SOCIAL 1 Flashcards
Bystander effect
A phenomenon where individuals fail to help a victim when others are around; the more people are around, the less likely people are to help themselves.
Social psychology
The science of the causes and consequences of social behavior, from cooperation to coercion
Humans are eusocial
- We take care of offspring that are not ours.
- We live in groups with overlapping generations of people
- We divide into specialized labor groups
Theory of mind
The ability to represent the beliefs and desires of people who are not you (especially when their thoughts and beliefs differ from your own)
How do we use the theory of mind?
We do this by reasoning about other people, using logic
Suggest that we stimulate the minds of others, engaging in a kind of empathetic process.
Benefits of working in groups
- Combine effort to do more than any single person can
- Divide labor so that each person can become specialized
- Pass knowledge to each other over time
Only happens when everyone cooperates equally
Costs of groups
- People tend to stereotype and discriminate against other groups
- People tend to loaf and do less in a group then on their own
- People can show extremely high levels of aggression (including wars)
Theory of mind you can:
- Predict what other people will do
- Explain motives behind their actions
- Reason about where you agree and disagree with them.
Right temporal-parietal junction (rTPJ)
A brain region that is selectively active when we think about the thoughts of others (i.e. unique and dedicated for ToM).
The rTPJ is selectively active when reading stories about people’s thoughts but not about their sensations.
Controversy about theory of mind
Tom is a kind of conscious and learned reasoning process that can improve with time and experience.
A simulated experience: imagining what it’s like to be another person and inferring they will do the same as you would.
Mirror neurons
Neuronal regions that activate when an individual performs an action or observes another individual performing the same action.
Attribution
An inference about the cause of a person’s behavior; typically - it is their disposition/ personality or the situation they are in.
What pushes us towards a dispositional attribution?
High consistency, low distinctiveness, low consensus
What pushes towards situational attributions?
Low consistency, highly distinctive behavior for them, high consensus
Consistency
Does this person act this way in similar situations?
High consistency = disposition
Low consistency = situation
Distinctiveness/ uniqueness
does this person act this way in different situations?
Low distinctiveness = disposition
Highly distinctive behavior for them = situation
Consensus
do other people act this way in similar situations
low consensus = disposition
high consensus = situation
This person always complains in restaurants
This person complains in many other places
Nobody else complains in this restaurant
high consistency
low distinctiveness
low consensus
disposition
This person rarely rates movies as “sorry films”
This person is not usually negative towards other things, like music, food, etc.
Many other people hate this movie, too.
low consistency
high distinctiveness
high consensus
Situational
Fundamental Attribution error
The general tendency for people to make dispositional attributions of others, even when readily available situational factors are available:
(bad drivers, instead of no time to stop)
Actor-Observer Effect
The general tendency for people to make situational attributions of ourselves (even when they would make dispositional ones of others in the same situation)
Social norms
culturally-specific expectations of appropriate vs inappropriate behavior of which everybody in the culture is supposed to act in accordance with
Breaking of social norms is almost always considered a dispositional cause, and individuals who break norms are often quickly shunned
Why are social norms extremely useful?
They allow us to have cultural expectations about groups that make attributions quick and easy.
Social norms can be manipulated and exploited
- Social norms are hard to change but often embody many things that are deeply problematic,
- Social norms are not cross-culturally universal, leading to problems in relying on them across groups, countries
- Can be used to change people’s behaviors even without them realizing you are using them.
