Psych/Soc Class 3 Flashcards
Impression Management
Also known as self-presentation
- Attempt to manage image by influencing perception of others
Self-concept
Also known as self-identity, self-construction or self-perspective
- includes all your beliefs of who you are
Combination of social identity and personal identity
What are the important social identities?
Age Disabilities (developmental) Disabilities (mental) Religion Ethnicity/race Sexual orientation Socioeconomic status Indigenous background National origin Gender
Self-efficacy
High - believe you are good at doing something
Low - believe you are bad at something
Locus of control
Internal - believe you have control
External - believe you do not have control
Learned helplessness
Low efficacy + external locus of control
Aversive control
Behaviour is motivated by reality or threat of something unpleasant happening
Avoidance behaviour
avoidance of predictable, unpleasant stimulus before it is initiated
Escape behaviour
Termination of unpredictable, unpleasant stimulus after it is initiated
Social Learning Theory
learning takes place in social context & can occur purely through observation, don’t need direct reinforcement or reproduction
Also called social learning, vicarious learning or observational learning
Social Comparison Theory
Gain accurate self-evaluations by comparing ourselves to others. Our identity is shaped by these comparisons & the types of reference groups we have
Stages of Moral Identity
Pre-conventional:
Self Interest - Rules are obeyed for personal growth
Punishment and obedience - rules are obeyed to avoid punishment
Conventional:
Conformity & Interpersonal Accord - Rules obeyed for approval
Authority & Social Order - Rules are obeyed to maintain social order
Post conventional:
Social Construct- impartial rules are obeyed; rules that infringe on rights of others are challenged
Universal Principles - individual establishes own set of rules in accordance with personal ethical principles
Social Facilitation Effect
Tendency of performance to improve for simple tasks but worse for novel complex task infront of audience
Deindividuation
Situations where there is a high degree of arousal & low degree of personal responsibility, we may lose our sense of restraint & individual identity thereby aligning behaviour with the group
Eg. Protest
Bystander Effect
Most people are less likely to help a victim when other people are present
Diffusion of responsibility
Occurs when responsibility to intervene in a crisis is inversely proportional to # of people present
Social Loafing
When people work in a group, each person is likely to exert less individual effort than if they were working independently
Peer pressure
Situations in which individuals feel directly or indirectly pressured to change their behaviour to match that of their peers
Peer Groups
Social groups whose members are close in age & share interests
- help children learn to form relationships & are typically most influential during adolescence
Groupthink
When desire to achieve harmony & reach ‘consensus’ decision causes groups to not critically evaluate alternative viewpoints & leads to irrational or dysfunctional decision-making
When is groupthink more likely to occur?
- group is overly optimistic ad strongly believes in their stance
- mindguarding
- groups justifies its own decision and demonizes opponents
- individuals feel pressured to censor own opinion thus creates an illusion of group unanimity
Mindguarding
Dissenting opinions, information & facts are prevented from entering the group
Group Polarization
When group agreement causes the preexisting views of group members to intensify, so on avg view of member of group is accentuated or moves towards one pole
- belief is MORE extreme
Conformity
When individuals adjust their behaviour of thinking based on behaviour or thinking of others
Obedience
When individuals yield to explicit instructions or orders from authority figure
Dispositional vs situational
Dispositional - internal causes
Situational - external causes
Fundamental Attribution Error
Attribute another person’s behaviour to their personality
Actor/observer bias
Attribute your own actions to situation
Just world phenomenon
Bad things happen to others because of their own actions
Self-serving
Attribute our success to ourselves, but failures to others
Optimism Bias
Bad things happen to other people, but not to us
Ultimate Attribution Error
Most likely for individuals who hold discriminatory views
3 factors to determine what you attribute behaviour to
Distinctiveness - extent they act like that in similar situations
High = external, low = internal
Consensus - extent to which individual is behaving like others
High = external, low = internal
Consistency - extent to which individual’s behaviour is similar every time this situation occurs
High = internal, low = external
What are 3 ways behaviour is motivated by social influences?
Compliance - motivated by the desire to seek reward or to avoid punishment. Compliance is easily extinguished if rewards or punishments are removed
Internalization - motivated by values and beliefs that have been integrated into one’s own value system. Someone who has internalized a value is less likely to behave in ways that do not reflect this value. This is the most enduring motivation of the 3
Identification - motivated by the desire to be like another person or group
Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiment
- distance between experimenter (person with authority saying to administer shocks) and teacher (person administering shocks) is increased, obedience will decrease
- distance between teacher & learner is increased, obedience will increase
- prestige of authoritative figure increases will cause obedience to increase
- ‘learner’ = confederate, teacher is the one obeying the experimenter no matter what
Harlow experiment with monkeys
- 2 mothers (one was just for food, other was just a cloth for comfort)
- monkeys wanted cloth mother always and other mother just for food
- Thus “contact comfort” was an essential element of infant/mother bonding, and essential to psychological development
- as they grew up they had hard time integrating with other monkeys
- experiment illustrated that behaviour is shaped by our interactions with others and that interaction is essential for proper development
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Unintentionally & unknowingly cause something to happen due to the face they expect it to happen or when they unwittingly confirm a stereotype about themselves
Called a ‘false definition’ in the beginning but then becomes true
Stereotype threat vs Stereotype boost
Stereotype threat - confirming a negative stereotype
Stereotype boost - individuals perform better than they would have because of exposure to a positive stereotype
Elaboration Likelihood Model
Is a persuasion model that focuses on how to influence how others think
3 key elements:
- Message characteristic
- Source characteristic
- Target characteristic
What are the 2 cognitive routes of persuasion?
- Central route - people are persuaded by the content itself
- Peripheral route - people focus on superficial or secondary characteristics of the speech or orator
Methods of compliance
Foot in the door - asking for a small request first then a much larger request next
Door in the face - asking for a large request first then a much smaller request
Norm of reciprocity - more likely to comply with a request from someone who has done us a favor in the past
Ingratiation technique - gaining compliance by gaining personal approval from an individual first
Low ball technique - getting someone to agree to something at a low cost & then increasing the cost
Solomon Asch’s Conformity Expeiment
- asked which line matched the comparison line
- when alone, 99% of the time they were correct but with a confederate they chose whatever answer they did bc of conformity
Mary Ainsworth Attachment Styles
- Humans are strongly attached to their caregivers around 12 months
- did experiment to see how toddlers responded infront of strangers when their more was absent and when she returned
Securely attached - explore surroundings while mother is present, cry when she leaves but quickly consoled when she arrives again; responsive & sensitive caregivers
Insecurely attached - toddlers will not explore while mother is present, will cry loudly when she leaves & remain upset or indifferent when she returns; caregiver is inconsistently responsive and insensitive
Types of behaviour of insecurely attached infants
- Ambivalent attachment:
- cries loudly when mother leaves but remains upset even after she returns
- toddler may cling to mother and simultaneously hit or push her away - Avoidant attachment:
- indifferent to mother’s departure or return
- however physiological data shows they’re experiencing stress - Disorganized attachment:
- toddler cannot predict the mother’s behaviour
Social Norms
Explicit or implicit rules that specify acceptable behaviour within a society
Deviance
Violation of society’s standards of conduct or expectations; deviant behaviour often violates social norms, both form & informal
Social Sanctions
- Stigmatization: Informal deviance or violation of the unwritten, social rules of behaviour results in social sanctions or social stigma
- Legal Sanction: Formal deviance or violation of legal codes results in criminal action initiated by state
- Preference of one behaviour over another: lesser degree of social violation results in preference rather than stigmatization
Folkway
Behaviour that’s socially approved but not morally significant; breaking it doesn’t usually have serious consequences
Mores
More strict norms that control moral & ethical behaviour; people feel strongly about them * breaking it usually results in disapproval
Taboo
Norms that society holds so strongly that violation leads to extreme disgust; often violator seen as “unfit” for society
Aggression
Any behaviour meant to hurt or intimidate others
- Hostile Aggression
- Instrumental Aggression
Hostile Aggression
- Affective or retaliatory aggression
- accompanied by strong emotions
- behaviour is impulsive, unplanned or uncontrollable
- Goal: harm the other person
Instrumental Aggression
- Predatory or goal-oriented aggression
- behaviour is goal-oriented, planned and controlled
- goal: harm the person to obtain something else
What affects aggression?
Biological, environmental & culture
What fosters attraction?
- Proximity - tend to like people who are closer to us because more opportunities to interaction, certain things in common because live close to each other, mere exposure effect
- Similarity - couples and close friends tend to be similar in age, religion, social class, etc
- Physical attractiveness - tend to attribute positive characteristics to people who are physically attractive (known as physical attractiveness stereotype)
Mere exposure effect
psychological phenomenon whereby we tend to develop a preference for things we’re familiar with
Social stigma
- may arise from deviant behaviour
- may also arise from circumstances which we have no control over
- it is the extreme disapproval of a person/group on socially characteristic grounds that distinguish them from other members of society
