
- He could form new information and could form short term memories but could not translate that short-term info into long-term.
How do we remember?
- Memory is a reconstructive process.
- Information retrieval is influenced by biases, schemas, motives and goals.
- Just like perceptions (eg. Where’s Waldo; Gorilla X-Ray; Donald and priming, etc)
- It is easier to remember schema-consistent information.
- Schemas guide the reconstruction
- Information that is highly inconsistent with schemas may be processed more thoroughly.
- Information retrieval is influenced by biases, schemas, motives and goals.
How do Current Schemas Affect Current Views of Past Events?
-
Mood-congruent memory: People are more likely to remember positive information when in a positive mood and negative
information when in a negative mood.- General rosy recollection bias
-
Application: Taking a test? Bring some things that activate the same schema and mood
- Songs, coffee, same pencil…
What is The Misinformation Effect?
- The process by which cues that are given after an event can plant false information into memory.
- Loftus and her colleagues (1978) illustrated how the phrasing of a question can lead someone to remember seeing something, like broken glass, that actually wasn’t there.
What was the Misinformation Effect Car Crash Study (Cohen) and what did it exhibit?
- Two ppl watching the same video, in video they both see a car wreck.
- First person asked how fast the car was going when it hit other car
- Second person asked how fast the car was going when it smashed into the other car
- In a follow-up question, when asked if there was broken glass
- No from ‘hit’
- Yes from ‘smashed’
- Cohen, 1981 study on how schemas shape memory: participants watched a videotape of a woman the researchers described as either a librarian or a waitress.
- Woman in the videotape noted that she liked beer and classical music
- When later asked what they remembered about her, participants who believed she was a librarian were more likely to recall that she liked classical music.
- Those who believed she was a waitress were more likely to remember that she liked beer.
- WHY? → their schema of the woman led the participants to look for, and therefore tend to find and encode into long-term memory, characteristics she displayed that fit their schema of her.
- Participants exhibited such schema-consistent memory even when interviewed a week later.
What is the application of the misinformation effect/
- The use of eyewitness testimony is often the most influential piece of trial evidence.
- Recollection of events can be influenced by how questioning is conducted.
- False confession can be coerced and fully believed by the ‘confessor’
What is the availability heuristic and ease of retrieval?
- The availability heuristic: Judging the frequency of an event based on the ease with which it is brought to mind.
- Schema based
- Tversky & Kahneman (1973)
- QUESTION: Are there more words that start with R or words with R as the 3rd letter
- RESULTS: Start with R = more; R is 3rd letter = less
- Wrong though, far more (there’s 2 right there!) words with R as 3rd letter
- Application: Med Students/Clinical Psych classes
- people in psych classes see psychological symptoms everwhere after that learn about it → over-apply it
- The ease of retrieval effect: judge how frequently an event occurs on the basis of how easily they can retrieve a certain number of instances of that event.
- Schwarz et al. 1991
- Come up with 6 vs. 12 examples when they behaved assertively (vs. unassertively).
- DV: How assertive or unassertive they thought they were.
- If asked to come up with 12, they believe they have less of the trait then if asked to come up with 6, why?
- Because it is harder to come up with 12 examples, so the difficulty of having to come
up with 12 makes people think they must not have as much assertiveness, whereas
its easy to come up with 6, so the ease with which they generate 6 examples makes them think they must be very assertive.
What is the ease of retrieval effect?
- The ease of retrieval effect: judge how frequently an event occurs on the basis of how easily they can retrieve a certain number of instances of that event.
- Schwarz et al. 1991
- Come up with 6 vs. 12 examples when they behaved assertively (vs. unassertively).
- DV: How assertive or unassertive they thought they were.
- If asked to come up with 12, they believe they have less of the trait then if asked to come up with 6, why?
- Because it is harder to come up with 12 examples, so the difficulty of having to come
up with 12 makes people think they must not have as much assertiveness, whereas
its easy to come up with 6, so the ease with which they generate 6 examples makes them think they must be very assertive.
What is the availability heuristic?
- The availability heuristic: Judging the frequency of an event based on the ease with which it is brought to mind.
- Schema based
- Tversky & Kahneman (1973)
- QUESTION: Are there more words that start with R or words with R as the 3rd letter
- RESULTS: Start with R = more; R is 3rd letter = less
- Wrong though, far more (there’s 2 right there!) words with R as 3rd letter
- Application: Med Students/Clinical Psych classes
- people in psych classes see psychological symptoms everwhere after that learn about it → over-apply it
How do we perceive people?
- Topper Chewsy → had bad blood from game before
- came behind him, punched in the jaw from behind, passed out fell →he fell on top of him → ended up breaking the guy he punched’s neck .
- Was he a thug or caught up in an ugly part of the game?
- Slater → steward on Jet Blue
- Was a steward for 2 decades at this point
- Taxiing, person grabs bag from
overhead - Argues with Slater, bag falls out of overhead hit Slater in head
- Gets on intercom
- ’20 years’ ‘that’s it, I’m done’
- ‘Go f— yourselves’
- Grabs two beers and slides down the emergency slide
- Drives home
- Weird guy or just pushed too far
and finally had it?
What are Attribution Theories?
- Attribution theories describe how people explain the causes of their own and others’ behaviour.
- We make causal attributions about many aspects of our own lives and others’.
- Often automatic, rapid (recall experiential system) →
- Often make intuitive attributions about behaviour
What is the Heider and Simmel Experiment and what did it test?
- CAUSAL ATTRIBUTIONS
In one study (Heider and Simmel, 1944), people watched a rather primitive animated film in which a disk, a small triangle, and a larger triangle moved in and out of a larger square with an opening.- The participants were then asked to describe what they saw (see figure 4.2).
- People tended to depict the actions of the geometric objects in terms of causes, effects, and intentions, such as “The Larger triangle chased the smaller triangle out of the room [the larger square].”
- This tendency, along with his observations of how people talked about their social lives in ordinary conversation, led Heider to propose that people organize their perceptions of action in the social world in terms of causes and effects.
- Heider referred to such explanations as causal attributions - explanations of an individual’s behaviour.
- They’re important; eg. when an employee is late, whether the employer attributes that behaviour to the person’s laziness or her tough circumstances can determine whether she is fired or not.
What are the Automatic Processes in Causal Attribution.
-
Causal schema come from two primary sources (Kelley, 1973)
- Personal experiences
- General cultural knowledge
-
When events don’t readily fit a causal schemas
- Rely on what is salient or highly accessible
- “Top of the head phenomenon”
- Often, this is the person/individual.
What is Dimensions of Attributions/Locus of Causality (Heider, 1958)?
There are 4 dimensions to attributions:
- Internal attribution (disposition) – a person’s behavior was caused by something internal, such as his/her attitudes, character, or personality
- External attribution (situation) – a person’s behaviour was caused by something external, such as the situation; assume that most other people in that same situation would behave similarly.
STABILITY OF CAUSE
- Stable – a person’s behaviour is reliably caused by the same thing
- Unstable– a person’s behaviour is not reliably caused by the same
thing
- These dimensions can combine in different ways
An Example of Attributions Theory?
- Go to the bar and go out with Fred
- Fred gets into a fight → not fun
- Fred is always getting into fights
- Internal stable
- Avoid Fred
- > ALTERNATIVELY
- Fred was in a bad mood
- Just got divorced
- Internal/External, unstable attribution
- Give Fred the benefit of the doubt
Why do we make internal vs. external attributions: Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)?
- aka correspondence bias
- We overestimate the extent to which other’s behaviour is due to internal, dispositional factors and we underestimate the role of situational factors
- Behaviour, we often believe, corresponds to disposition.
- People’s tendency to draw correspondent inferences, attributing behaviour to internal qualities of the actor and, consequently, underestimating the causal role of situational factors,
What was Jones and Harris’ Study (1967) on and what did it show?
- ON FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR
- Participants watch a debater whose arguments are either pro-Castro or anti-Castro. They are told that the debater was either given a choice on which side to debate or he had
no choice. (2 independent
variables) - What is the debater’s real attitude?
How Pro-Castro is the debater?
(dependent variable) - FOUND that in the chosen condition, ppl seemed to make a reasonable assessment: if they chose pro-castro, they rated them as more pro-castro; if they chose anti-castro they rated them as anti-castro
- But these conditions were actually assigned
- However, the other half of participants were told that the writer didn’t have a choice in whether to advocate for or against Castro; instead the experimenter had assigned what side the writer should take.
- Logic would suggest that the lack of choice would make the position advocated by the essay a poor basis fro guessing the author’s true attitude.
- However, these participants, despite knowing the essay writer had no choice, also rated his attitudes as corresponding to the position he took in the essay.
What is the Three Stage Model of Attribution (Gilbert et al., 1988 based on dual process models)?
- First you notice the behaviour (see sb do sth)
- They then make an automatic dispositional inference
- then, if you have the capacity, you override or add situational correction to that fundamental attribution error.(3. If observers have sufficient accuracy motivation and cognitive resources available, they modify their attributions to take into account salient situational factors.)
- This model predicts that ppl will be especially likely to ignore situational factors and to make the FAE when they have limited attention and energy to devote to attributional processing.
What was Gilbert, Pelham and Krull’s (1988) Study on the Three Stage Model of Attribution?
- Gilbert and colleagues (1988) had participants watch a videotape of a very fidgety woman discussing various topics. -> Participants asked to rate how anxious this person generally was.
- The videotape was silent, ostensibly to protect the woman’s privacy, but participants were shown one- or two-word subtitles indicating the topics she was discussing.
- One video where woman described her ideal vacation, fashion trends
- One video talking about her hidden secrets, sex life
- Half of the participants cognitively busy and half not cognitively busy.
If observers have sufficient resources (under normal conditions), they should initially jump to an internal attribution for the fidgety behaviour and view the woman as anxious, but in the condition in which the topics are anxiety provoking, they should make a correction and view the woman as a less anxious person. - Found when ppl weren’t cognitively busy, they rated her as more anxious.
- Cognitively busy → unable to make that effortful correction to attribution -> lacked the resources to correct for the situational factor (embarrassing topics) -> and therefore judged the anxious-looking woman to be just as prone to anxiety if she was discussing sex and secrets as if she was discussing travel and fashion.
- they just thought she was an dispositionally anxious person when she was discussing anxious topics (instead of talking about uncomfortable subjects)
Why we make internal vs. external attributions: Actor/Observer Differences
- Observer Attributions (perceptions of other’s behaviour) → We tend to attribute other people’s behaviour to internal reasons and assume their behaviour is caused by their disposition.
- Actor Attributions (perceptions of own behaviour) We tend to attribute our own behaviour to external reasons and assume that our behaviour is caused by the situation.
What Causes Actor/Observer Attribution Differences?
- We want to see ourselves as flexible – and that we can change according
to the demands of the situation
- We also use our estimate of the personality in a self-serving way.
* Self-serving attributions
* Success = It was all me! -> internal attributions
* Failure = Excuses, excuses, excuses -> external attributions - We understand situations better
* We realize that situations can constrain our own behaviour. We know our behaviours differ in different situations and are not due only to our disposition.
* Role of perceptual salience → when u are doing sth, perceptually, you do not see yourself. → the stimulus you are looking at is sb or sth else, not yourself.- if you are watching sb do sth, they are the most salient stimulus → cause of that behaviour
- We fail to use information
* The situation is the first automatic attribution and then only after do we consider disposition.
How can Actor-Observer effect be reversed?
by shifting the individual’s visual perspective.
- Eg. Storms (1973) replicated the actor-observer effect by showing that when pairs of participants sat across from one another and had a conversation, they generally thought their partners were determining the things they talked about.
- They attributed the direction the conversation took to the person they could see—their partner.
- If shown a video playback of the conversation from the discussion partner’s perspective (now the actors were watching themselves talk), participants were more likely to think that they were the ones steering the direction of the conversation.
How Accurate are we at understanding others?
- Attribution Theory and Research suggests that we are often not accurate because of the following biases:
- Fundamental attribution error (FAE)
- Actor/observer difference
- Defensive (self-serving) attributions
Vs. - Impression Formation Research suggests that we can be surprisingly accurate in our assessment of personalities from thin slices of information.
What are the Dual-Process Models of Impression Formation?
- Bottom-up factors: we watch their actions, gestures, facial expressions, and we listen to them
- Top down – we use our schemas (prior knowledge/expectations)
- Our impressions of others are influenced by both bottom-up and top-down factors
- Recent research uses diverse methods to better understand
how we form impression of others and the impact of both
bottom-up and top-down factors
What is the first way humans form impressions of others?
Impression from bottom up
* Gathering individual observations of a person in order to form an overall impression
* Negativity bias
* Thin slices
* Theory of mind
What is Negativity Bias?
- part of Bottom-Up forming
- Evolutionary advantage to
weighting negative behaviour
more strongly - Norm adherence failure
- Attribution: person-level or
internal - Labelled ‘Bad’ behaviour
- Not always though, sometime these displays are seen as unique, genuine, dominant, ‘cool’, etc…
- E.g. partner study → in the partner study, prof is sitting in chair formation in the room → experimentor says they are waiting for the 4th person → the person who is part of the study (not prof) says they forgot their phone → trips over prof (confederate’s) feet → prof (confederate) says sth like “that guy was such an asshole” → or other awful things → ppl kept choosing him (Prof) over and over again despite him being awful (saying awful things about the other person)
- Not always though, sometime these displays are seen as unique, genuine, dominant, ‘cool’, etc…
What is ‘Thin Slices’ in the impression formation process?
- Impression formation based on ‘quick peeks’ at behaviour or physical attributes
- Face
- 30 sec video
- Personal space
- Website/Social Media
- RECALL Narcissism and Facebook
- Surprisingly accurate
- Ambady & Rosenthal 1992
- Eg, Two Tinder profiles → only difference is toque he is wearing → the vegan guy got more right swipes than ‘bacon’ toque guy
- Was funded by PETA
- putting bacon a toque is weird
- putting vegan on toque is less weird → identity → can’t relate identity to bacon
What is Physiognomy?
- Physiognomy
- Body/face reflect personal
characteristics- if you’re an angry person, you have an angry face
- Old idea
- Body/face reflect personal
- Pseudoscience
- Recalls phrenology
- Face perception and thin slice research?
- finding that face perception extends to understanding characteristics
- Thin Slice → a very small piece of information about that person → face → and you are able to predict sth about them based on that thin slice.
Can you understand individual’s based on face and only face?
- Can you understand individuals based on face and only face?
- Nick Gruell UofT
- Looking at faces and trying to judge who is more of one characteristics
- Who is more powerful? (first slide)
- Left guy is more powerful CEO of mobile company
- right guy is CEO of Wendy’s
- Who is the Democrat and who is the Republican?
- Guy on right is Democrat
- Guy on left is Republican
- Mormon or Non-mormon?
- Guy on right is mormon
- Guy on left is not mormon
- Who is more powerful? (first slide)
- “I ran into the TA whom I asked
to speak on the Holy Ghost for
my baptism. I was very excited
to see him. There was this sense
of “glow” from him, which I
heard about many times yet
never understood, like a
“Mormon Radar.” But I saw it for
the first time and I finally
understood what it is. It is the
Spirit!” - Mormons are generally
healthier- Strict no-substance diet
- Skin is ‘shinier’
- Early leaders explained this adv.
- “The gift of the Holy Ghost …
develops beauty of person, form
and features. It tends to health,
vigor, animation, and social
feeling”
- “The gift of the Holy Ghost …
What is an example of making an impression from Bottom-Up using Theory of Mind?
- Theory of mind → children in kindergarden realize ppl have different thoughts and feelings than you do.
- Smarties box but has raisins inside → asked them what they think their sibling would think was in the box → said smarties
- Asked where the ball was → the first child thought that the other kid would check the first place where the ball was put
- Theory of mind is a specialized social cognitive skill that comes in early childhood
- —a set of ideas about other people’s thoughts, desires, feelings, and intentions, given what we know about them and the situation they are in
- recognize that other people have thoughts, emotions, goals. → we can intuite what they are based on what we know about them, how they look, etc.
- Face experts:
- We can read another’s mental state based on very little information
What is Theory of Mind?
- Bottom-up impression making
- Theory of mind is a specialized social cognitive skill that comes in early childhood
- —a set of ideas about other people’s thoughts, desires, feelings, and intentions, given what we know about them and the situation they are in
- recognize that other people have thoughts, emotions, goals. → we can intuite what they are based on what we know about them, how they look, etc.
- Face experts:
- We can read another’s mental state based on very little information
What was the “Mind in the Eyes Test” and what did it test?
- SEE IMAGES IN SLIDES
1. Eg. I say interested
2. Decisive
3. Insisting
4. Cautious
→ very good at this
Mind in the Eyes Test - Reveals a mental ability of using minute facial cues to read another’s cognitive/emotional mental state
- Bottom-up
- Useful for quickly ‘sizing-up’ others
- Friend/enemy?
- Information on environment and social situation
- Romantic interest
- Ability predicts:
- Emotional intelligence
- probably some relationship between reading them emotion of sb else and reading their own emotions
- Belief in god
- Why???
- you’re more likely to believe in God the better you are at Theory of Mind tests
- Emotional intelligence
What is Theory of Mind related to in the brain?
- a set of ideas about other peoples’ thoughts, desires, feelings, and intentions based on what we know about them and the situation they are in. (Malle and Hodges, 2005).
Related to particular network in the brain - Dorsal medial pre-frontal cortex (DMPFC)
- Two conditions:
- a joke vs not
- found that when people are engaged in theory of mind → thinking of intentions, psychological state of sb else → this reliably involves the dorsal prefrontal cortex.
What part of the brain does Theory of Mind involve and what is this called?
SEE IMAGES
- ‘Social brain’ (blue)
- Dorsal medial pre-frontal cortex -> DMPFC
- Temporal Parietal Junction
- Right
- Precuneus/Posterior cingulate
- Anterior temporal pole
- Inferior frontal gyrus
- Posterior Superior Temporal
Sulcus
- Self-referential (red)
* MPFC
* PCC
What are Mirror Neurons?
- Certain neurons that are activated both when one performs an action
oneself and when one observes another person perform that action. - Perception – Action link in the brain
- Monkeys at rest, even using the hand related to the neuron even if it hasn’t fired yet
- Same pattern firing in your neuron
- Wasn’t mere observation → was intention → the goal
- Activated by intention (e.g., to grasp an object) not just the action
- Not just encoding an action, but encoding another person’s goal
- Very useful for social judgements and impressions
- ToM Simulation theory
- ToM arises from mental rehearsals of behaviours and states
- when I’m trying to think about u and why you’re doing what you’re doing, I’m simulating it as myself → putting myself in your shoes.
- Mirror neurons support this
- So does overlap between self-related and ToM-related brain regions
- ToM arises from mental rehearsals of behaviours and states
- Mirror neuron activity correlates with emotional empathy scales
What is Impression from top-down?
- Using preconceived ideas and schemas as (part of) the basis for impression formation
- Transference
- False consensus
- Implicit personality theories
What is Transference in forming impressions?
- Freudian idea
- top-down impression making
- In therapy Freud noticed how
patients began to treat him like someone else in their life- Key to therapy
- Non-psychodynamic version
- We apply attributes to unfamiliar people from similar others
- when those people are similar to others we think of them in terms of the person we find them similar to, in both positive and negative attributes
- Positive and negative
- We apply attributes to unfamiliar people from similar others
What is False Consensus in Impression Making?
- Another idea with Freudian
associations - Top-down impression making (based on schemas)
- Like projection
- We assume other people are like ourselves
- Perhaps based on self-related mental simulations?
- Multi-determined, however:
- Salience and accessibility
- Prominent schema e.g. self-concept
- Self-serving biases
- Consensus supports a positive view of self
- Close others are actually similar
- We are attracted to similarity
- Eg. we think Friends are actually more genetically similar than strangers
- Akin to Fourth-Cousin level of similarity
- Salience and accessibility
What are Implicit Personality Theories?
- Some traits are more central than others to overall impressions
(e.g., warm vs. cold)- weighted more
- traits more important to overall impression, eg being warm vs being cold
- Assumptions of cross-situation consistency
-
Halo effect: The tendency of social perceivers’ assessments of an individual on a given trait to be biased by the perceivers’ more general impression of the individual
- why we stick celebrities into commercials → we think they’re good so we associate them with good → assume the things they interact with are good
What iis the top-down influence example: Eye-tracking and similarity?
- The impact of perceived similarity on face processing (Kawakami, Williams, Friesen, & Hugenberg)
- Twenty items from an ambiguous personality test (Bernstein, Young,
& Hugenberg, 2007)- I usually place myself nearer to the side than in the center of the room)
- I prefer to isolate myself from outside noises.
- Participants responded on a scale from
- 1 - strongly disagree to 7 - strongly agree\
- Look at faces then and see which of them is similar to them
- Based on responses on the personality survey, we
have identified the degree of overlap between your
personality and these other students. - Yellow → not like me
- Orangish → kind of like me
- Brownish → a lot like me
- Eye tracking task -> tracked where they looked for 6 seconds
RESULTS: - Looked at eyes the most - The gaze proportion for the eyes was dependent on similarity
- The more similar somebody was, the more you would look at the eyes.
- Clear effect of looking at the eyes more when you think sb is more similar to you
Why is attention to the eyes related to perceived similarity in Kawakami et al.,’ “Eye Tracking and Similarity Test?”
- RECALL: Mind in the Eyes: The eyes provide critical information about others - about their intentions, emotions, and identities.
- A greater focus on the eyes may indicate our willingness to “know” others (and see them as individuals).
- to know these people that are more similar to you
- more willing when they’re more similar
What is the Ease of Retrieval Effect?
the process whereby ppl judge how frequently an event occurs on the basis of how easily they can retrieve examples of that event.
- (Schwarz and colleagues, 1991) → asked college students to recall either 6 instances when they acted assertively or 12 instances when they acted assertively.
- Researchers found that: Participants asked to recall 12 instances of assertiveness ranked themselves as less assertive than those asked to recall only 6 instances.
- For most people, coming up with 12 distinct episodes is actually pretty difficult; it’s much more difficult than recalling only 6 instances of assertiveness.
- People thus seem to make the following inference: If I’m finding it difficult to complete the task that is asked of me (recalling 12 acts of assertiveness), then I must not act assertively much, and so I must not be a very assertive person.
- People asked to recall 6 instances ended up thinking they were more assertive than participants asked to recall 12 instances.
What is Common Sense Pyschology?
- Heider: assumed the same kinds of rules that influence the organization of visual sensations also guide most people’s impressions of other people and social situations.
- In one study (Heider and Simmel, 1944), people watched a rather primitive animated film in which a disk, a small triangle, and a larger triangle moved in and out of a larger square with an opening.
- The participants were than asked to describe what they saw (see figure 4.2).
- People tended to depict the actions fo the geometric objects in terms of causes, effects, and intentions, such as “The Larger triangle chased the smaller triangle out of the room [the larger square].”
- This tendency, along with his observations of how people talked about their social lives in ordinary conversation, led Heider to propose that people organize their perceptions of action in the social world in terms of causes and effects.
- Referred to as CASUAL ATTRIBUTIONS (explanations of an individual’s behaviour)
What are Fixed and Incremental Mind-sets?
- Dweck and colleagues (Dewck, 2012; Hong et al., 1995) proposed that intelligence and other attributes need not be viewed with this fixed, or entity, mind-set—that is, as stable traits that a person can’t control of change.
- Rather, they could be viewed as attributes that change incrementally over time.
- When we take an incremental mind-set, we believe an attribute is a malleable ability that can increase or decrease.
- Children and adults with fixed mindsets make more negative stable attributions about themselves in response to challenging tasks and then tend to perform worse and experience more negative affect in response to such tasks.
- they also tend to eschew opportunities to change such as abilities, even when the abilities are crucial to their success.
- Eg. exchange students who had stronger fixed mind-sets about intelligence expressed less interest in remedial English course when their English was poor, even though improving would facilitate their academic goals (Hong et al., 1999)
In contrast, those with incremental mind-sets viewed situations that challenged their abilities as opportunities to improve, to develop their skills and knowledge.
What is a correspondent inference?
- Edward Jones and Keith Davis (1965): proposed that when ppl observe an action, they have a strong tendency to make a correspondent inference, meaning that they attribute to the person an attitude, a desire, or a trait that corresponds to the action.
- Eg. if you watch Ciara pick up books dropped by a fellow student leaving the library, you will automatically think of her as helpful
- Correspondent inferences are useful bc they give us quick information about the person we are observing, in terms of either their dispositions or intentions.
Correspondent inferences are most likely under what three conditions?
- The individual seems to have a choice in taking an action
- A person has a choice between two courses of action, and there is only one difference between one choice and the other. Eg. if Sarah must choose between 2 similar colleges, except one is known to be more of a party school, and she chooses the party school, you may conclude she’s into partying. But you would be less likely to do so if the school she chose was more of a party school but also closer to her home and less expensive.
-
Someone acts inconsistently with a particular social role. Eg. if a contestant in a game show wins a car but barely cracks a smile and simply says “Thank you” you would be likely to infer that she is not an emotionally expressive person. But if she jumps up and down excitedly after she wins the new car, you would not be as certain what she is like because most people in that role would be similarly exuberant.
- but this tendency is so strong that we often jump to correspondent inferences without sufficiently considering external situational factors that may also have contributed to the behaviour witnessed.
- People’s tendency to draw correspondent inferences, attributing behaviour to internal qualities of the actor and, consequently, underestimating the causal role of situational factors, it is so pervasive that it is known as fundamental attribution error (FAE).
What is the covariation principle?
The tendency of the co-occurrence of a potential causal factor (Frank’s arrival) and an outcome (a fight) to lead to a causal hypothesis (Frank causes fights) is called the covariation principle (Kelley, 1973). → the tendency to see a causal relationship between an event and an outcome when they happen at the same time.
Eg. if Frank arrives late to a party and, soon after, a fight breaks out, it is likely that you’ll entertain the hypothesis that Frank caused the melee, especially if the co-occurence of Frank’s arrival and fights happens repeatedly.
What are the 3 kinds of info for arriving at a causal attribution when accuracy is important?
- CONSISTENCY (across time)
- eg. see a superhero movie and you really like it the first time, but not the second time→ the outcome would be labelled low in consistency → would probably conclude that there was sth unique about the first time you saw it that prompted your first reaction → eg. you really need a distraction the first time you saw it → attribution to an unstable factor that might be different each time you saw the move.
- if you loved it every time (pride and prejudice) → outcome high in consistency across time → stable internal attribution to sth about you or a stable internal attribution to sth about the movie.
- distinctiveness (across situations)
- eg. if you rarely like superhero movies and you liked one you just saw: rate it high in distinctiveness → lead you more toward an external attribution to the movie.
- if you always like superhero movies → reaction the the movie is low in distinctiveness.
- consensus (across people).
- how did others react to the movie? → if you loved it and most others loved it → high consensus, suggesting that sth about the movie was responsible for your positive reaction.
- If most ppl didn’t like the movie, you would be most likely to attribute your reaction of liking the movie to sth about you.
→ In short, when a behaviour is high in consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus, the attribution tends to be external to the stimulus in the situation; whereas when a behaviour is high in consistency but low in distinctiveness and consensus, an internal attribution to the person is more likely.
- Recent findings confirm that when distinctiveness is low and consistency is high, observers tend to make trait attributions to the person (Olcaysoy Okten and Moskowitz, 2018)
What is a discounting principle?
whereby the importance of any potential cause of another’s behaviour is reduced to the extent that other potential causes are salient. (Kelley, 1971; Kruglanski et al., 1978).
- Eg. years ago most of the baseball-watching world was in awe of players such as Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, attributing their remarkable accomplishments to their incredible athletic ability and effort.
- However, when allegations of steroid use surfaced, many fans discounted the players’ skills, attributing some of their accomplishments to an alternative causal factor: performance-enhancing drugs.
Are our attributions biased by preferred views of the way the world works?
YES!
- Eg. one way to preserve the belief that the world is just is to view people as being responsible for the outcomes they get.
- When ppl are strongly motivated to believe the world is just, they are especially likely to blame people who have had bad things happen to them, such as those who have contracted STIs, rape victims, battered spouses, and poor people.
- BC we value ppl who affirm our preferred way of viewing the world, we tend to like those who buy into the world being just and think they are more likely to be successful.
- When ppl proclaim that the world is unjust and has given them a raw deal, we assume they will be less successful even if they are otherwise just as competent as those endorsing just world beliefs.
What is Counterfactual Thinking?
- the process of imagining how some event could have turned out differently. (Roese and Epstude, 2017)
- Counterfactuals are deeply ingrained in how we react to events; they are associated with unique patterns of activation of regions of the brain (De Brigard and Parikh, 2019) and they often affect us without our conscious awareness.
The more easily we can mentally undo an event, the ________?
the Stronger Our Reaction to It.
- SEE TEXTBOOK NOTES CHP 4- People who read stories like version B don’t think they are nearly as tragic as do those who read stories like version A.
- Kahneman and Tversy: explained Version A is seems more tragic (despite that both versions have the exact same outcome) because it is easier to generate a counterfactual with Version A; it’s very easy to imagine a counterfactual in which Carmen made it safely to Greece: All she had to do was stick to her original flight plan!
- But with Version B, no such obvious counterfactual is available. → we would have to think for a while about ways her tragic death might have been avoided.
General principle: If sth bad happens, the easier it is to imagine how the bad outcome could have been avoided, the more tragic and sad the event seems.
- Negative outcomes resulting from unusual or almost avoided actions are easier to imagine having gone better and therefore arouse stronger negative emotional reactions.
What is an Upward Counterfactual?
- an imagined alternative in which the outcome is better than what actually happened.
- When bad things happen, people often generate upward counterfactuals and the more easily they do so, the worse the negative outcomes that actually occurred seem.
- We also generate upward counterfactuals for our own less-than-desired outcomes: “If only I had studied harder”; “If only I had told her how much I care about her”.
- Upward counterfactuals generally make us feel worse about what actually happened.
BUT ALSO studies have found that when older ppl look back on their lives, they tend not to regret actions they did but actions they didn’t do : “if only I had gone back to school and got that master’s degree” ; “if only I had spent more quality time with my kids”
Why do people engage in upward counterfactuals?
- Neal Rose and colleagues (eg. Epstude and Roese, 2008; Roese, 1994) proposed that by making us consider what we could have done differently, upward counterfactuals serve an important function: They can provide insight into how to avoid a similar bad outcome in the future.
- Roese found that students encouraged to think about how they could have done better on a past exam reported greater commitment to attending class and studying harder for future exams.
- → They prepare us to avoid similar ills in the futures.
What are Downward Counterfactuals?
- An imagined alternative in which the outcome is worse that what actually happened.
- Don’t help us prepare better for the future, but they help us feel better about the past (Roese, 1994).
- Consolation function.
- Eg. after a robbery you might conclude that although the thieves took your television, at least they didn’t take your laptop.
- When ppl want to put a positive spin on an outcome, they choose the downward counterfactual.
Upward and Downward Counterfactual and Personal Accomplishments
Subjective, emotional reactions of satisfaction or regret are not determined so much by what you did or did not accomplish as by the counterfactuals you generate about those outcomes.
- Eg. Researchers asked participants to judge the happiness of athletes at the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olmpics who had won either the silver or the bronze medal by watching silent videotapes of them at the awards ceremony (Medvec et al., 1995)
- On the basis of an analysis of which counterfactuals are most likely for silver and bronze-medal winners, the researchers predicted that the bronze-medal winners would actually be happier than the silver-medal winners.
- They reasoned that for silver-medal winners, the most salient counterfactual is likely to be the upward counterfactual that “If only I had gone X seconds faster, or trained a little harders, I could have won the gold medal!”
- In contrast, bronze-medal winners are likely to focus on the downward counterfactual that “If I hadn’t edged out the fourth-place finisher, I would have gone home with not medal at all!”
- RESULTS: In support of this reasoning, Medvec and colleagues found that bronze-medal winners were rated as appearing happier than silver medal winners on the awards stand.
What is Prosopagnosia?
the inability to recognize familiar faces.
Why is there a negativity bias as we move toward a general impression of the person?
- Occurs for 2 reasons:
- 1st: there’s a likely adaptive tendency to being particularly sensitive to detecting the negative things in our environment (Ito et al., 1998)
- 2nd: most of the time, people follow norms of good behaviour, so bad behaviour is more attention grabbing and may seem to reveal a person’s “true colours”.
- As a consequence, we are particularly likely to remember when sb we thought was good does a bad thing, but we easily overlook when a person we’re used to observing do bad things does sth good (Bartholow, 2010)
What is False Consensus?
- A general tendency to assume that other people share our own attitudes, opinions, and preferences. (Mullen et al., 1985; Ross, Greene and House, 1977)
- Eg. people who are in favour of gun control think most people agree with them. And people who are against gun control think they are in the majority.
- We are more likely to assume consensus among members of our ingroups than with members of outgroups (Krueger and Zeiger, 1993)
- Our ingroups are more likely to remind us of ourselves
- in part bc of this tendency, we often assume that, as a group, our friends are more similar to each other than people we don’t like are, even tho having more information about our friends suggests that we should recognize the differences between them. (Alves et al., 2016)
Why does False Consensus come about?
- Our own opinions and behaviours are most salient to use, and therefore, more cognitively accessible. → so more likely to come to mind when we consider what other ppl think and do.
- It is validating for our worldview and self-worth to believe that others think and act the way we do. → so when feel under attack, we’re motivated to think that others share our viewpoint and validate our actions (Sherman, et al., 1984).
- eg. teenagers caught smoking explain his actions by saying: “everybody does it!” → research suggests that teenagers who engage in behaviours that might be bad for their health actually do overestimate the degree to which their friends are engaging in the same behaviours.
- We tend to like and associate with people who are in fact similar to us.
- If our group of friends really do like to smoke and drink, then in our own narrow slice of the world, it does seem as if everyone does it because we forget to adjust for the fact that the people we affiliate with are not very representative of the population at large.
- Eg. on the internet, where our group of Facebook friends or Twitter followers generally validate and share our opinions (Barabera et al., 2015) and the news outlets we sook out package news stories in ways that seem to confirm what we already believe.
What are Implicit Personality Theories
- One way we use our preexisting schemas to form impressions of a person is to rely on our implicit personality theories.
- These are theories that we have about which traits go together and why they do.
- Asch (1946): found that some traits are more central than others, and the more central traits affect our interpretation of other traits that we attribute to a person.
- Asche’s participants were asked to consider two people with traits like those ascribed (see table).
- Asch’s participants viewed someone like Bob (whose only difference was that he was described as “warm”; as opposed to Jason having all the same qualities but being described as “cold’) as generous, wise, happy, socialable, popular and altruistic.
- They viewed someone like Jason as ungenerous, shrewd, unhappy, unsociable, irritable, and hard headed.
- Yet changing that one trait greatly altered the overall impressions of them.
- “warm” and “intelligent” was seen as “wise”
- “cold” and “intelligent” was viewed as “shrewd”.
- RESULT: Warmth and coldness are therefore considered central traits that help organize overall impressions and transform interpretation of other traits ascribed to a person.
What is Halo Effect?
- (a tendency to assume that people with one positive attribute (eg. who are physically attractive) also have other positive traits.)(Nisbett and Wilson, 1977a; Thorndike, 1920).
- If the general impression is good, then any individual assessment of the person’s friendliness, attractiveness, intelligence, and so is likely to be more positive.
- The same halo effects can be negatively bias our perceptions of the people we dislike, but they tend to be stronger for positive information than for negative information (Graf and Unkelbach, 2016).
What is Stereotyping?
a cognitive shortcut or heuristic, a quick and easy way to get an idea of what a person might be like.
- Stereotyping is an application of schematic processing.
- Forming a completely accurate and individualized impression of a person (ie. one that is unbiased by stereotypes) is an effortful process.
- we often fall back on mental shortcuts when the stakes are low or we aren’t especially motivated to be accurate.
- But even when the stakes are high and our judgments matter, we can still be biased by our stereotypes when we are tired or fatigued.
- Eg. when a participants are asked to judge the guilt or innocence of a defendant on the basis of ambiguous evidence, their decisions are more likely to be biased in stereotypical ways when they are in the off-cycle of their circadian rhythm—such as 8:00am when they are normally at their cognitive peak in the evening (Bodenhausen, 1990).
- Sometimes we take a bit of information we might know about a person and erroneously assume that the person is part of a larger category merely because he or she seems to map onto our schema of that category.
What is representativeness heuristic?
- the tendency to overestimate the likelihood that a target is part of a category if the person has features that seem representative of that category.
- In this case, “lacking interest in political issues and enjoying mathematical puzzles” seems more representative of an engineer than of a lawyer.
- even when the statistical evidence showed that far more people in the pool were lawyers than engineers (that is, a 70% base rate of lawyers), the pull of the heuristic was sufficiently powerful to override this information.
What is the relationship between Stereotypes and Individuation?
As we get to know a person better, we come to view him or her more as an individual than as a member of a stereotyped group (Kunda et al., 2002)
- We are more likely to use a bottom-up approach and perceive a person as an individual unique from social groups when we are motivated to get to know and understand who that person is (Fiske and Neuberg, 1990).
- such motivation is often activated when we need to work together with the person on a project (Neuberg and Fiske, 1987) or when we are made to feel similar to them in in some way.
- When this happens, we attend closely to the person’s specific words and actions and form individualized impressions of the unique individual with whom we are interacting.
What is the primacy effect?
- The idea that what we learn early colours how we judge subsequent information.
- First studied by Asch (1946):
- In this study, Asch gave participants information about a person named John. In one condition John was described as “intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and envious”; in a second condition, he was described as “envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, and intelligent”
- even tho participants in the two conditions were given exactly the same traits to read, the order of these traits had an effect on their global evaluations of John.
- RESULTS: they rated him more positively if they were given the first order, presumably bc the opening trait, “intelligent” led people to put a more positive spin on all of the traits that followed it.
What was Jonestown an example of?
Social influence!
- In 1978, US congressman, Leo Ryan, visited Jonestown on a fact-finding mission after receiving concerned letters from families of
members.
- During this visit, Ryan established that only a small portion of
the Jonestown group wished to leave and offered to take them
back.
- As Ryan and team were boarding their flight, a group of Jonestown members shot at them and killed five including Ryan.
- Jim Jones then gathered his members and told them the time had come for ‘revolutionary suicide’.
- With little resistance, most drank cyanide laced punch.
- Parents even gave it to their children first before consuming it themselves.
- That day, 914 people died including 276 children.
- Why would so many willingly give up their lives based on request of one individual?
- and kill their children for him?
- due to heavy social influential forces at work
What is social influence?
- Social influence refers to the effects of other people on an individual’s beliefs, attitudes, values, or behaviour (ABCs).
- Types of social influence:
- Social Learning
- Conformity
- Compliance
- Obedience
- History replete with examples of people doing unexpected things because of social influence.
What is social learning?
-
Social learning: The capacity to learn from observing others
- We can either be encouraged or discouraged from engaging in both new or known behaviours.
What was Albert Bandura’s Observational Learning?
- Behaviourism:
- How might people learn without direct outcomes
- Psychodynamics
- Catharsis
- aggression → where do people learn aggression → psychodynamics says it is a way to literally let off steam → let go of the valve once in a while to let go of the impulses
- Catharsis
- Modeling
- Observed S-Rs can be learned through observation
- No direct RF
- don’t actually have to engage in the behaviour → can learn from that observation
- Good and bad behaviour
- Social display = social acceptance
- seeing good and bad behaviour → this is what ppl do, so I’m going to do it.
- Model aggression?
- those who had been exposed to the modelled aggression made them replicate those aggressive behaviours → but it was not cathartic
- See how other people react to good and bad behaviour
- Social display = social acceptance
What did Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiment do?
- In these studies, mildly frustrated nursery school children (between ages three and six) watched a film of a young woman punch and kick a large inflated Bobo doll and hit it with a mallet.
- Children readily imitated this behaviour when they were later given an opportunity to play with the Bobo doll; they punched and kicked the doll and hit it with a mallet in a manner eerily similar to the model’s behaviour, right down to repeating the same aggressive remarks the model had made (eg. “Pow, right in the nose, boom, boom.”)
- Bandura notes opposite of catharsis
- Dominant psychodynamic idea
- People learn behaviours without first enacting them (operant conditioning)
- and see outcome of those behaviours
- Clear implications: Media and learning (Movies, Video Games, Sports, etc.,)
- these things that influence how we act socially
- Observing and learning a behaviour doesn’t necessarily means we will imitate it:
- According to Bandura’s (1965) social learning theory, we can be encouraged or discouraged to engage in both new and known behaviours, depending on the consequences of the action.
- Thus, children were more likely to imitate the Bobo doll bashing if the model was rewarded for the actions (eg. supplied with a soda and candy) but were less likely to do so if the model was punished for the actions (eg. a second adult spanked the aggressive model with a rolled-up magazine) (Bandura, 1965).
- Social learning is also more likely if the behaviour observed fits the motivational state of the observer. → kids who were frustrated were more likely to imitate a violent model.
When is social learning more likely?
- Social learning is more likely when observers identify with the model—that is, when the model is liked and seems similar to the observer.
- Helps account for the value of role models for members of underrepresented groups in various fields, such as women in STEM fields (science, tech, engineering, and math)
- This underrepresentation is due to many factors, such as stereotypes about women’s math ability, but research has shown that it can be combatted by exposing women to successful role models in STEM field (Dasgupta, 2011).
- This may be especially important during adolescence, when young women face pressures that turn them away from science-related interests.
- In one study, middle school girls attended a science outreach program (O’Brien et al., 2017).
- Those randomly assigned to write about their favourite female role models in the program later reported an increased sense of fit in since compared to those not writing about their role models.
- In one study, middle school girls attended a science outreach program (O’Brien et al., 2017).
What is conformity?
- Definition: Altering behaviours or beliefs to bring them in accordance with others.
- Good or bad?
- In general, has a negative tinge to it but is it good or bad is a loaded question.
Why do people conform?
- Two different influences leading to conformity:
- Informational influence: Influence producing conformity when a person believes others are correct in their judgment.
- Normative Influence: Influence that produces conformity when a person wants to fit in or fears the negative consequences of appearing deviant.
- Sources of influence produce two different types of conformity:
-
Private Conformity: Change in beliefs (or intentions) when a person truly accepts the position taken by others.
- informational more related to private (not always tho)
-
Public Conformity: Superficial change in behaviour produced by real or imagined group pressure without change in opinion.
- normative more related to public (not always tho)
-
Private Conformity: Change in beliefs (or intentions) when a person truly accepts the position taken by others.
What are the two types of conformity?
-
Private Conformity: Change in beliefs (or intentions) when a person truly accepts the position taken by others.
- informational more related to private (not always tho)
-
Public Conformity: Superficial change in behaviour produced by real or imagined group pressure without change in opinion.
- normative more related to public (not always tho)
What was the Autokinetic Study by Sherif (1936) and what did it find?
- Sherif (1936) sought to study the possibility that even basic perceptions of events can be affected by efforts to bring one’s own perceptions in line with those of others.
- took advantage of a perceptual illusion:
- If a small, stationary point of light is shown in a pitch-black room, it appears to move. → this false perception of movement is called the autokinetic effect.
- Sherif sought to determine whether other people could influence an individual’s perceptions of how much the point of light moves.
- 1st he had people individually judge how much the point of light moved. → He got various estimates.
- Then he put two or three people together in a dark room and had them call out estimates of how much the light was moving.
- RESULTS: People started out with varying estimates, but after only a few trials, they came to agree on a particular estimate of how much the light moved.
- He also showed that a confederate planted in the group who made a particularly large assessment of the distance moved could push the group norm to a higher estimate.
- If the confederate was replaced by new, naive participants, the remaining group members would sustain the group norm and bring the new participants on board with them (Jacobs and Campbell, 1961)
- This body of research demonstrated a group norm on the basis of informational influence (the processes of using others as sources of information about the world)
- they were trying to figure out how much the light was moving and used other ppls’ estimates as information.
- Generally, informational influence leads to private acceptance—a genuine belief that the attitude expressed or the behaviour engaged in is correct.
- Ppl most often seek others and information sources when they aren’t sure what to think or how to behave.
What did Rohrer and colleagues (1954) follow-up study to Sherif’s Autokinetic study show?
- Private acceptance (conforming by altering private beliefs as well as public behaviour)
Rohreer and colleagues (1954) brought people back individually to judge the movement of the light. - Those who had come to group norm about the distance the light moved still viewed the light moving the amount the group had agreed upon a year earlier—a compelling example of the social construction of reality.
- This body of research demonstrated a group norm on the basis of informational influence (the processes of using others as sources of information about the world)
- they were trying to figure out how much the light was moving and used other ppls’ estimates as information.
- Generally, informational influence leads to private acceptance—a genuine belief that the attitude expressed or the behaviour engaged in is correct.
- Ppl most often seek others and information sources when they aren’t sure what to think or how to behave.
When do we conform to informal social influence?
- When the situation is ambiguous
- When there is a crisis
- When others are experts
E.g., earthquake → eg. when prof moved to Christchurch New Zealand → tectonically active place → every 4 or 5 days an earthquake that you didn’t feel most the time → was in the tallest building in campus → and as he sitting at the computer he realized his chair was moving left to right → building was rocking about 5-6ft. → when he panicked, he realized no one was doing anything so he followed those around him and sat back down.- informationally, he was lacking, but there were a ton of experts around him
What is Normative Social Influence?
- Conforming in order to be liked and accepted or to fulfil others’ expectations. This type of conformity results in public compliance (but not private
acceptance) of the group’s beliefs and behaviours. - Conformity when we use others to know how to fit in.
What was Asch’s Social Pressure Study? (1951)
- Table full of actors, an experimentor and one real participant.
- They’re told to make clear line judgements: which line is the same as the line on the left.
- Go around the table, sometimes ppl would say the right answer, but sometimes everyone would say the wrong one → when it came to you you may conform
- A good number of percentage never conformed
- 75% of participants conformed at least once
- Because the stimulus being judged was not ambiguous, participants had sufficient perceptual information to make a confident judgement.
- It is unlikely that people conformed to others in this study because they were sources of information.
- Rather, Asch teaches us that people also conform to the norms of a group even if it means discounting what they know to be true.
- This process, referred to as normative influence (the process of using others to determine how to fit in) **can be contrasted with informational influence.
- In Asch’s experiment many participants acknowleged that they made choices they didn’t believe were right simply to go along with the group.
- These participants reported feeling anxious, fearing the disapproval of others, and wanting to avoid sticking out.
- When we stick out, we run the risk of looking foolish, and many people are reluctant to face that possibility (Cialdina and Goldstein, 2004).
What are the factors affecting conformity?
- Group size (Asch, 1951; Campbell & Fairey, 1989; Gerard et al., 1968; Insko et al., 1985):
- Group Unanimity (Asch, 1956; Gilovich et al., 2011; Allen & Levine, 1969; 1971):
- Culture (e.g. Milgram, 1961; Bond & Smith, 1996; Berry, 1979):
- Gender (e.g. Eagly & Chrvala, 2006; Bond & Smith, 1996; Sistrunk & McDavid, 1971):
- Individual differences (e.g. Santee & Maslach, 1982; Singh & Prasad, 1973; McClelland et al., 1953; Strickland & Crowne, 1962).
- Age differences (e.g. Berndt, 1979; Pasupathi, 1999).
How does Group Size Effect Conformity?
- Group size (Asch, 1951; Campbell & Fairey, 1989; Gerard et al., 1968; Insko et al., 1985):
- Not surprisingly, size of the group matters with larger groups exerting more influence. However, effects of group size level off quickly (after about 4-5).
- 2 groups of 2 is more effective → causes more conformity (two groups of two ) → more influential in influencing the participant than the group of 4 → more influence because its like you had two different groups arrive at the same thing on their own
- Important to see the group’s opinion as independent. In fact, two groups of two more effective than one group of four.
- Not surprisingly, size of the group matters with larger groups exerting more influence. However, effects of group size level off quickly (after about 4-5).
How does Group Unanimity Effect Conformity?
- Group Unanimity (Asch, 1956; Gilovich et al., 2011; Allen & Levine, 1969; 1971):
- Even having one other dissenter reduces conformity by almost 80%
- Conformity decreases even when other dissenter does not share same opinion or does not appear too competent.
- Appears that any dissent can reduce normative pressure
- mere act of dissent is critically important
How does Culture Effect Conformity?
- Culture (e.g. Milgram, 1961; Bond & Smith, 1996; Berry, 1979):
- People in collectivistic societies tend to conform more than those in individualistic societies.
- A review of 133 studies worldwide shows conformity rates vary considerably (from 18% to 60%) across culture.
- Slight decline in conformity within the US over time.
- rise of individualism over time in US
How does Gender Effect Conformity?
- Weak gender differences in conformity, but even this tendency only in public conformity.
- Effects are moderated (there are boundaries to receiving this effect) by content of the judgment issue such that women tend to conform more in stereotypically male domains, whereas men conform more in stereotypically female domains.
How does Individual difference effect Conformity?
- ndividual differences (e.g. Santee & Maslach, 1982; Singh & Prasad, 1973; McClelland et al., 1953; Strickland & Crowne, 1962).
- People with strong sense of self as reflected in high self-esteem,
motivation to achieve, leadership ability, and minimal concern about others’ judgments conform less. - However, only a weak effect.
- People with strong sense of self as reflected in high self-esteem,
How do age differences play into conformity?
- Conformity especially high among teenagers (ages 14-15).
- ironic
- Among adults 18-85 years of age, conformity tends to slightly
decrease with age.
What is Compliance?
- Changes in behaviour elicited by direct requests from others.
- Different strategies for compliance that rely on various psychological
processes.
What is Foot-in-the-Door Technique?
- Compliance technique in which one makes an initial small request followed by a larger request involving the real behaviour of interest (e.g. Freedman & Fraser,
1966; Burger, 1999; Schwartzwald et al., 1983).- For example, asking to sign a petition and then requesting donation.
- Researchers found that only 17% of people agreed to display a ‘Drive Safely” billboard on their lawn, but 55% complied when they first agreed to stick 3 inch sign on window or sign petition.
- Similarly, while only 22% of women complied with request to take inventory of their
homes, 53% complied when first agreed to answer questions about household items.
- “Are you the home owner?”
- I was doing the survey already, and he was fully prepared for the Renter response
- doing the survey already
- I was doing the survey already, and he was fully prepared for the Renter response
- Compliance may occur here because:
- When people comply with a small request, they may engage in self perception process of seeing themselves as ‘helpful’ and become motivated to maintain self image when second request made.
- After agreeing to an initial request, people may feel that refusing a second one would
be a public inconsistency.- In fact, people high in preference for consistency more likely to comply with subsequent request than those low on measure.
What is the Free Gift Technique?
- Giving a small gift to someone or doing a small favour increases the likelihood to complying with a subsequent request (e.g. Breckler et al., 2006).
- For example, charities sending out unsolicited gifts to potential donors.
- “so here’s the entry ticket, all yours”
- Norm of reciprocity: Norm dictating that people should provide benefits to those who benefit them (e.g. Gouldner, 1960; Fiske, 1991; Regan, 1971; Strohmetz et al., 2002; Kunz &
Woolcott, 1976).- For example, over 20% of strangers returned xmas cards → when they sent out random fake Christmas cards to random addresses
- Participants bought twice as many raffle tickets from confederate when they were given a free drink by same person.
- People tip better when receive thank you message or candy with bill.
- However, desire to reciprocate wears off with time.
- so second request has to come quite quickly
More on the Free Gift Technique?
- Situations in which receiving a gift from different person may lead to
compliance because of positive mood (e.g. Isen et al., 1976; Carlson et al., 1988; Isen, 1999).- For example, although almost 70% of participants complied with request to relay a message immediately after receiving a gift, only about 45% did 10 minutes after receiving the gift and about 10% more than 20 minutes after receiving the gift.
- Feeling good (elicited by good music, food, feedback, etc) generally leads to greater compliance (e.g. requests for blood, experimental participation,
donating to charity, etc).
Cialdini and Door-in-The-Face Technique
Cialdini (1984), author of ‘Social Influence’ writes:
“I was walking down the street when I was approached by an 11 or 12 year old boy. He introduced himself and said that he was selling tickets to the annual Boy Scouts circus to be held on the upcoming Saturday. He asked if I wished to buy any at 5 dollars a piece. Since one of the last places I wanted to spend my Saturday evening was with the Boy
Scouts, I declined. “Well”, he said, “if you don’t want to buy any tickets, how about buying some of our big chocolate bars? They’re only a dollar each.” I bought a couple
and, right away, realized that something noteworthy had happened. I knew that to be the case because: (a) I do not like chocolate bars; (b) I do like dollars; (c) I was standing there with two of his chocolate bars; and (d) he was walking away with two of my dollars.” (p. 47)
What is Door in the Face Technique?
- Making a very large request that one will certainly refuse and then following that it with a more modest request (e.g. Cialdini, 2007; Cialdini et al., 1975; Harari et al.,
1980; Cann et al., 1975).- Subsequent request tends to be seen as a concession that the target feels compelled to honor.
- For example, classic study on topic found 17% of students were willing to chaperone a group of juvenile delinquents on a trip to the zoo, but 50% complied when it was first prefaced by request to counsel delinquents for 2 hours a week over the next two years.
- Technique may be effective because pressure to respond to change in position of the requester. The second request may be seen as a concession on their part
requiring concession on ours (reciprocal concession).- Also, perceptual contrast between two requests might be at play.
- Technique works best when:
- First request is large, but not enough to be considered illegitimate.
- Requests made close to each other in time.
- Requests made by same person.
- “Are you able to answer a few more questions…Not a problem, then can I quickly get your name and email to enter that ticket there?
What is the Liking Technique?
- People are more likely to comply with requests from those who are likable, similar, or attractive (e.g. friendly or attractive salesperson harder to reject; e.g. Cialdini,
2001; Drachman et al., 1978; Dariusz et al., 2001; Burger et al., 2004).- For example, only 28% of people agreed to request for making collections for an orphanage when simply asked, but 68% agreed after a brief friendly conversation.
- Similarly, people more likely to comply with request for assistance or donation when sharing a date of birth or first name.
- “Hey man” “cool” “amirite”
What is Scarcity Technique?
- Strategy in which appeal of item increased by making it appear rare or temporary (Cialdini, 2001; 2007; Worchel et al., 1975; Kurtz, 2008).
- For example, retail stores boost sales using messages like: “Hurry, a limited time offer!”, “Only 5 items left at this price”, etc.
- Cookie rated as more desirable when taken from a jar with 2 cookies than 10 cookies.
- Similarly, people more likely to purchase an item when told it is in limited supply.
- “Letting people know, just in the neighbourhood” → hint of now, and only now.
What is “That’s Not All Technique”?
- Strategy in which something is added as a bonus or reduced as a discount from the original offer (e.g. Burger, 1986; Burger et al., 1999; Pollock et al., 1998).
- For example, salesperson offering ‘free’ bonus or discount on product even before chance to respond.
- 44% of participants told that cupcakes cost 75 cents bought them compared to 73% of participants told that it was a dollar that was reduced to 75 cents.
- Similarly, only 40% bought cupcake and two cookies when sold all at once for 75 cents, but over 70% did when sold cupcake with two bonus cookies (for the same price)
- “It’s for company X, so that ticket also gets you entered into the yearly draw for a new car”
What is Low Balling Technique?
- Strategy in which the person secures agreement with a request, but then increases the size of the request by revealing hidden costs (e.g. Cialdini et al., 1978;
Cialdini, 2007; Burger & Cornelius, 2003).- For example, car dealer getting agreement at lower rate and then increasing price later on.
- When asked to participate in a study starting at 7AM, 31% agreed and 24% showed up; however, 56% agreed to participate and 53% showed up when not told study time
until later. - Similar effects found in many domains including fundraising and reducing harmful habits like smoking.
- Strategy may be effective because:
- Once people make a commitment to something, they focus on its positive aspects and see choice more favourably.
- Also, once people make a public commitment to a course of action, they feel obligated to follow through.
What is Obedience?
- Obedience: Behaviour change produced by the commands of authority.
- In many ways, social order depends on respect to authority.
- However, also creates vulnerability to destructive social influence.
- Original interest in topic stemmed from events of WWII.
- Milgram studies classic in area, but later replicated by others.
What was Milgram’s (1963) Obedience Study
- “Teachers” believe they are
delivering shocks to a “learner”
(appear to be randomly assigned to the roles). - Every time the learner gets an answer wrong, he gets a shock that increases in intensity.
- Strongly encouraged by the
experimenter to continue, even when the “learner” protests. - How long the participant would continue administering escalating levels of shock before refusing to continue was the indicator of level of obedience.
- In subsequent variations of the study, the learner grunted, complained, and screamed as the shocks escalated, but these reactions did not affect the level of obedience exhibited by the participants.
- when confronted with silence as the learner stopped making noise -> 26 of the 40 participants (65%) obeyed fully to the point of delivering 1 450-v shock to the learner
What were the two types of Social Influence in Milgram’s obedience study?
- Normative social influence – He says “It is absolutely essential that you continue” (You think “… I did commit to doing this study…what will he think of me if I mess up his
study now?”) - Informational social influence – Because the situation is ambiguous/novel, we are unsure, and so we look to the expert/the experimenter (You think “… he must know what he is doing”)
Explanations to Milgram’s (1963) Obedience Study
- Explanations (other than normative and informational influences)
for why people obeyed: - We are socialized to obey.
- Increased in small increments (foot-in-the-door technique). Self-justification.
- at each point you’re like “well, it’s just a little bit more…”
- Hard to say no to authority figure; hard to face and challenge
situational norms. - On automatic pilot to “obey the experimenter.” We may adhere to
norms in mindless ways. Fast-pace doesn’t allow for much
thought. - Not evil people but bad situation.
- not bad people, bad situation.
What are Cross-Cultural Differences in Obedience?
- Studies conducted worldwide (for a review, see Blass, 2012; 1991; Miller,
1986).- Replications conducted in 1980s and even 1990s in Spain, Austria, Germany, South Africa, Jordan, Scotland, Australia, India, Netherlands, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
- Evidence of even higher rates of obedience in most countries
compared to the US. - No gender differences observed across studies.
- gender is a non-factor
- Recent replications in the US have found high obedience rates similar to original work (e.g. Burger, 2009).
- However, slightly less obedience than original work (about 70% went until 150V in recent work compared to 82.5% in Milgram’s original work).
- might coincide with the increase in individualism
- Participants did not mindlessly obey.
- Almost all called experimenter’s attention to suffering or implicitly pleaded to stop.
- Many got out of chair or asked to stop before continuing.
- Illustration of indecisive disobedience more than blind obedience.
- Should i do it should I not? before following authority
