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PSYC10004: mind brain and behaviour 2 > social psychology > Flashcards

social psychology Flashcards

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1
Q

definition of social psychology

A
  • The scientific study of the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour of individuals in social situations (Gilovich, Keltner, Chen, & Nisbett, 2018)
  • The scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other (Allport, 1985)
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2
Q

The social brain

A

Understanding the self and its relations to others

Forming judgements about others

Understanding and making inferences about others’ mental states

Perception of socially-relevant cues (faces, eye gaze, expressions, gestures)

Understanding social categories and our place in them

Social decision-making (to help or hurt, to trust or not)

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2
Q

guiding principles of social psychology

A
  1. The social brain: our brains are good at taking in and processing social information
  2. The power of the situation: the social contexts we find ourselves in shape and the way we think, feel, and act
  3. Levels of analysis: social psychs are interested in individuals, dyads, and groups
  4. Critical thinking: healthy skepticism
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3
Q

The power of the situation

A

The behaviour of people is always a function of the field of forces around them:
- the field of forces for humans is the situation they find themselves in
- as such, human behaviour can be thought of as resulting from a combination of particular personal attributes in a particular situation

a person x situation interaction

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4
Q

Levels of Analysis

A

Individual: relationship with the self
Interpersona: relationships with others individuals
Intragroup: relationships with other people in our group
Intergroup: relationships with people in a different group

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5
Q

Healthy skepticism

A

Understanding how and why context matters

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6
Q

Aspects to self-identity

A

Personal identity - who we are as individuals

Social identity - who we are based on our groups

Cultural identity - who we are based on our upbringing

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7
Q

The Social Self

A

The self is a unitary and continuous awareness of who one is
- e.g. the same person who fell asleep last night woke up this morning

Many aspects of the self are influenced by social experiences
- e.g. how we think of ourselves, what (and who) we like and dislike, habits we form, values we adhere to

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8
Q

Social identity

A

We often think about identity as something unique to us, that distinguishes us from other people

A big part of who we are comes from the groups we belong to (Tajfel, 1979):
- Try describing yourself without reference to groups
- Gender, nationality, ethnicity, political orientation, religion
- Ideology groups (environmentalises, feminist), interest groups (study, hobbies), work groups

Identity is something that binds us with others, not separates us from others

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9
Q

Early conceptions of social selves

A

The Social Me (William James, 1890):
- What we know about ourselves from social relationships

  • Who a person is in one context (e.g. at work) isn’t necessarily the same person they are in another contect

Working self-concept (Markus & Wurf, 1987):
- A subset of our self-knowledge is brough to mind in a given context

  • The self relevant to relationships may be the mind’s prime focus in romantic contexts; the self related to competition in sport contexts
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9
Q

Cultural identity

A

Our sense of self derived from groups we belong to that have a distinct culture (nationality, ethnicity, social class, etc)

A form of social identity, but one that is often with us from the day we are born and emcompases, a total way of life and the way we view the world

Can be fostered directly (through socialisation efforts) or indirectly (through background exposure to ways of life, predisposition toward seeing the world in a particular way)

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9
Q

Self-categorisation theory

A

Categorisation: a basic human process:
- We group things together to help us understand the world

  • Categorisation as a process emphasises the differences between groups and the similarities within groups
  • At the group level, we categorise people into ‘ingroups’ (groups to which we belong) and ‘outgroups’ (groups to which we don’t belong)
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10
Q

We categorise ourselves as well as other people

A
  • The self can be construed at various levels of identity abstraction
  • Different identities become salient in different contexts (a psychology student in this lecture, a mother when homeschooling)
  • Shifting the salience of different identities can make previous outgroup members (e.g. engineering students) become ingroup members
  • ‘Who we are’ depends on the contect in which we find ourselves
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11
Q

Culture and the Social Self

A

Cultural self-construal (Markus & Kitayama, 1991):
- Individualist (or independent): the self is an autonomous entity separate from others; people should assert their independence and celebrate their uniqueness

  • my environment should change to fit me
  • many western countries: USA, Australia, UK
  • separate from social context, be unique, express yourself, promote your own goals

Collectivist (or interdependent): the self is fundamentally connected to other people; people should seek to fit in a community and fulfil appropriate roles:
- I should change to fit my environment

  • Many East Asian, South Asian, African and Latin American countries
  • connected with social context, fit in, occupy your proper place, promote others’ goals
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12
Q

Being with others can be good for us

A

Humans have basic psychological needs (Williams, 2009):
- Belonging: to be accepted by others

  • Self-esteem: to be liked by others
  • Control: to be capable of achieving goals
  • Meaning: to have relevance in the world

Connection with others foster these needs (Greenaway et al., 2016):
- People were asked to remember they gained or lost an important identity or group membership

  • Then reflected on how this event affected basic needs
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13
Q

Significance of the social

A
  • Being with others can be good for us
  • Being apart from others can be bad for us
  • The online context
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14
Q

Social Comparisons

A

Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954):

Two assumptions of this theory
1. We seek to gain accurate self-evaluations

  1. Comparisions with other people help us reality-check our own self-evaluations

We make two types of comparisons (Wills, 1981):
1. Downward comparisons: when we compare ourselves to others we think are worse than us on a particular dimension (can improve our self-evaluation)

  1. Upward comparisons: when we compare ourselves to others we think are better than us on a particular dimension (can worsen our self-evaluation)
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14
Q

Self-Evaluation Maintenance Model (Tesser, 1988)

A

Two assumptions of this theory
1. We seek to maintain or improve our self-evaluation

  1. Comparisons with others influence our self-evaluation

Two processes in this theory
1. Reflection: other people improve our self-evaluation
2. Comparison: Other people worsen our self-evaluation

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14
Q

Social belonging, self esteem?

A

The Sociometer Hypothesis (Leary et al., 1995):
1. Things that make us feel good about ourselves (self-esteem) are also the things that make others accept and like us (belonging)

  1. Like a fuel gauge, self-esteem is a readout of our likely standing with others
    - high self-esteem signal social inclusion
    - low self-esteem signals social exclusion
  2. Self-esteem cues us when we need to attend to and shore up our social bonds
    Leary and colleagues argue
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15
Q

Reflection

A
  • Usually happens when evaluation happens in a domain that is not relevant to the self
    E.g. my sister won her rowing race at 6am in the freezing Melbourne winter - I feel so good!
  • Self-evaluation goes up because the self shares in the success
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16
Q

Comparison

A

Usually happens when evaluation happens in a domain that is relevant to the self
e.g. my friend got the highest score on the MBB2 assignment - I need to eat my own feelings
Self-evaluation goes down because it invites unfavourable comparisons with our own abilities

Both processes are exacerbated with a close other

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17
Q

BIRG-ing - basking in reflected glory

A

Others’ succes becomes our success, align ourselves publicly with successful others

  • Align ourselves publicly with successful others
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18
Q

CORF-ing - cutting off reflected failure

A

Others’ failure becomes our failures, unless

  • We distance ourselves publicly front those others
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19
Q

The Better-Than-Average Effect (Alicke & Govorun, 2005; Taylor & Brown, 1988)

A
  • Most of us tend to view ourselves positively
  • So much so that people think they are above average on a wide range of positive dimensions
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20
Q

Being apart from others can be bad for us

A

Alone Together - we can be apart from others in more ways than physical distance
- Psychological distance: loneliness
- Social distance: social network centrality
- Induced distance: rejection and discrimination

Loneliness - subjective feeling of distress when social relations are not going how we would like

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21
Q

Ostracism and why

A

act of ignoring and excluding of an individual or group by an individual or group

Why do we ostracise?
Group reasons
- strengthen the group: make the group cohesive
- protect the group: correct unacceptable behaviour
Individual reasons
- individuals who ostracise feel more powerful and in control

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22
Q

Discrimination

A

how others treat us on the basis of our group membership impacts on our mental and physical health

Discrimination can lead to ill-health through:
- Stress and emotional reactions with detrimental impacts on mental health

  • Negative coping responses (e.g. smoking, drug use)
  • Reduced access to resources (e.g. education, employment, housing, medical care)
    Physical injurt via racially-motivated assault
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23
Q

Stimulation hypothesis

A

online interactions strengthen existing relationships and thus have a social benefit

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24
Q

displacement hypothesis

A

social media replaces offline, F2F interactions, thus incurring social costs

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25
Q

social media can strengthen social ties

A
  • ACTIVE use to connect with others (e.g. public posts) is associated with greater perceived social support, and better well-being
  • online communication can stimulate self-disclosure, which improves relationships and well-being
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26
Q

social media can weaken social ties

A
  • passive use is associated with less perceived social support and worse well-being
  • accessing social media because it seems easier than communication F2F increases loneliness
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27
Q

social comparisons is problematic

A
  • people who are social media for longer and more frequently tend to think others are happier and have better lives than them
  • social comparisons anxiety on instagram predicts greater depression
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28
Q

Making a First impression

A

Snap judgements: how quickly do we form impressions?

Thin slices: how much information do we need to form accurate impressions?

Person perception: what information do we use to form impressions?

29
Q

Snap judgement

A

Lack of sufficient information rarely stops us from making judgments about others

  • We often make snap judgments about people - quick impressions based on the most bried of glances
  • Willies and Todorov (2006) showed people faces and had them rate those facts on a range of traits (likeable, competent, honest, aggressive, extraverted etc)
30
Q

Person perception

A

How we perceive others is a complex process influences by a number of factors

31
Q

Thin slicing

A

The ability to find patterns in events based on “thin slices”, or narrow windows, of experience

  • Our ability to draw relatively accurate conclusions about the emotions and attitudes of people in short interactions
  • Ambady and Rosenthal (1993) had participants form judgmements of university lecturers and high school teachers
32
Q

But judgement do appear to be based on two primary dimensions:

A

Warmth and competence
When we meet people, we ask ourselves: what is this person’s intention toward me (friend or foe)?

We also ask: is this person capable of acting effectively (achieving goals)?

33
Q

Warmth

A
  • Traits that help us assess others’ intent in a social context
  • “Are this person’s intentions toward me good or bad?”
  • Friendly, kind, sincere, generous, helpful
34
Q

Competence

A
  • Traits that help us assess others’ ability to act on their intentions
  • “Can this person carry out their intentions toward me?”
  • Skill, efficiency, confident, intelligence
35
Q

Impression by Innuendo

A

We like to form well-rounded impressions of people, meaning may infer qualities about people if we don’t have concrete evidence about those qualities.

Kervyn et al. (2012) devised a study to test the “innueundo effect”

35
Q

Updating a First impression

A

Impression formation: the process by which people combine information about others to make overall judgments

Two ways in which impressions are updated:
Algebraically
Configurationally

35
Q

milgram’s obedience studies

A

The high rate of obedience is typically
attributed to a number of factors:
* The authority figure has high status
* Participants believe the authority figure (not
themselves) is responsible for the actions
* No clear-cut point to switch to disobedience
* Many obedience situations have gradual
escalation - following orders at first has mild
consequences with more harmful
consequences coming later (at which point
you’ve already obeyed a lot…)
Milgram’s Obedience
Studies

35
Q

emotion-based approaches

A

Compliance with requests is higher
when people are in a positive mood

This happens for two main reasons:
* Mood colours our interpretation of
events: requests seem less intrusive
when we feel good
* Emotion maintenance: we want to
continue feeling good, and granting a
request is one way to do so
Emotion-based
approaches

35
Q

reason-based approaches

A

We often make decisions by weighing
the pros and cons of engaging in a
particular action

Some persuasion attempts are focused
on changing people’s decision calculus

Reason-based approaches induce
compliance by providing good reasons
for people to agree to a request
Reason-based
approaches

36
Q

norm of reciprocity

A

When someone does something for us, we
feel pressure to help in return

  • People are expected to provide benefits for those
    who provided benefits for them
  • To fail to respond is to violate a social expectation
    and run the risk of social condemnation
36
Q

power of commitment

A

Once a choice has been made, people feel
pressure from themselves and others to act
consistently with that commitment

  • Even if the commitment becomes increasingly
    costly
  • This can be exploited by others
36
Q

door-in-the-face

A

ask for a very large favour that will certainly be refused, and then follow the request with a more modest favour

the drop in size of the request appears to be a concession on the part of the asker

people feel compelled to respond to a concession by making their own concession

FUELLED BY RECIPROCITY

36
Q

foot-in-the-door

A

make a small request to which most people agree, then follow it up with a larger request that was the real favour all along

human behaviour, like a ball rolling downhill is subject to momentum

don’t want to go back on our word, complying with the favour becomes part of our self-image

FUELLED BY COMMITMENT

37
Q

elaboration likelihood model

A

explains how people change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages

proposes two pathways to persuasion:
- central: people think carefully and deliberately about the content of the message, attending to argument strength
- peripheral: people attend to easy-to-process, superficial cues related to argument length or message source

38
Q

norm-based approaches

A

our tendency to conform to the behaviour of others around us can be harnessed to achieve compliance

people change their behaviour to fit the norm:
- above-average users used less energy
- below-average users used more energy

39
Q

types of social influence

A

majority influence
- when most group members behave in a certain way, one tends to behave in a similar fashion

minority influence
- even if there is a strong majority, a consistent minority in the group can affect group members’ attitudes and behaviour

40
Q

factors that affect majority influence

A

anonymity
- when we privately write, rather than publicly say, our answer, conformity drops

expertise and status
- we are more likely to conform to the views of the others we think are experts on the topic

group size
- conformity increases with more people reporting incorrectly, but only up to a point

group unanimity
- one person dissenting - even if it doesn’t support our view, reduces conformity

41
Q

minority influence

A

majority opinion doesn’t always prevail, if it did, there would be no social change

42
Q

normative influence

A

we are influenced by others because we want to gain their social approval or avoid their disapproval

more common in majority influence

43
Q

informational influence

A

we are influenced by others because we accept information from them as evidence about reality

more common in minority influence

44
Q

freud’s take on selfishness

A

actions are motivated by the ‘pleasure principle’ - we do things that maximise personal pleasure

45
Q

machiavelli’s take on selfishness

A

humans are “fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain”

46
Q

what does the dictator game encourage people to give?

A

social closeness to or distance from recipient

trust and prosociality

demographic factors

NOT being an economic student

47
Q

giving feels good

A

spending money on others makes us happier than spending money on ourselves

48
Q

social loafing

A

the tendency to exert less effort when working on a group task in which individual contributions cannot be monitored

49
Q

why do we loaf?

A

deindividuation: people feel they can ‘hide in the crowd’ and avoid the negative consequences of slacking off

equity: people have preconceived ideas that people don’t work hard in groups, so reduce their own effort

reward: people feel their personal effort won’t be recognised even if they try hard

50
Q

lessons learned from social loaf

A
  1. assign responsibilities and tasks; make clear who is accountable for what
  2. establish clear standards and rules for what good performance looks like
  3. evaluate individual performance as well as group performance
51
Q

social facilitation

A

we don’t always slack off in groups - in fact, the mere presence of others can give us a boost

two types of social facilitation:
- co-action effects: we perform better at tasks when we do them with other people

  • audience effects: we perform better at tasks when we are watched by other people
52
Q

co-action effects

A

performance boost when accompanied by others engaged in the same activity

53
Q

social loafing (karau & williams 1993)

A

more likely on tasks people don’t care about or in groups that people don’t like

more likely when personal effort can’t be identified

more likely when motivation is low

54
Q

social facilitation (bond & titus 1983)

A

more likely on simple/easy tasks than complex tasks

more likely when personal effort can be identified

more likely when motivation is high

55
Q

altruism

A

prosocial behaviour that benefits others without regard to consequences for oneself

Batson and Shaw (1991) propose several motives for altruism:
- social reward: being esteemed or valued by others
- personal distress: reduce our own distress about others’ suffering
- empathic concern: identifying with someone in need and intending to help

56
Q

why do bystanders not intervene?

A

diffusion of responsibility: the presence of other people reduces each person’s sense of responsibility

pluralistic ignorance: each bystander may be uncertain about the legitimacy of the “emergency”

evaluation apprehension: people fear making mistakes and being seen as foolish, which makes them reluctant to intervene in critical situations

57
Q

the bystander effect was reduced when:

A
  • the situation was more dangerous
  • the perpretrator was present
  • the victim was a close other
  • other bystanders were real
57
Q

lessons learned about the bystander effect

A
  1. reduce the ambiguity of the situation - gather information about what is happening and how to respond
  2. speak up - discuss with others around you whether this is an emergency situation and what to do
  3. invite empathy for the victim - see them as a real person with feelings rather than a nameless ‘other’
58
Q

define prejudice

A

an attitude or affective response (positive or negative) toward a group and its members

59
Q

define discrimination

A

favourable or unfavourable treatment of individuals based on their group membership

60
Q

compare prejudice and discrimination

A

prejudice is an attitude; discrimination is a behaviour

61
Q

the minimal group paradigm

A

henri tajfel (1970)

designed to reveal the minimal conditions required for ingroup favouritism and outgroup derogation to occur

61
Q

prejudice is an attitude

A
  • affective: how much someone likes or dislikes someone based on their group; strong feelings about a group
  • cognitive: thoughts that reinforce a person’s feelings - knowledge and beliefs about a group
  • behavioural: intentions to turn thoughts and feelings into an action - to behave in certain ways toward a group
62
Q

the motivational perspective

A

hostility can emerge between groups even in the absence of direct competition

intergroup hostility can develop simply because another group exists

the mere existence of group boundaries can be sufficient to initiate intergroup prejudice

62
Q

types of prejudice

A

blatant prejudice (allport, 1958)
- explicit rejection of the outgroup
- belief in inferiority of the outgroup
- opposition to contact with the outgroup
- outward expression of negativity toward the outgroup

subtle prejudice
- convert forms of prejudice
- can involve rejection of explicitly prejudiced beliefs while still feeling animonsity
- can be reflected in unacknowledged or unconscious negative feelings toward members of certain groups

63
Q

social identity theory

A

Combines with self categorisation theory to form ‘the social identity approach’

Our identity is comprised in large part of social groups we belong to

Hence, in order to feel good about ourselves, we strive to feel good about and boost the status of our ingroups

People who are more identified with the group tend to show greater ingroup favouritism (e.g., McCoy & Major, 2003)
Social Identity Theory

64
Q

the cognitive miser

A

Prejudice as a byproduct of our tendency to categorise things and people

People tend to favour simpler ways of thinking than more effortful ways of thinking (Fiske & Taylor, 1984)

Just as a miser seeks to avoid spending money,
the human mind often seeks to avoid spending cognitive effort - so we rely on heuristics or cognitive shortcuts

65
Q

the cognitive perspective

A

This gives rise to stereotypes, which
help us process information rapidly
and efficiently but can be biased
* Beliefs that all members of a group have the same qualities, which define the group and differentiate it from other groups (Hogg & Abrams, 1988)

Main features:
1. Define people in terms of their social category membership
2. Stereotypes are shared (amount to more than one person’s opinion)

66
Q

prejudice reduction

A

economic lessons:
reduce intergroup competition and increase intergroup cooperation (‘recategorisation’)

motivational lessons:
set ingroup norms against prejudice and tolerance

cognitive lessons:
weaken the effects of stereotypes by exposing people to individuals from lots of different groups (‘intergroup contact’)

PSYC10004: mind brain and behaviour 2 (3 decks)

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