Social essay plans

Question 1

priming effects in judgements and behaviour

Answer 1

the relation between perception and behaviour

• most important function
• understanding
  
  • Dijksterhuis and Bargh (2001) (put in brackets after talked about understanding)
• an evolutionary spin
• perceiving leads to doing
• Haynes et al. (2017) - perception of being overweight led to increased likelihood of attempting weight loss - said try but didn’t actually do it - perceptions may not lead to correct actions

2 routes to flexibility

• perception insufficient to elicit action - may need additional process
  
  • Ma and Cao (2017) - travel attitudes moderate the influences of perceptions on travel behaviour
• perception sufficient to elicit action but action inhibited - default option
• Pretegiani et al. (2019) - increased basal ganglia inhibitory output to the intermediate layer of the superior colliculus disrupted the normal coupling of perception and action
• Hommel (2019) - Theory of Event Coding (TEC) - claims perception and action are identical processes

the direct effect of perception on behaviour produces imitation

• neuropsychological evidence
  
  • Zajonc et al. (1982) - mimicked faces in photo – made some Ps chew gum - disrupted link
• ideomotor action
  
  • Jeannerod (1994) - simulating an action leads to same activation in brain as making action – ACC activated
  • McNeill et al. (2019) - Simulating (MS) and imagining (MI) an action leads to better performance - same activation in the brain
• the common coding hypothesis
  
  • Prinz (1990) - shared representational systems (perceptions/actions)
  • Monier et al. (2019) - synchronised action during learning (of a rhythmic interval in children) benefitted performance - against common coding hypothesis
• crucial - Perception –> mental representation of this action –> performance - imitation = consequence of the way behaviour is represented internally
• what do we perceive that we imitate?
  
  1. observables
     - Bos et al. (2016) - imitation of facial expressions is an automatic process but is modulated by contextual information
  2. trait inferences
     - Carver et al. (1983) - hostility prime – inclined to give harder shocks
     - Wilard et al. (2016) - religious priming only effects religious believers - reliably increases prosocial behaviour - need to evaluate the robustness of these effects across contexts.
     - Bargh et al. (1996) - rudeness prime – polite – 558s to interrupt – neutral – 519s – rude – 326s
     - Macrae and Johnston (1998) - helping prime – sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t
     - Unnerstall (2019) - against primes - primes ability to impact implicit associations not consistent across studies - didn’t influence behaviour
     - O’Carroll et al. (2019) - Results In line with our previous work, participants primed with a reciprocity statement reported greater intent to register as an organ donor than controls - but no effect on behaviour
  3. social stereotypes
     - Bargh et al. (1996) - elderly (Florida, grey, bingo)/control prime – timed how long to get to end of corridor – sig diff – neutral – 7.3s – elderly – 8.28s
     - Lee and Lee (2019) - This result suggests that the implicit activation of age stereotypes can change memory of Korean elderly in both positive and negative ways.
     - Aarts and Dijksterhuis (2001) - cheetahs and snails
     - Bargh et al. (1996) - aggressive subliminal prime (AA faces) - aggression prime = more hostile
     - Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998) - Trivial Pursuit – secretary – 46.4% correct, - no prime – 49.9%, professors – 59.5%
     - O’Donnell et al. (2018) - didn’t find same as previous study
     - Chan and Yanos (2018) - priming people about mental illness leads them to believe that mental illness was related to a violent incident

Question 2

controlling stereotypes

Answer 2

preventing activation

• 2 factors
  
  • perceivers temporary processing goals (Macrae et al., 1997) - RTs differed as function of processing goal - Lexical advantage of stereotypical words - Stereotype activation is not always a spontaneous by-product of a triggering stimulus – not inevitable - Activation only occurred when participants processed the target in a semantic manner. - Stereotype activation may be governed by pragmatic concerns (here, processing goals).
    
    • Carton and Rosette (2011) - evaluators would engage in goal-based stereotyping by perceiving that black leaders-and not white leaders-fail because of negative leader-based attributes and succeed because of positive nonleader attributes (i.e., compensatory stereotypes).
  • their general attitudes (i.e. prejudice level; Moskowitz et al., 1999) - Only non-chronics showed activation – lexical advantage to stereotypical words after presented with image with woman - Being the kind of person who strives to be egalitarian may prevent activation
    
    • Axt et al. (2018) - selected applicants based on academic credentials - applicants also differed on irrelevant social categories - asked to avoid bias = showed reduced bias

quashing the effects of activation stereotype

1. impression formation
   - category membership and attributes
   
   • Fiske and Neuberg’s continuum model - initial, confirmatory, re- and piecerneal integration
     
     • Palma et al. (2019) - learned which dimension most relevant and became faster at responding
       - factors making us pay more attention
   • outcome dependency (Pendry and Macrae, 1994) - Least stereotypic impressions when outcome dependent and cog resources available
     
     • Wells (2017) - These findings confirm the claims by social psychologists that while contact might assist in changing perceptions, the change will not necessarily have the intended effect.
   • perceiver accountability (Pendry, 1998) - give account to someone else of impression formed initially
     
     • Plaks and Halvorson (2013) - the more attention accountable entity (but not incremental) theorists paid to counterstereotypic information, the more stereotype-driven were their impressions.
   • accuracy-set instructions (Kruglanski and Freund, 1983) - pay more attention if instructed to be accurate
     
     • Wyer (2007) - These findings suggest that motivational factors play an important role in determining not only the outcome of suppression, but also the choice to attempt suppression in the first place
2. replacing stereotypic thoughts with egalitarian responses
   - Devine (1989) - Automatic activation does not inevitably lead to stereotypic responding - role of prejudice level - may be some methodological issues
   
   • Casper et al. (2010) - Findings indicate that social stereotypes are organized as specific mental schemas that are triggered by a combination of category and context information.
     - role of prejudice level
     - Monteith (1993) - Automatic activation does not inevitably lead to stereotypic responding - role of prejudice level
   • Johnson et al. (2016) - those trained to negate prejudice-consistent information in a more meaningful way showed a significant decrease in automatic prejudice - driven by motivation to suppress

stereotype suppression

• Wegner’s IMP model
  
  • Kay et al. (2013) - exposure to positive stereotypes –> unlikely to arouse emotional vigilance and causes harmful beliefs towards members of the target group - has opposite affect to intended
• Macrae et al. (1994) - Third party ratings of passage stereotypicality showed that ‘suppress’ participants were more stereotypic in passage 2 than were controls
  
  • Geeraert (2013) - suppression rebound effect
• Macrae et al. (1998) - Presence of mirror, video, own name increased stereotype suppression – especially if anti-stereotyping - Such factors increase salience of belief that stereotype is undesirable
  
  • Durguid and Thomas-Hunt (2015) - individuals who received a high prevalence of stereotyping message expressed more stereotypes than those who received a low prevalence of stereotyping message
• Monteith et al. (1997) - depends on how accessed (e.g. overt measure or stereotype accessibility)
  
  • Ford et al. (2017) - suppressed prejudice if believing to share views with others, but not if other person made jokes about stereotyped group
• Kelly and Kahn (1994) - Initial suppression was followed by diminished expression of the intrusive thoughts - opposite of rebound
• Blair and Banaji (1996) - These data support proposals that stereotypes may be automatically activated, as well as proposals that perceivers can control and even eliminate such effects even under high load
  
  • Kidder et al. (2017) - stereotype priming is significantly moderated by the presence of prime–response relations, participant task, stereotype dimension, target stimulus type, SOA, and prime repetition

Question 3

stereotypes as expectancies

Answer 3

general information

• stereotypes as expectancies
  
  • Selimbegovic et al. (2019) - Stereotype endorsement and gender identification separately interacted with gender to predict expectancies for success in STEM‐related professions.
• what is in these expectancies

(category based) stereotypes as a functional cognitive process

• Gilbert and Hixon (1991) - jump out of the toolbox when there is a job to be done
  
  • Heilman and Caleo (2018) - therefore way of changing stereotypes is to change expectancies - The second is aimed at preventing the negative performance expectations that derive from this perception of unsuitability from influencing evaluative judgments.
  • Rattan et al. (2017) - evaluations of job candidates can depend on what social group is more salient

stereotypes as heuristics

• Holyoak and Nisbett (1988) - rule-driven processing - confirming expectancy
  
  • Amidu et al. (2019) - The findings showed that valuers accomplished the valuation task by dividing the overall problem into sub-problems. These sub-problems are thereafter solved by integrating available data with existing knowledge by relying more on forward reasoning than backward reasoning - say data cannot be generalised
• application to stereotypes
• Bodenhausen and Wyer (1985) - use stereotypes as heuristic - search for alternative if initial expectancy doesn’t fit
  
  • Falben et al. (2019) - Whether manipulated at the level of occupational (Expts. 1, 3, and 5) or trait-based (Expts. 2, 4, and 6) expectancies, stereotypes facilitated task performance and influenced decisional processing via a combination of response and stimulus biases - consistent = faster, stereotypic = preferred, less evidence for stereotypic

factors that increase reliance on stereotypes

• task complexity
  
  • Hadjmarcou and Hu (1999) - Subjects facing a more complex task due to ambient events were found to evaluate the target stimulus in a way that was more consistent with category‐based rather than piecemeal processing.
  • Bodenhausen and Lichtenstein (1987) - Whether manipulated at the level of occupational (Expts. 1, 3, and 5) or trait-based (Expts. 2, 4, and 6) expectancies, stereotypes facilitated task performance and influenced decisional processing via a combination of response and stimulus biases - use stereotypes with harder tasks
    
    • Read et al. (2018) - increased cognitive load reduced stereotype acceptance - suggest that the processing of stereotype-inconsistent information might be the underlying cause of these unexpected findings
• resource depletion
  
  • Tyler et al. (2016) - demonstrating the extent to which people objectify a sexualized woman or not is influenced by the availability of regulatory resources, a case that heretofore has been absent from the literature
  • Macrae et al. (1994) - pps formed impressions of targets while simultaneously monitoring prose passage (Indonesia) - Half got name (Julian), stereotype label (doctor) plus traits, half got name plus traits (no stereotype label) - improved prose monitoring performance when stereotype labels present than absent
  • Pendry (1998) - Participants formed impression of old lady Hilda (PC) - Overheard illicit goings on in either Tesco or the Guild (juicy gossip) - Ps overhearing the more relevant goings on were more distracted, and… - Formed more stereotypic impressions
    
    • Lee (2008) - The advantages of the male computer observed in Experiment 1 dissipated when the computer provided speech output, demanding greater processing attention.

further factors
- motivation and attention
- Pendry and Macrae (1994) - Form impression of old lady
Half told they would later meet and work with her – realistic to expect this could be a possibility - Half told they would meet but not work with her
- Mittman and Williams (2019) - Across three experiments, we show that observers learned and utilized task-relevant regularities to inform their decisions and maximize rewards. Notably, social information was utilised only when doing so conferred reward gains (i.e. motivation)
- circadian variations in arousal
- Zhang et al. (2019) - only when an individual has adequate sleep did common ingroup identity attenuate the display of intergroup bias, whereas individuals with short habitual sleep (study 1) or after one-night sleep deprivation (study 2) displayed equally high levels of intergroup bias regardless of their high or low levels of common ingroup identity.
- Bodenhausen (1990) - Participants completed Morningness/Eveningness Q-aire (split) - Non-optimal – exec function poor and more likely to rely on heuristics

Question 4

the self I

Answer 4

terms

• positivity bias
• ego protection
• self-esteem enhancement
• positive illusions

positive illusions

• categories
• unrealistic positive views of the self
• relating to attribution
• Stevens and Jones (1976) - Results - Success = personal ability; failure = bad luck; most extreme when blow to self-esteem and consensus was to do well (18% personal ability, 40% luck)
• Pelster and Heckhausen (2018) - causal attributions may differ to what is expected - no time for careful analysis of causes event - less interested in realistic attributions compared to those that facilitate future actions/promote well-being

motivated scepticism

• how are we sheltered from self-esteem damaging feedback?
• cognitive dissonance reduction
• cognitive dissonance that involves the self
• Bluffer’s guide to rationalism
• Khalaj and Savoji (2018) - Learning of cognitive self-regulation strategies to reduce the students’ academic burnout, learning of cognitive self-regulation strategies to reduce the students’ cognitive dissonance and learning of cognitive self-regulation strategies to progress the students’ academic performance
• Lanuauze and Siadou-Martin (2019) - The results show that psychological discomfort is increased by the contact with dissonant external information and that consumers may at the same time minimize the effects of additional cognition by implementing informational strategies such as trivialization or decredibilization to defend their consumption behavior.

defensive pessimism and self-handicapping

• definitions
• unrealistic optimism
• Ferradas et al. (2018) - self-handicapping associated with performance goals - end goal - defensive pessimism associated with approach goals - how to get there
• Ntoumanis et al. (2008) - SH and DP positively predicted by fear of failure - DP negatively predicted by physical self-concept - DP neg predicted enjoyment in PE and intentions to participate

motivated inference

• Kunda (1987)
• biased theory generation - Shared attributes seen as the thing that promoted good marriage; outcome info affected ratings – bias in way framed possession certain attributes and in actual context
• warding off links - caffeine consumption and links to a fictitious disease linked to breast cancer
• Baekgaard et al. (2017) - The experimental findings strongly support the hypothesis that politicians are biased by prior attitudes when interpreting information
• Schellenberg and Balis (2018) - passionate Facebook users, hockey fans, and runners (total N = 763), participants viewed messages giving reasons why their favorite activity should not be pursued

predictions of a bright future

• think positive events bring more joy than they do - Gilbert et al. (1998)
• implicit self-esteem

maintaining positive illusions
- Shelley et al. (1989) - not defensive mechanisms as they promote mental health - positive illusions responsive to the utility of information - the mind processes negative information differently, depending on what the information is - preserve positive self-concepts AND make adaptive use of negative feedback

consequences

• Shepperd et al. (2015)
  
  • misplaced hope
  • disappointment and regret
  • behavioural consequences and problems

Question 5

the self II

Answer 5

optimism bias
- definition - difference between expectation and outcome

mechanisms mediating OB

• Sharot et al. (2007)
  
  • Marsh et al. (2018) - reduced positivity in past and future thinking to be associated with reduced memory specificity alongside greater levels of anxiety, depression, and rumination - retrieval-induced forgetting imp in maintaining biases
  • Lai et al. (2019) - positive correlation between dispositional optimism and the rGMD - significant connection between dispositional optimism and putamen density

maintenance of unrealistic optimism

• Sharot et al. (2011)
  
  • Wake et al. (2019) - posterior medial frontal cortex - conflict between expectation and new information - similar results to Sharot for updating beliefs - brain activity in the pMFC, dorsomedial PFC - when experiencing conflict and updating beliefs
  • Devitt and Schachter (2019) - Future simulation did not bias subsequent memory for older adults - older adults performed similar to younger adults in Experiment 2, with more liberal responses to positive information after positive simulation.

dopamine and OB

• Sharot et al. (2012)
  
  • Lefebrve et al. (2017) - incorporate better-than-expected outcomes at a higher rate than worse - differences between individuals - signals in the reward system - striatum and vmPFC
  • Kregiel et al. (2016) - The results of our study demonstrated that prolonged (2 weeks), but not acute, L-DOPA administration induced optimistic bias in rats. - rats not humans

Question 6

the self III

Answer 6

self presentation

• tactics
• and impression management

components of impression management

self-presentation and romance

self-presentation online

differences between online and offline

Question 7

attitudes and behaviour I

Answer 7

general information

why do attitudes matter

definitions

what can we have attitudes about?

what is an attitude?

research - life after LaPiere

other important aspects

attitude accessibility

• Fazio et al. (1989) - picked sweets - ABC high for people with accessible As – picked in line with attitudes
  
  • McCartan and Elliott (2018) - driving behaviour and attitudes - positive attitude dimension was more predictive of behaviour and was more accessible, hence why it eats more predictive
• the MODE model - motivation and opportunity as determinants of behaviour - Fazio (1990)
  
  • Chen (2019) - when have motivation and opportunity, pick foods want rather than those primed to choose

attitude specificity

• Davidson and Jaccard (1979) - women and the pill/general birth control - So - more specific attitude, better ABC
  
  • DiBello et al. (2018) - Overall, the results indicate that one’s attitude toward heavy drinking significantly mediates the association between college alcohol beliefs and drinks per week, binge frequency, as well as alcohol-related problems over 12 months - specific attitudes

attitude strength/vested interest

• Sivacek and Crano (1982) - Proposal to raise drinking age from 19 to 21 - Those most affected were the ones who opposed it most and - Were more prepared to campaign against it (46% youngest, 26% middle-aged, 12% oldest)
  
  • Schleicher et al. (2015) - job attitude strength moderated the relationship between job satisfaction (attitude) and behaviour - the relationship was stronger when people had stronger job satisfaction attitudes.

attitude components

introspection

• Wilson et al. (1989) - think about relationships - Thinking about why you hold an attitude can disrupt ABCs
  
  • Gallitto et al. (2019) - more knowledge (introspection) of children’s rights was a better predictor of attitudes towards spanking children - more agree with rights = less agree with spanking

direct experience

• Fazio and Zanna (1978) - Tried to predict whether attitudes to volunteering in psych expts would predict participation in specific experiments - A’s predicted behaviours more accurately for pps with past experience
  
  • Chi et al. (2018) - attitudes towards a specific event are influenced by having direct experience with a particular event - government event

subjective norms

Question 8

attitudes and behaviour II

Answer 8

theory of reasoned action

• Fishbein and Ajzen (1975)
  
  • Lindsey (2017) - TRA and eating behaviour - persuasive messages can influence healthy eating behaviours but the mechanism is not consistent with TRA predictions
• Albarracin et al. (2001) - Future condom use behaviour significantly related to BIs to use condoms (r = .45) - BIs predicted by Attitudes (r = .58) and SNs (r = .39) - As towards condom use predicted by behavioural beliefs (r = .56) - SNs predicted by normative beliefs (r = .46)
• Breslin et al. (2019) - TRA models explained a significant amount of variance for intentions, in which knowledge about and exposure to individuals with mental health conditions significantly predicted better intentions.

theory of planned behaviour

• Ajzen (1991)
  
  • van den Broucke et al. (2018) - TPB and student sleep habits - perceived advantages and disadvantages, norms and control predicted intentions to avoid poor sleep patterns, naps etc. - also influenced current behaviour
  • Ajzen and Kruglanski (2019) - We conclude that the formation of a behavioral intention is determined by motivation to perform a behavior in light of alternative options and in the context of the individual’s currently active goals

are some types of belief more important than others?

which is more important at predicting behavioural interventions? A/SNs?

• Trafimow and Finlay (1996) - measures of As, BIs and SNs - About 80% had BIs better predicted by As than SNs - So for 20% pattern reversed
• Ybarra and Trafimow (1998) - private = A and collective = SN
• Robstad et al. (2019) - examine qualified intensive care nurses’ implicit and explicit attitudes towards obese intensive care patients and whether their attitudes are associated with their behavioural intentions towards these patients - Attitudes were not associated with behavioural intention.
• Carrera et al. (2019) - desired attitudes would better predict behavioural intentions in people who present an abstract style of thinking. - Our results support the relevance of desired attitudes in terms of behavioural predictions and extend the role of the construal level in the prediction and promotion of desirable but demanding behaviour in the framework of individual differences.

how do BIs translate into behaviour?

the MODE model

Question 9

attitude change

Answer 9

changing attitudes by changing peoples thoughts

• source - credibility, attractiveness, similarity, sleeper effect
  
  • Kang and Namkung (2019) - decision making for food choices - significant relationship between credibility and decision making - found the information more useful when credible
  • Cohen et al. (2017) - failure to find the expected effect of demographic similarity on identification and its implications for the understanding of the mechanisms underlying the development of identification
  • Foos et al. (2015) - An experimental study was conducted to support the existence of the sleeper effect
  • Jung et al. (2017) - minimal variations in the presentation of online contents can influence assessments of their credibility and behavioral intentions.
• content - communication, appealing to emotions
  
  • Rocklage et al. (2018) - association between emotion and persuasion appeared sufficiently strong that people persisted in the use of more emotional appeals even when such appeals might backfire. Finally, direct evidence was provided for an association in memory between persuasion and emotionality
• audience - intelligence, gender, age
  
  • Vakola et al. (2004) - relationship between personality traits and employees’ attitudes toward change. Similarly, the contribution of emotional intelligence to the attitudes to change was found to be significant
  • Jacks and Lancaster (2015) - physical health message - revealed significant fit effects involving gender, delivery style, and message framing
  • Neyens et al. (2017) - attitudes towards game - Moreover, this mediation effect did not differ by children’s age.

how does persuasion occur?

elaboration likelihood model

• peripheral
• central
• ability
  
  • Wu et al. (2018) - The results suggested that low distraction induced larger differentiation of post-message attitude between strong and weak arguments compared to high distraction, indicating the successful operation of both processings. - distraction = peripheral route
• motivation
  
  • Inzlicht et al. (2018) - effort often rewarded - use central route as may bring more rewards
• personal interest
  
  • Koo and Lee (2019) - Research findings imply that a sponsorship campaign, in which sponsor-event congruence occurs, may have the power to deliver a product relevant message to consumers who are involved in sports via a central route.

where do ELM and HSM differ?

affective influences on attitudes

• exposure
• Leonard et al. (2019) - knowledge about specific characters = more like to buy that food if it’s on the packaging
• emotion learning
  
  • van Kleef et al. (2015) - hypothesized that people use the emotional expressions of others to inform their own attitudes, but only when they are sufficiently motivated and able to process those expressions.
• mood
  
  • Beattie et al. (2011) - Our study found that the clips did affect emotion, and in particular, they decreased the happiness and calmness levels of our participants, but they also felt more motivated to do something about climate change, more able to do something about climate change and, in addition, they were significantly less likely to think that they had no control over the whole climate change process.

when do we resist persuasive communications
- forewarning
  - Kamalski et al. (2008)
- inoculation
  - Braddock (2019)
- need for cog closure
  - pfeiffer et al. (2019)
- defensive strats 
  - Xu and Wyer (2012)
- culture 
  Zoudman et al. (2018)

Question 10

cognitive heuristics

Answer 10

general information

satisficers and optimisers

system 1 and 2

sample size

representativeness

availability

anchoring an adjustment

Question 11

from cognition to behaviour

Answer 11

construal and behaviour

self-fulfilling prophecy

stereotype threat

expectancies

Question 12

implicit stereotyping

Answer 12

for:

• McConnell and Leibold (2001) - Ps with higher level of automatic White preference on race IAT showed less comfort and friendliness when talking with black than white interviewer
• Hugenberg and Bodenhausen (2003) - College students being more ready to perceive anger in Black than in White faces
• Ziegert and Hanges (2005) - In simulated hiring decision, judging White job applicants more favourably than equally qualified Black applicants
• Green et al. (2007) - ER doctors recommending optimal treatment – thrombolytic therapy – less often for Black than White patient presenting with same acute cardiac symptoms
• Greenwald et al. (2009) - large meta-analysis (184 studies) – Race IAT clearly predicts racially discriminatory behaviour - Greenwald et al. (2015) - compared previous study with another similar - different studies and effect size policies used - but same results
• Hall et al. (2015) - Most health care providers appear to have implicit bias in terms of positive attitudes toward Whites and negative attitudes toward people of colour - more rigorous testing needed
• Maina et al. (2018) - 37 health care studies demonstrate mixed results for the role of implicit bias in disparities
• Paulhus and Williams (2018) - found a link between group membership and implicit eval of pos and neg expressions
• Carlana (2019) - teacher stereotypes cause girls to underperform and select less demanding schools
• Forscher et al. (2019) - may be able to change implicit measures - doesn’t always lead to changing explicit measures - short term changes

against:
- McConnell and Leibold (2001) - the sequence of events that participants experienced was fixed in order to minimize suspicion about the purpose of the study - design of the study resulted in participants having com- pleted the explicit measures of prejudice and the IAT just before interacting with the Black experimenter, high accessibility
- Ziegert and Hanges (2005) - unable to replicate finding by Brief et al. (2000) - explicit measure of modern racism would interact with corporate climate for racial bias to predict discrimination in hiring context
- Oswald et al. (2013) - included a substantial minority of correlations for which there was no theoretical expectation of a predictive relationship - very small correlation for associations
- Leuke and Gibson (2014) - mindfulness helps people rely less on established associations
- Craig et al. (2014) - found that group membership did not contribute to the implicit evaluation of positive and negative emotional expressions.
- Maina et al. (2018) - mixed results - so IAT cannot predict in all situations
- Forscher et al. (2019) - associating goals, concepts and motives changed implicit measures the most - IAT will not always predict
Gawronski (2019) - studies on implicit bias use a small sample - so whether this is reliable and valid can be questioned