Psychology in Society Flashcards
What is a social dilemma?
- Each decision maker has a course of action that may yield superior outcomes for the self
- But if we all choose this strategy, it’ll all end up worse off than if people cooperated
- Basically where self-interest and collective interests are at odds with each other
What types of social dilemmas are there?
Social traps
Social fences
What is a social trap?
+ for the self
- to the collective
What are social fences?
- for the self
+ to the collective
What does the Rational Self Interest Model state?
That humans should optimise outcomes for the self over the collective.
But this does not account for the whole picture
How are humans ultra-social compared to non-human primates?
- We punish free-riders
- Children apply some form of distributive justice
- We intervene as a third-party in response to norm violations
- Intrinsically motivated to help
What are the key mechanisms of cooperation?
- Reciprocity
- Indirect reciprocity
- Fairness
- Punishment
What is direct reciprocity?
A helps B, so B helps A
What are game theoretical paradigms?
- Interactive games between PPs wwhich bring social dilemmas into the lab
- Usually in the form of economic games
- Allows us to study social decision-making in a controlled way
What is the prisoners dilemma?
- A and B commit a crime and get arrested
- The prosecutors need one of them to turn on their partner so they can charge the other
- A and B have the choices to cooperate and refuse to talk or defect and testify against your co-conspirer
What is the iterated prisoners dilemma?
Repeated rounds of the prisoners dilemma against a simulated other.
What is the tit for tat strategy in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma?
Player starts cooperative and then responds in kind to the other person’s actions
What is indirect reciprocity?
Upstream: A helps B so B helps C
Downstream: A helps B so C helps A
Why do we study fairness and punishment in social decisions?
Fairness norms are a powerful source of social influence
What game do we use to test fairness and punishment?
Ultimatum game
What is the ultimatum game?
- Player A receives an initial endowment and they devide the money as they see fit and offers part to plater B
- B can accept or reject
- If player B rejects, no one gets any money
What emotional responses are found in fairness?
- People perceieve unfair others as less likeable, agreeable and even less attractive than fair others
- Emotionally people respond to unfair others with disgust, anger, and sometimes sadness
What is the public goods game used for?
There are variants used to examine trust, cooperation, and reputation-building in groups
What is the public goods game?
- Everyone gets an endowment
- Everyone puts as many tokens in the pot as they choose
- The pot is multiplied by a factor and then the pot is split up again
What have we found about fairness and punishment?
- Norms for fairness drive behaviour beyond ‘rational self interest’
- Fairness violations elicit powerful emotional and behavioural responses
People will incur a cost to punish others for unfair behaviour, even if they are merely third parties to the behaviour
What have we found about consistent contributors?
- Contributions remained high in groups with high consistent contributors
- CCs ultimately made more money than members of groups without CC
- Addtive effect of status whereby high status CC had a stronger effect
- Motivational dispositions of the group did not maek a difference
What have we found about propagation of cooperation?
- When an individual cooperates with another individual, it tends to influence the second individual in future interactoins
- The original individual’s cooperative influence persists over time and across the social network
What is perspective-taking?
Inferences about others’ mental states
What is empathy?
Inferences about others’ affective states
What facilitates helping behaviour?
Empathic responses
What determines whether helping actually occurs?
Critical moderators
What are the two definitions of power?
- Capacity to influence others while resisting their attempts to influence
- Relative control over another’s valued outcomes
What are harsh bases of power?
- Use economic and physical outcomes
- Work with outcomes that are more tangible and explicit
- Rely upon power differentials that are more obvious
- More likely to ecist when power is illigitimate
- Require surveillance
What are soft bases of power?
- Use social outcomes
- Work with more outcomes that are more subjective and intangbile
- Rely upon power differentials that may be less obvious
- NOT weaker than harsh
- Tend to produce influence that is self-sustaining
What are types of harsh power?
Coercive
Reward
What are types of soft power?
Informational
Expert
Referent
What are types of both harsh and soft power?
Legitmate
What is the approach theory of power?
When you’re in a high position of power, you’re in an approach oriented state
What does the approach oriented state involve?
- Attention to rewards
- Positive emotions (desire, pride)
- Automatic cognition
- Disinhibition
- State/trait driven behaviour
What is the inhibition theory of power?
When you’re in a low position of power, you’re in an inhibited state.
What does the inhibited state involve?
- Attention to threats
- Negative emotions (awe, embarassment)
- Systematic, controlled cognition
- Inhibition
- Situationally constrained behaviour
When feeling powerful, people tend to…?
- More willing to engage in action
- Act in line with their own preferences
- Express opinions openly
- Experience/express more +ve emotions
- Decreased motivation to affiliate with lower power
- Less likely to be perspective-taking or empathetic
- Lower basal cortisol levels and power cortisol
What individual differences are there when acquiring social influence?
- Dominance vs prestige
- Motivation and leadership
What is dominance?
The degree of deference, respect, and attention one receives as a consequence of the perceived ability to coerce, intimidate, and impose costs and benefits
What is prestige?
The degree of deference, respect, and attention an individual receives as consequence of the perceived attractiveness as a cultural model of coalition partner.
Do dominance and prestige predict power?
- Both independently predict power
- Both independently predict visual attention toward the target
Would unstable leadership lead dominance motivated individuals to withhold information from group members?
Yes
- less keen for their team to get good clues
How does low dominance show in motivation and leadership?
They don’t care whether their leadership is stable/unstable/equal, they wanted their team to do the best they could either way
Would unstable leadership lead dominance-motivated individuals to exclude highly-skilled group members form the group?
Yes, they act in their own self interest.
What does group-based power persist?
Social identity
Social dominance
System justification
How does group-based dominance exert itself?
- Force
- Outgroup derogation
- Ingroup bias
What is the social identity approach?
- Groups provide us with a social identity
- Group identity increases self-stereotyping, depersonalisation, perceieved intergroup difference
- We strive for positive distinctiveness
What is social dominance theory?
- Group-based hierarchies exist acrpss societies
- Discrimination is coordinated via legitimising myths
- Social dominance orientation
What is social dominance orientation?
An individual orientation toward group-based dominance
What are legitimising myths?
Societal shared social ideologies
- e.g. men have more power because women are emotionally unstable (false but supports the societal structure)
What does social dominance orientation correlate positively with?
Sexism
Racism
Nationalism
Support for the US invasion of Iraq
What does social dominance orientation correlate negatively with?
Tolerance
Egalitarianism
Support for human rights
Support for the military intervention i the Yugoslovakian war
What does social dominance orientation correlate negatively with?
Tolerance
Egalitarianism
Support for human rights
Support for the military intervention i the Yugoslovakian war
What is the system justification theory?
- Process by which existing social arrangements are legitimised even at the expense of personal group interest
What are the 3 sections of system justification theory?
- Ego
- System
- Group
What does the ego section of system justification theory represent?
The desire to maintain a favourable image, to feel valid, justified, and legitimate as an individual
What does the status section of the system justification theory represent?
Desire to imbue the status quo with legitimacy and to see it as good, fair, natural, desireable, and even inevitable
What does the group section of the system justification theory represent?
The desire to maintain favourable images of one’s group and to justify the actions of ingroup members
Why is conformity different to obedience?
Because conformity is still a change in behaviour or express attitudes and beliefs, but it’s in response to social norms or others behaviour so it’s not in response to a direct request
What is a situationist account?
The idea that is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act
What is persuasion?
A change in attitude, beliefs, or behaviour in response to direct messages
What does persuasion require>
Internalisation
What are the different components to persuasion?
- Affect
- Behaviour
- Cognition
ABC
What is the affect component of persuasion?
Attitudes strictly as an evaluative response so that you respond positively vs negatively to something
What is the behaviour component of persuasion?
Incorporate behaviour into their definition of attitudes, and the logic here is that the whole purpose of attitudes is because they prepare us to act
What is the cognition aspect of persuasion?
People talk about attitudes as a constellation, also a whole set of cognition of ideas or thoughts around the attitude target on top of behavioural correlates
Why is it difficult to show the attitude to behaviour link in the lab?
- not clear which component out of the 3 is important in a given situation
- Not clear which attitude is driving behaviour in a given situation
- Behaviour toward one attitude object could be controlled by attitude toward another
What is heuristic processing of persuasion?
- Argument quality is not so important
- Relies upon simple rules like ‘majority rules’ or ‘he looks trustworthy’
What is systematic processing of persuasion?
- Argument quality is important
- Involved effortful scrutiny of all relevant information like ‘are the arguments logically coherent’
- Attitude is more resistant to change
When do we use systematic processing in persuasion?
- When one is motivated to be accurate, defend an attitude, or create a positive impression
- When one has the cognitive capacity for effortful processing
- When one’s personality requires clear explanations
What factors affect persuasion?
Source
Message
Audience
What do we search for in a source when being persuaded?
- Expertise
- trustworthiness
- likeability
- status
- group membership
What do we search for in the message when being persuaded?
- One vs Two-sided arguments
- Emotional vs cognitive appeal
- Explicit vs implicit conclusion
What differences in audience affect likelihood of being persuaded?
- Intelligence
- Self-esteem
- Need for cognition
- Cognitive load
How does matching source and audience increase likelihood of persuasion?
Sources are more persuasive when they share characteristics with the audience
How do high-power communicators persuade?
- used more competence-relate arguments
How do low-power communicators persuade?
- Used more warmth-related arguments
When matching message and audience, what is important?
Matching need for affect and need for cognition
How does source expertise link with audience motivation?
People process experts’ message heuristically when not very motivated. But also likely to attend closer and process then systematically when interested
What is proattitudinal?
When people agree with us, we trust experts and process their arguments heuristically but we scrutinise non-experts in order to identify weaknesses in our side
What is counterattitudinal?
When people disagree with us, we ignore non-experts but we scrutinise experts in order to better counter them
How do we relate to brands?
- Brands are social objects
- So perceived in terms of intentions and ability
What emotional responses do brand dimensions elicit?
- Pity
- Contempt
- Envy
- Admiration
What effects to strong brand relationships have?
- Loyalty beyond habit
- Contribute to the self concept
- Resistance to negative info about the brand
What is anthromorphism?
- Attribution of human characteristics to inanimate objects, animals, etc
Where is anthromorphism used in persuasion?
- In branding whereby brands themselves are anthropomorphised
- Product design whereby products have human features
- Have a positive effect on product impressions
What do entity theorists believe?
- Expect behaviour to be consistent over time
- Characterised a person based on a single act
What do incremental theorists believe?
- Believe that behaviour changes with context
- Do not expect behaviour to be stable over time
How do audiences try to resist persuasion?
- Avoidance
- Contesting
- Empowering
What is conformity?
Aligning one’s behaviour or expressed attitudes and beliefs with social norms oe others’ behaviour. Conformity does not require internalisation
What are norms?
Implicit or explicit rules or principles that guide of constrain behaviour. Norms are understood by members of a group and applied without the force of laws.
What is normative influence?
involves a change in behaviour that is deemed necessary in order to fit in a particular group
e.g. going along with the crowd
Why do we conform?
- Informational influence
- Normative influence
- Referent informatinal influence
what is informational influence?
When one accepts information from another as evidence about reality
e.g. ‘they must know something I don’t know’
What is referent informational influence?
When one conforms to the norm of a group when one’s membership in that group is important or salient
e.g. ‘that’s what people like me do’
What are illusory norms?
- not always obvious when you go into the real world what the norms are and because of that ambiguity there is ambiguity in how we behave
What is the false consensus effect?
When one overestimates the degree to which attitudes or beliefs are shared by others
What is pluralistic ignorance?
Conforming to what one mistakenly believes is the majority view, despite not personally endorsing it
How do emotions link to norm transmission?
The idea is that moral emotions specificslly, help to spread norms
What are the emotional costs of nonconformity?
Guilt, shame, embarassment, humiliation
What are the social costs of nonconformity?
Isolation, ostracism, perceived as disruptive
What is the Black Sheep Effect?
The costs of nonconformity can be particularly harsh for ingroup deviants
What are the costs of nonconformity in tight cultures?
Stong norms and low tolerance of deviant behaviour
What are the costs of nonconformity in loose cultures?
Weak social norms and high tolerance of deviant behaviour
When have participants been known to show the most moral outrage?
When they learn of norm violation online
What is traceability?
The degree to which behaviour in the game would be identifiable
What is gossipy-ness?
tendency to talk about others and tendency to gossip
What is an advantage of gossip?
It provides a moderating effect on pro-group behaviour
What are the benefits of nonconformity?
Status and Power
Does nonconformity signal status?
Yes - to experts
Yes - within high prestige contexts
What is the Robin Hood effect?
The notion that nonconformity signals that one would make a good leader when that nonconformity is prosocial
What is descriptive deviance?
Diverge from the average group attitude in a direction consistent with the desirable group attitude
What is prescriptive deviance?
Diverge from the average group attitude in a direction inconsistent with the desirable group attitude
When do people feel as though violence is more acceptable?
When they feel as though it was a moral issue - particularly strong pattern when PPs believed that their morals converged with those of the majority
What is convergent-divergent theory?
- Diverging from the majority is threatening, so people inhibit their own thoughts that are at odds with those views
- Diverging from the minority is not threatening, so people are comfortable entertaining minority viewpoints
What is the conversion effect?
Individuals accept the majority view passively but actively engage in a validation process with the minority view.
What is a tipping point for social change?
When the size of the minority reaches a specific proportion of the population, norms flip quickly and dramatically so that the minority attitude, belief, or behaviour becomes the norm
When do groups reach a tipping point?
When the minority is about 25%
What is a vocal minority?
group that voices an opinion that the majority of people don’t agree with
Whar is externalism?
Learning depends upon other people’s knowledge
What is transactive memory?
The memory of a group includes information shared between individuals
What is the illusion of explanator depth?
Individuals overestimate their knowledge of a topic until they are asked to explain it in greater detail
What is the Community-of-Knowledge hypothesis?
- People fail to distinguish their own knowledge from other people’s knowledge
- Merely believing that someone else understands a topic leads us to believe we know more about that same topic
