Social Flashcards
definition of impression formation:
highly complex, easy, vital for social functioning
How many words are there to describe people?
over 17,000
Are impressions of others made slow or fast?
extremely rapid. impressions of trustworthiness, competence, likeability,
aggressiveness, attractiveness can be made in 100ms
What is the halo effect?
Beautiful people expected to lead better
lives (more successful, better marriages etc).
Beautiful people assumed to have more
socially desirable personality traits
According to research, what ‘advantages’ do attractive people have (beauty premium)?
-paid around 5 to 10 % more
-receive lighter sentences in criminal justice system
-more attractive children are expected to attain higher grades by teachers
According to research, what advantages do people deemed ‘trustworthy’ have?
-given better credit ratings on real credit websites
-more likely to have loans funded
-less likely to face death penalty if convicted for crimes, even more so than people who are actually innocent
What factor can make political candidates more likely to be elected?
when they look more competent. for example five year olds were more likely to pick the president to ‘captain a ship’ over another person
When participants were given good, bad or neutral information about three individuals, then played trust game with them, what did they tend to use to predict their partner’s intentions in the game?
Participants didn’t rely fully on partners’ actual behaviour in the game to predict partners’ intentions. Instead, participants used their initial impressions
When participants were given good, bad or neutral information about three individuals, then played a trust game with them, what was revealed in the fMRI activity?
- fMRI scanning showed activity in the caudate nucleus (associated with reward learning) ONLY in neutral condition (where no prior impression was given)
*Suggests prior impressions disrupted
learning from the game
What are the universal dimensions of social cognition according to Stereotype Content Model (SCM):
Warmth (trustworthiness, friendliness, kindness) and competence (capability, ability)
What is suggested by the evolutionary perspective of the universal dimensions of social cognition?
social perception reflects ancestral selection
pressures promoting survival
What was the Stereotype Content model initially created for?
Originally created to explain stereotypes, later applied to impressions of individuals
What predicts warmth in social groups?
competition.
the higher competition between group members, the lower warmth
what predicts competence in social groups?
status.
the higher ‘status’ of the social group, the higher competence
Students were asked to sort 64 traits into groups of traits that were likely to cluster in the same person. Which two dimensions were found after multidimensional scaling?
-social (warmth)
-intellectual (competence)
Explain the criticism of the Stereotype Content Model associated with halo effects:
halo effects see positive impressions cluster together like the attractiveness halo
warmth and competence impressions of individuals are positively related. What does this suggest about the dimensions of the stereotype content model?
There could be a contradiction when claiming the SCM model has ‘dissociable dimensions’
Evaluate the construct validity of the stereotype content model (big two):
-People report morality as more important than sociability or competence for in-group members
-People also judge morality as more important than sociability or competence for strangers
-Morality related traits more likely to be mentioned than social warmth traits in real obituaries
describe the zero-acquaintance paradigm:
-36 same-sex groups of strangers
interacted without previously meeting before
-Peer judgements of prestige and dominance correlated with peer as well as researcher judgements of influence
-Prestige and dominance had similar levels of influence but effects were statistically dissociable
describe the primacy of warmth in the ‘big two’
warmth is argued to be more central, more salient, and more important for overall valence (if the impression is overall positive or negative). In Asch (1946) study there were extreme reversals in positivity of overall impression if ‘cold’, even with other desirable traits present
What were Asch’s findings when he replaced warm/cold with polite/blunt as a trait?
polite/blunt had a less strong effect because warm/cold are considered as ‘central traits’
What is evidence AGAINST warmth being a central trait?
-In a replication study, there was no evidence that warmth was ranked as more important. Warmth/cold manipulation had less effect when presented with other traits
-the importance of warmth is context specific: warmth is only central in context of mainly competence-related traits
-suggests that the dimensional approach is oversimplified
How was the primacy of warmth demonstrated when people were asked to list 10 most important personality traits?
Warmth dimension is more readily available in spontaneous lists of traits ie. 8/10 warmth related traits vs 2/10 competence related traits.
How are ‘morality’ and ‘competence’ prioritised in impression formation?
-Morality is more important in impression formation as more directly affects another’s well-being (hurt or help)
-Competence is more important in self-perception, as it more directly affects own well-being
Words belonging to which category of traits are recognised more quickly in lexical decision tasks?
Warmth traits are recognised as words more quickly than competence traits
Why is competent behaviour seen as more diagnostic than incompetent behaviour?
competence is assumed not to be under personal control (a stupid person can’t fake being smart but a smart person can make mistakes)
Why is cold behaviour seen as more diagnostic than warm behaviour?
warmth is assumed to be under personal control (people have a strong motivation to fake being nice, but not to fake being mean)
Describe the dual process model of impression formation (Brewer 1988):
Impressions can be bottom-up driven by features of the person, and also be created top-down from prior knowledge such as stereotypes
In what situations are impressions more likely to be driven by stereotypes?
when people are mentally busy because it is easier than individuating features
Describe motivated tactician account on forming impressions:
people are efficiency seekers who do enough to make sense of the world, depending on their goals and available mental resources. coping with limited mental resources influences the strategy taken by people. stereotypes are more efficient because they are sets of pre chunked knowledge.
What is the opposite of an efficiency seeker?
cognitive miser
Explain the Meaning Seeker Model:
people seek to understand others through stereotypes.
stereotypes are dynamically constructed and not pre specified or rigid.
individuation is not always superior to stereotyping as stereotyping can be very useful.
what is an example of a useful stereotype?
doctor/patient stereotypes can help guide consultations
How do more recent approaches consider impression formation?
It is considered as an integrative, dynamic process of stereotyping and individuation to make predictions about others. the brain dynamically incorporates prior information and existing evidence from varied sources
Define Physiognomy:
pseudoscientific practise of assessing character from the face in the 19th century
Three main sources of impression information:
1) what other people say - psychology studies use descriptions of behaviour or character
2) their behaviour – psychology studies use videos, or real interactions (e.g. economic games)
3) their appearance – most work has been done on faces
How did two dimensions of facial impressions emerge?
Participants generate spontaneous impressions while looking at a set of faces
New participants then rate the same faces on the most frequently mentioned traits
Principal components analysis to distil impressions down into underlying dimensions
What are the two dimensions of facial impressions?
Trustworthiness: do they want to help or harm me
Dominance: can they help or harm me
Are warmth and trustworthiness similar?
yes
are dominance and competence similar?
nope
what mechanisms do models suggest impressions reflect?
natural and sexual selection (threat detection, attractiveness)
are impressions universal?
warmth and competence dimensions differentiate groups across culture. high cross cultural agreement in whether traits represented agency (competence), communion (warmth) and how positive the traits were.
two dimensions can account for impressions across culture
how do face impressions differ across culture?
higher within culture agreement for own culture faces
Definition of nudging:
Self consciously attempting to move people in directions that will make their lives better
Definition of a Nudge:
any aspect of the environment that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way
What makes a nudge powerful?
the concept of having two or more conditions
aka Randomised Control Trials or A/B testing
-control condition and variation condition
allows for comparison
What are the six principles of influence (according to Robert Cialdini)?
- Reciprocation
- Social proof
- Liking
- Authority
- Commitment & self-consistency
- Scarcity
Why is reciprocation so powerful?
There is no human society that doesn’t reciprocate.
Allows us to give to other people and not lose; allows division of labour, trading, expertise, efficient social groups
Describe the compliance experiment, involving coke, that is proof of reciprocation (Reagan 1971:
-experiment supposedly about “art appreciation”
-a confederate “bought” the participant a Coke (or not)
-At the end, the confederate asked participants to buy raffle tickets so he could win a competition
-2x tickets bought in Coke condition compared to baseline
This was a 400% return on investment
How did ‘likeable ness’ impact the participant response in the compliance experiment where one condition of participants were gifted a free coke?
people gave more money to the confederate when they liked him better (confederate either behaved nice or mean to third person)… BUT only when he didn’t buy them a coke.
when he bought them a coke, people reciprocated regardless of liking.
What do charities do in order to gain more donations?
Reciprocation; free samples/gifts
What is the Door-In-Face technique?
obligation to make a concession to
someone who has made a concession to you.
3x as many people agree to chaperone juvenile delinquents to the zoo after declining larger favour (Cialdini et al 1975, JPSP)
Why might people choose not to go into an empty restaurant?
Social Proof Theory
What Social Nudge might hotels do in order to encourage their customers to reuse their towels?
Telling people 75% of other customers reused their towels.
if you tell people other people do a certain thing, other people are more likely to follow.
Define Injunctive Norms:
what we’re supposed to do
Define Descriptive Norms:
what most people do
What is The Big Mistake?
When Injunctive and Descriptive norm clash, trying to promote one but instead promoting the other
Explain an example of The Big Mistake from a National Park in Arizona:
Study looked at people removing petrified wood from a National Park in
Arizona.
Compared the effectiveness of different messages set along visitor path
Dropped petrified wood along the paths (to measure how much wood was
taken by visitors)
“Many past visitors have removed petrified wood” (Negative) descriptive norm; 8% of the wood dropped was removed . accidentally primed the public into this being a social norm/an option that had not previously occurred to them
Please don’t remove the petrified wood from the Park, in order to preserve the natural state of the Petrified Forest” (Positive) injunctive
norm; 1.7% of wood removed and so more effective
When and Why do we follow the group?
Similarity
We follow people like us:
- in the tax study, “people in the same town” was more effective than “people in the UK”
- in the towel study, “same room” was more effective than “same hotel”
Feasibility
i.e. convenience
-energy consumption study: social proof message 3.5x more effective than
messages about why it’s good to save the environment
What is the Bystander Effect?
If people are unsure what to do, they will often do nothing and rely on other people to do something
Describe an example of the bystander effect?
Kitty Genovese murder in New York Assault carried out for 35 mins and 38 people who saw/heard what was going on and didn’t do anything; all expecting the other people to call the police or for help
What happened to the outcome of the Pluralistic Smoke Experiment after other people (confederates) were added into the scene?
-75% people reported the smoke
when on their own
-10% didn’t move when confederates present; meaning 90% of people chose to do nothing because the confederates did nothing
Why do we like others?
- physical attractiveness
- similarity
- cooperation and synchrony
- compliments
- personalisation
Examples of the Halo Effect:
-more attractive people are paid around 5 to
10 percent more (Hameresh & Biddle 1993, Beauty and the Labor Market)
* … are viewed as being more socially
competent (Eagly et al Psych Bulletin 1991)
* … even receive lighter sentences in the
criminal justice system (Stewart, J. Applied Psychology 1980)
Supports associative learning
(anything associated with beauty
is also perceived as good)
* brands exploit the halo effect to
sell products
Who was granted more favour when confederates dressed up as either a hippie or ‘straights’ asked for a favour? (Emswiller et al 1971)
-Favour was granted more often when
confederates’ clothes matched the
participants’
-We like people more when they are
similar to us.
Explain the ‘Robbers’ Cave’ experiment:
famous study on cooperation in a boys camp
when the Eagles and Rattlers were competing over camp resources, hostilities rapidly
increased. Increasing cooperation between the groups increased liking and in turn, further cooperation
What is an example of synchrony increasing helping behaviours in synchronised tapping task
-participants and confederate asked to tap along with music (on headphones)
* after unsynchronised tapping (different music), 18% of participants stayed to help confederate with maths tasks
* after synchronised tapping (same music), 49% stayed to help
* likelihood of helping was mediated by sense of similarity
How can remembering names increase social likeness:
Being Personal:
-Remembering details about a person is perceived as an index of how important you think they are
-Remembering names is perceived as a compliment
-Remembering someone’s name also increases the likelihood that the person will make a purchase, mediated by the compliment value
How can demand bias be mitigated?
-making sure participants are blind to the experiment hypotheses and/or the condition
- asking at the end what the experiment was
about (funnel debrief)
- use between-subjects design e.g. synchrony studies Hove & Risen 2009 Social Psychology
How can experimenter bias be mitigated?
-strict decision criteria for choosing a participant
- making experimenters blind
- record interactions
- use computer interaction (so completely
scripted)
Under what circumstances did people stop giving shocks in the Milgram Experiment?
-the experimenter told the participant to stop
(even if the “victim” insisted they continue)
-the experimenter and “victim” switched roles
-with two experimenters who disagreed
What happened when researchers phoned wards and pretended to be doctors
asking the nurses to administer a dangerous dose of unauthorised medication to a specific patient?
- in 95% of cases, the nurses went to the medicine cabinet and secured
the medicine (where they were stopped!)
Two routes of authority:
Dominance: physical power
Credibility: expertise and trustworthiness
What is the weakness-before-strength technique?
takes something opponent can use against you and turn it around
i.e.
Queen Elizabeth:
“I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a King, and a King of England, too”
“And though you have had or will have, many mightier and wiser princes sitting in this seat, yet you have never had, nor shall have, any who loved you better”
What was the outcomes of a study that compared behavioural nudges carried out by experts (scientists) and government groups?
- Scientists judged more trustworthy
than government groups - Genuine nudges judged more
ethical and plausible than fictitious
nudges - Genuine nudges by government
judged less trustworthy than fictious (implausible) nudges by scientists
Cognitive Dissonance Theory:
inconsistency among beliefs or behaviours causes an uncomfortable psychological
tension. So, we act to reduce that tension as consistency is preferred
What is the Foot in the Door technique?
start small and build up
Describe the cancer study investigating the Foot-In-the-Door technique:
-students were phoned up by a researcher and asked hypothetical question: would they help collect donations for the ‘American Cancer society’ if asked?
-Experimental group (plus control group, who hadn’t previously been contacted) then phoned up by the ‘American Cancer Society’ and actually asked to help
* 31.3% helped in experimental group v 4.2% in control group
* Fighting cancer is a socially desirable behaviour so people overpredicted that they would help (47.8% thought they’d help!)
What is the opposite to foot-in-the-door technique?
door-in-the-face technique
When does the foot-in-the-door technique work best?
works best when there is time between
requests or different people requesting, suggesting it invokes consistency
what is the foot-in-the-door effectiveness mediated by?
mediated by changes in self- perception (i.e. in line with behaviour)
When does the door-in-the-face technique work best?
when a target request is made immediately after the first request, with the same requester, suggesting it invokes reciprocation (i.e. external pressure)
What is more effective: foot-in-door technique or door-in-face technique?
the two techniques are equally effective (meta analysis)
what was deemed an effective strategy in changing behaviour (moderate effect size)
and also successful in driving long term behaviour change?
Commitment
Why might Commitment be effective?
- Change in self concept and/or attitudes towards behaviour (“I am the
kind of person who recycles”)? - Follow social norm (“good to be consistent”)?
In the Student study on Public v Private commitment, which group resisted social influences from a group who were wrong?
-Public commitment condition showed most consistency with initial estimate wrongly made by others
-Private commitment condition resisted social influence from the group
In consumerism under what circumstances will people find something more desirable?
when it is…
* time-limited
* rare
* difficult to get
Participants rated the same cookie, either taken from a jar with 2 cookies OR with 10 cookies, when were they rated more desirable to eat?
-Cookies in short supply rated as significantly more desirable to eat and more attractive as an item, and more costly
-cookie rated as EVEN more attractive, liked,
and costly when it was first shown in a jar of ten, THEN in a jar of two (instead of always two)
-Cookies either reduced due to ‘social demand’ or because ‘experimenter made a mistake’:
Interestingly there was no difference on rated taste of the cookies
When some participants were told a tape was restricted, how did censorship change people’s desire to hear the tape?
- Censorship increased people’s desire to hear the tape
- Desire especially increased when:
- told others had heard the tape
- deliberately (not accidentally) withheld
- it was personal (only they couldn’t hear it)
What is Psychological Reactance?
when people feel that their choices are heavily constricted, they feel angry and may react by increasing that behaviour
What is the Low Road to imitation?
Mimicry
-mimicry of relatively simple, observable behaviour
What is the High Road to imitation?
Priming
-imitation based on higher-level constructs
Describe the Perception-behaviour link:
seeing is doing (automatic copying, no need for conscious or deliberate thought)
Why is mimicry referred to as a chameleon-effect?
mimicry happens automatically and unconsciously, people as social chameleons
How did mimicking exact words used by customers increase tips more than paraphrasing did ?
Mimicry as a nudge: mimicry leads to increased liking and increased persuasion
Describe behavioural priming:
initial activation of a construct leads to activation of other constructs and leads to relevant behaviour
How did Behavioural Priming have an effect in the Milgram (shock) task?
-People primed by asking them to unscramble mainly hostile words (hostile, aggressive, etc.) or neutral words (supposedly a different
experiment)
-People primed with hostility gave more shocks than the control group did
Effect size was really small
Can people be primed with stereotypes?
-People primed with “professor” stereotype (asked to write down typical professor characteristics) performed better on a general knowledge task than control participants
-People primed with a “football hooligan” stereotype, showed lower general knowledge than control participants
What is an example where smell acted as a non verbal behavioural prime?
Participants put in room with (hidden) bucket filled with lemon- scented cleaning water (or control). Participants in the bucket condition were more likely to list cleaning activities as goals for the day (36%) than the control participants (11%)
What is a criticism of the role of environmental priming in the Elderly Walking Paradigm after it was failed to be replicated?
-it did replicate when the experimenter wasn’t blind to condition i.e. expected the participant to walk slower
- thus the experimenter, rather than environment, may have primed participant
For what reasons do many behavioural priming studies fail to be replicated?
- Demand bias & experimenter bias
- Under-powered studies: small effects need large participant samples, most priming studies were run on N = 20
- Effects may just be a type 1 error (i.e. not really there)
- Mistakes in statistical analysis: statistics are hard and mistakes do happen!
- experimenter and demand bias may instead demonstrate how powerful social influence is
When is behavioural priming at its most effective?
priming requires salient stimuli and top-down attention (factors associated with consciousness)
when participants learned that they had succeeded on an achievement test completed earlier, did the participants posture effect how proud they felt?
Those who received the good news in the slumped posture felt less proud and reported being in a worse mood than participants in the upright or working posture
Images that typically evoke emotionally positive and negative responses were presented on a computer screen. Experimental participants were asked to indicate when a picture appeared by quickly moving a lever. Some participants were instructed to push a lever away from their body, whereas others were instructed to pull a lever toward their body, which group responded fastest?
Participants who pushed the lever away responded to negative images faster than to positive images, whereas participants who pulled the lever toward themselves responded faster to positive images
participants were induced either to nod in
agreement or to shake their heads in disagreement with statements. While they were “testing” their headphones the experimenter placed a pen on the table in front of them. Later, a different experimenter
offered the participants the pen that had been placed on the table earlier or the novel pen. Which pens did the participants prefer?
Individuals who were nodding their heads preferred the old pen, whereas participants who had been shaking their heads preferred the new one
Power Posing: Novel Chinese idiograms were presented during arm flexion (an action associated with approach) or during arm extension (i.e., an action associated with avoidance). How were the idiograms evaluated by participants?
Novel Chinese idiograms presented during arm flexion were evaluated more favourably than idiograms presented during arm extension
Describe the Mind-Body Problem:
Dualism
-Body: works like a machine (obeys laws of physics)
-Mind: non-material (functions mysteriously)
-Problem - how can the mind influence the body (and vice versa)?
What is the nature of knowledge?
Mental Code: it is generally agreed that the processing of any mental content, including social information, involves internal symbols of sort
Describe Amodal Architectures:
-mind as computer metaphor
-high-level cognitive operations (inference,
categorization, memory) are performed using amodal symbols; mental representations that don’t rely on specific sensory information
-a design approach that allows for the perception or representation of information beyond what is directly visible or available12. It involves the ability to mentally complete or understand the whole structure or concept, even when only partial information is present
Describe An Amodal Person:
-When interacting with a person our brain takes in information through our senses. Our brain then converts these experiences into more abstract concepts (amodal symbols).
These abstract concepts are stored in our long-term memory, creating a mental “summary” of the interaction
-As our knowledge grows, the underlying amodal systems become organized into structures that represent concepts (e.g., schemas) extracted from experience
-Amodal redescriptions of social experience constitute social knowledge
What are some problems with Amodal architectures?
- There is no compelling evidence that the brain contains amodal symbols.
- The amodal symbol account is at odds with the available empirical evidence.
Rather than using amodal redescriptions of on-line modality- specific states to represent situations, what does the cognitive system
use instead?
Re-enactments (simulations)
What is the key notion of Perceptual Symbol Systems (PSS)?
simulations of perceptual, motor, and introspective experience underlie the representation and processing of knowledge. our brain reactivates or “simulates” the original patterns of activity from when we first had the experience
What is on-line and offline embodiment ?
-When we directly experience something (through our senses, actions, or inner thoughts), our brain creates specific patterns of activity for each type of experience
-Later, when we remember, talk about, or think about those experiences, our brain doesn’t create a completely new, abstract representation.
How did Darwin define attitude (1904)?
as a collection of motor behaviours -
especially posture - that convey an
organism’s response toward an object.
Describe headphone experiment for Movements modulating judgements:
Participants instructed to nod or shake their
heads while wearing headphones, under the
pretext that the research was designed to
investigate whether the headphones slipped off while the listeners moved to music.
While nodding or shaking, participants heard
either an agreeable or disagreeable message
about a university-related topic. Later they rated how much they agreed with the message
Evidence for Embodiment of Attitudes involving a table:
Participants who performed the ‘approach’
behaviour (pushing table up) during name generation retrieved more names of people they liked, whereas those who performed the ‘avoidance’ action (pushing table down) retrieved more names of people they disliked
What is behavioural synchrony?
behavioural coordination: speech rate, accent, syntax, walking speed
What is offline embodiment?
Embodiment of social perception when targets
are not present. (Not happening in real time).
i.e. Category priming (e.g., grey,
Florida, bingo) and subsequent walking speed. Participants walked more slowly when primed
with elderly stereotype.
Participants were given information about a ‘future partner’ in a task. When were Participants were more likely to display positive facial reactions?
when their imagined partners were competent rather than incompetent when their imagined partners were competent rather than incompetent
Describe the pencil in the mouth experiment, (a highly controversial experiment):
-Researchers told participants that they were studying adaptations for people who had lost the use of their hands. Such individuals would need to use their mouths to hold pencils for writing, or to use a television remote
-The study was to assess whether the
unpleasantness or difficulty of these tasks affected people’s responsiveness.
-The participants then held a pencil in their teeth (which naturally activates the muscles typically used for smiling) or lips (which does not activate those muscles) and then rated several cartoons for funniness. Those who were (unknowingly) “smiling” rated the cartoons as funnier than people who were not smiling
Were the findings of the ‘imagining’ hot/cold beverage experiment supportive or unsupportive of the findings of the real holding beverage study?
Supportive: Participants considered the target to have more favourable traits when they previously imagined holding hot rather than iced coffee – but only from a first-person perspective
if you imagine experiencing pain how can this be similar to actually experiencing the pain?
When imagining pain in first person, the same area of the brain that is activated when experiencing physical pain shows activity
What does recognising a facial expression of emotion in another person and experiencing that emotion oneself involve?
-Overlapping neural structures.
-Understanding other minds via simulation (mirror neurons)
What is an example of mirroring in an experiment investigating the experience of smells?
Participants were required to sniff odors that generated feelings of disgust. The same participants then watched videos of other individuals expressing disgust. Results showed that areas of the anterior insula were activated both when individuals observed disgust in others and when they experienced disgust
themselves
Describe a study suggesting ‘physical cleansing restores our moral self image’?
Participants were asked to describe an unethical deed from their past and were then given the option of cleaning their hands with an antiseptic wipe. Afterwards, participants who had chosen to clean their hands were less likely to volunteer their time to help a desperate student with their research. They were also less likely to express feelings of guilt, regret and shame in a survey
For what reasons are the existence of embodiment effects scrutinised?
- large effects, small samples
- Many effects are not replicable
