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social psychology Flashcards

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1
Q

what is operant conidtioning?

A
  • Every behaviour has consequences that increase or decrease the likelihood of the behaviour recurring.
  • Operant conditioning occurs when a response has consequential rewards or punishments.
  • Part of the Behaviourist philosophy of psychological theory.
  • Developed by B.F. Skinner.
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2
Q

what did wilson and verplanck discover?

A

Monitored informal conversations between experimenter and subject:
* 1st ten minutes: no reinforcement.
* 2nd ten minutes: subjects’ opinions reinforced by experimenter (by agreeing/repeating).
* During reinforcement period, higher rate of opinion-giving.

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3
Q

what is observational learning?

A

learning by observing others

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4
Q

what is imitation?

A

learning by copying behaviours from others

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5
Q

what’s the difference between imitation and observational learning?

A
  • Imitation requires replicating the behaviour of another
  • Observational learning does not require replication
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6
Q

what is the social learning theory?

A
  • Combines the principles of observational learning and operant conditioning (Bandura, 1977)
  • The likelihood of a behaviour being socially learned is dependent on:
  • Observing the behaviour of another person
  • Observing the consequences of associated with the other person producing the behaviour
  • Having the capacity to produce the behaviour yourself
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7
Q

what are the stages of the social learning theory?

A
  1. ATTENTION - The individual notices a behaviour to model
  2. RETENTION - A memory of the behaviour is stored
  3. MOTOR REPRODUCTION - A copy of the behaviour is produced
  4. MOTIVATION - Reinforcing or punishing consequences follow
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8
Q

what were the bobo doll experiments?

A

Showed young children short film of model (i.e., anactor) beating up ‘Bobo doll’

Three endings to the film:
1. Model Punished condition: after beating up doll,model is scolded.
2. Model Rewarded condition: after beating up doll,model gets sweets.
3. No Consequences condition: after beating up doll,model receives no consequences

Children then taken to room containing Bobo doll andother toys

Results:
1. Model Punished condition: children not violent to doll
2. Model Rewarded condition: children violent to doll
3. No Consequences condition: children violent to doll

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9
Q

what is the observational evidence for social learning?

A

Phillips (1986): murder rates increase in the week following a televised boxing match. The increase correlates with the TV audience, and is race-specific to the loser of the fight

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10
Q

what is obedience?

A

Following the orders of a person in authority. Obedience typically involves a lower status individual behaving in away that complies with the wishes of someone of higher status

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11
Q

what was milgram’s study of obedience?

A

Subjects recruited for ‘learning and memory’ experiment.

  • Participant and confederate draw lots to decide role in experiment (‘Teacher’ or ‘Learner’).
  • Task: Learner asked to memorise list of word-pairs,Teacher asked to test Learner’s memory and punish mistakes using electric shocks.
  • Teacher instructed to increase voltage with every wrong answer

65% of participants gave the maximum 450 volts.

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12
Q

how did victim proximity affect obedience? (milgram)

A
  • Lower obedience when Learner is in room (40%).
  • Even lower when Teacher has to put Learner’s hand onto plate (30%).
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13
Q

how did the proximity of an authority figure affect obedience? (milgram)

A

Lower obedience when instructions given via telephone (21%).

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14
Q

how did legitimacy of the authority figure affect obedience? (milgram)

A
  • Obedience more likely in Yale laboratory (65%) thandowntown office (48%).
  • more obedience for Experimenter than another participant (20%).
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15
Q

how did the presence of dissenters affect obedience? (milgram)

A

When one confederate quits at 150v, and another at 210v, only 10% give highest shocks.
* Obedience disappears when another Experimenter dissents.

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16
Q

what are the explanations of obedience?

A
  • Obedience is an appropriate response when authorities are trustworthy
  • At the extreme, repetition of evil acts …becomes routine, and, as the perpetrator becomes more deeply entrapped, almost mundane
  • Role adoption
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17
Q

what was the stanford prison experiment?

A
  • Students sign up for experiment on ‘prison life’.
  • Randomly assigned ‘prisoner’ or ‘guard’ roles by coinflip.
  • Prisoners arrested aggressively by real police,searched, blindfolded and taken to cells in a basement‘prison’ in the Psychology Department.
  • Roles formalised by uniforms: prisoners put in smock and ankle chains, guards put in uniform and given truncheon
  • To suppress and control prisoners, Guards gave punishments and rewards such as:
  • Hours of press-ups
  • Removal of food, clothes and bedsDenial of access to toilets and washing facilities
  • Special cells: ‘privilege cell’ or solitary confinement
  • Some punishments spontaneous, some initiated by Zimbardo.
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18
Q

what were the results of the stanford prison experiment?

A

After only a couple of days, guards showed of cruelty and prisoners became dehumanised and passive.

The experiment was prematurely stopped after six days (of a planned fortnight) because the brutality of guards was deemed too harmful to prisoners.

Within days, some prisoners had to be released after developing depressive or psychotic symptoms.

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19
Q

what conclusions can be drawn from the stanford prison experiment?

A
  • The role of guard or prisoner was enough to produce behaviours
  • Zimbardo argued that anyone would become cruel and tyrannous if given power over others- suggesting a generic drive to abuse power.
  • Stronger than Milgram claims
  • Zimbardo argued the SPE was evidence that situational factors rather than dispositional factors determine the way people will behave.
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20
Q

what are the criticisms of zimbardo’s conclusions?

A

Participants were merely “role-playing” how they thought they should behave based on their knowledge of the stereotypes associated with prison guards.

  • Evidence that some guards were quite nice to prisoners

.* Lots of evidence from the real world that people react very differently in similar situations

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21
Q

what is conformity?

A

a change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of perceived pressure from individuals of similar status

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22
Q

what is not conformity?

A

A change in behaviour in obedience of the orders of a person in authority.

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23
Q

what is the difference between conformity and obedience?

A

obedience :
* Influences behaviour of those with lower status in hierarchy.
* Behaviour adopted is different from authority’s behaviour.
* Requirement to obey is explicit.
* Participants blame obedience for their behaviour.

conformity:
* Influences behaviour among those of equal status.
* Behaviour adopted is similar to peers’ behaviour.
* Requirement to conformis often implicit.
* Participants deny conformity has affected their behaviour

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24
Q

what is the bystander effect - diffusion of responsibility?

A

Participants witness someone apparently having an epileptic seizure either:
* Alone
* With 1 other person
* With 4 other people

results: the majority of people respond when witnessing the incident alone whereas less do when another person is present. when four other people are there the response rate is even lower

25
Q

what are factors impacting majority influence?

A
  • Unanimity
  • Commitment
  • Accountability
  • Individual differences
  • Culture
  • Group pressure
26
Q

how does unanimity affect conformity?

A

unanimity - number of confederates?

Conformity is dramatically reduced by the presence of a single non-conformist (5%)

27
Q

how did commitment impact conformity?

A

Deutsch & Gerard (1955): subjects who had shown experimenter their private judgement(‘committed’) were much less likely to change it to conform

28
Q

how does accountability impact conformity?

A

Quinn & Schlenker (2002): low conformity when subjects told in advance that they would have to justify their decision to other group members

29
Q

how does individual differences impact conformity?

A
  • People with low self-esteem are much more likely to conform then those with high self-esteem.
  • This difference is higher for task specific self-esteem.
  • If you have had previous task success, then you are less likely to conform.* Women more likely than men to conform
30
Q

how does culture impact conformity?

A

Bond & Smith (1996): Conformity is higher in‘collectivist’ countries (e.g. Japan), than‘individualistic’ countries (e.g. USA).
* Conformity has steadily declined since 1950’s

31
Q

how does group pressure impact conformity?

A

When is a group more likely to induce conformance?
* When it consists of experts
* When its members are important to an individual
* When members are comparable to the individual
* When the individual doesn’t feel secure within the group

32
Q

what is informational and normative influence

A
  • Influence - The need to be right
  • Normative Influence - The need to be liked
33
Q

how does primacy impact impression formation?

A

We put greater emphasis on early pieces of information we discover about a person – a primacy effect

34
Q

what is the halo effect?

A

The physical attractiveness stereotype is an example of the ‘Halo effect’
* Definition: a person who is good at “X” is perceived to be good at “Y”, even X and Y are unrelated

35
Q

what did Dion et al state?

A

participants read reports of children misbehaving in class - photo attached. Unattractive children judged more harshly

36
Q

what did frieze et al state?

A

rated attractiveness of employees on 5-point scale; compared salaries. Less attractive people tended to have lower salaries - each point worth $2,150

37
Q

what qualities do we look for in friends?

A
  • Competency
  • Closeness
  • Similarity
38
Q

why do we look for competence in possible friends?

A

Aronson et al (1966): Participants listen to interviews with four candidates for quiz show:
Excellent; Average; Excellent but makes blunder;Average but makes blunder.Order of preference:
1. Excellent-blunder
2. Excellent
3. Average
4. Average-blunder

39
Q

why do we look for close interactions in possible friends?

A

Out of a group, most likely to like people with whom we have close interactions, even if we have no choice over interaction partners

40
Q

what did insko and wilson state about close interactions

A

Insko & Wilson (1977): participants tested in triads (e.g., A, B,C), with two pairs of participants interacting (e.g., A-B & A-C) and one pair never directly interacting but observing the other pair (e.g., B-C).

Results: Interacting participants liked each other more increased liking, even though all participants heard the same information

41
Q

why do we look for similarities in close friends?

A

Tend to like people who are similar to ourselves, e.g.hold similar opinions.

  • Have more interaction with similar ‘types’ (through activities, clubs, social groups, etc), and interaction is more likely to be positive.
  • Assume similar people will like us.
  • Similar people make us feel validated, by agreeing with our beliefs and attitudes
42
Q

what is the matching hypothesis?

A

People are more likely to form long-term relationships with a person who is of a similar level of physical attractiveness to themselves.
* Students took part in a “computer-date-matching”experiment
* More attractive students more likely to request more attractive dates
* Less attractive students more likely to request less attractive dates

43
Q

what does hunter gatherer society dictate about reproductive issues?

A

Men: reproductive success increased by mate who produces lots of offspring.
Women: reproductive success increased by mate who delivers food, shelter and protection.

If mate preferences can be inherited, preference for these characteristics would be passed on more often, leading to evolved sex-specific partner preferences

44
Q

what are the evolved mate prefrences?

A

Evolved mate preferences:

mate which is going to invest:
– Good financial prospects(indicated by industriousness,ambition, intelligence, etc)
– Social status
– Age
- Dependability and stability
- Love and commitment cues
– Positive interactions with children

Problem: Selecting mate to physically protect self and children
Evolved mate preferences:
– Height
– Strength
– Bravery
– Athletic ability

Selecting mate of high fertility Evolved mate preferences:
* youth
* health (indicated by beauty, symmetry, waist-to-hip ratio, etc)

45
Q
A

Cross-cultural study (37 countries), asking people to rate importance of 18 characteristics in potential mate/marriage partner. Analysis of over 10,000 respondents showed:
* Women rate financial prospects and social status more highly.
* Men rate physical attractiveness more highly.
* Both rate age to be important - women prefer older partners, men prefer younger partners

46
Q

who was phineas gage?

A

Reported by Gage’s doctor (Harlow, 1868):
* Before accident: hard-working and responsible employee, well-adjusted and popular with peers.
* After accident: offensively profane, irresponsible, socially inappropriate, impatient, ‘uninhibited ‘ “Gage was no longer Gage”.
* No longer employable – exhibited in freak showand joined gold rush

47
Q

what are examples of modern gages?

A

EVR (Damasio, 1994): orbitofrontal damage during tumour removal. Intact intelligence but impaired decision making and emotional responses.
* MGS (Dimitrov et al.,1999): following medial prefrontal damage, “gross impairment in social competence, decision making and conduct”.
* Anderson et al. (2005): patients with childhood ventromedial damage - severe social impairments (e.g., disruptiveness, criminality,irresponsibility).

48
Q

what causes behavioural changes after brain damage in gage-like patients?

A

Neuroanatomically,prefrontal cortex islinked with the ‘limbic system’ (associated with emotion processing/motivation).
* Damage/disconnection prevents ‘gut reactions’
* prefrontal cortex and limbic system required for social decision making (Damasio,1994)

49
Q

what does neuroimaging evidence show about the emotion system?

A

Ventral prefrontal cortex (Yamasaki et al., 2005)

Comparing fearful faces with neutral faces shows bi-lateral amygdala activation.

Comparing angry faces with neutral faces also shows amygdala activation

50
Q

what is face processing?

A

Face processing – faces have evolutionary and developmental importance
* Neuropsychological evidence: Prosopagnosia(‘face blindness’)
* Patients cannot recognise familiar faces

51
Q

what is prosopagnosia?

A

Person memory is intact – people recognised using other cues (e.g., hairstyle, voice, gait,features).
* Perhaps caused by structural processing difficulties.
* Specific to faces?

52
Q

what are the face areas of the brain?

A

Prosopagnosia associated with damage to‘fusiform face area’ (fusiform gyrus in temporal lobe) and ‘occipital face area’, especially in right hemisphere

Neuroimaging largely supports fusiform face area.
* Haxby et al. (2000) – p’s viewed images of faces, cats and man-made stimuli.

53
Q

what is person processing?

A

Person processing - processing complex person information is important in social groups.

Evidence from patients suggests both emotion and face processing systems are important

Additional systems revealed by neuroimaging –especially medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC).
* fMRI studies reveal various roles for mPFC areas

54
Q

what is capgras syndrome?

A

The delusion that intimate others have been replaced by impostors.
* Neuropathology: disconnection between the fusiform face area and limbic system.
* Explanation: others are correctly recognised but lack of emotional response causes confusion (Ellis &Young, 1990).

55
Q

how can we differentiate between person and object processing?

A

Mitchell, Heatherton & Macrae (2005)* Task: can word describe item?
* half items were objects (e.g., tomato – angry)
* half items were people (e.g., David – sundried)
* Results: higher mPFC activation for people decision trials than object decision trials

56
Q

evidence for social processing?

A

Mitchell, Macrae & Banaji (2004)
* P’s perform either social (‘form impression’) or non-social (‘remember order’) task on statements paired with six faces.
* Results: higher mPFC activation for ‘form impression trials’ than ‘remember order’ trials

57
Q

evidence for mentalising?

A

Participants completed ‘physical properties’ and ‘mentalising’ (attributing psychological state) tasks for people and dogs.

  • Results: ventral mPFC activated during mentalising tasks, whether target was person ordog.
58
Q

what is the evidence for mental processing?

A

Kelley et al. (2002)
* Self reference taske.g., Are you creative? / Is George Bush honest?
* mPFC activation higher for self-referential trials than other-referential trials.
* Further: Macrae et al. (2004): high mPFC activation predicts subsequent memory

Psychology - Concepts and Theories (4 decks)

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