Social Psychology Flashcards
Definitions of social psychology
Allport 1954 - how thoughts, feelings and behaviour are influenced by actual, imagined or implied presence of others.
Bateson (2006) - honesty box with flowers or eyes - demonstrated impact of implied presence.
Smith & Mackie - effects of social and cognitive processes on way individuals perceive, influence and relate to others.
Allport focused on intrapersonal - Smith & Maggie interpersonal
Social facilitation and inhibition
Facilitation - tendency to perform better in presence of others
Inhibition - performing worse with others
Triplett 1898 - cyclists race faster when competing
Michaels et al. 1982 - pool players - good players facilitated, poor players inhibited
Facilitation occurs when task is simple or behaviour is well-learned
Inhibition occurs when task is complex or not well-learned
Zajonc 1965 - arousal facilitates dominant responses - dominant responses are correct on simple and well-learned tasks be incorrect on complex tasks.
Presence of others serves as a source of arousal.
Attribution
Making judgments about other people’s behaviour. Behaviour explained with situational or dispositional attributions
Attribution theories describe how people develop causal understanding of behaviour.
Heider (1958) offers 2 motives: need to form understanding of world + need to control environment.
Kelley’s Covariation Theory (1967)
Behaviour explained by causes that go together with behaviour - 3 dimensions.
Consensus - do most people behave this way? If no - dispositional. If yes - situational.
Consistency - does person always behave this way? If no - situational. If yes - dispositional.
Distinctiveness - is the behaviour performed in a particular situation? If no - dispositional. If yes, situational.
Fundamental attribution error (correspondence bias)
We overestimate role of dispositional factors and underestimate situational factors when explaining behaviour of others.
Jones and Harris 1967 - students read pro or anti-Castro essays. Assumed students were pro-Castro even though they knew the writers were assigned to take a certain position.
Actor-observer effect
We attribute our own behaviour in different ways to others.
Observers overestimate disposition, actors overestimate situation.
E.g. Orvis et al 1976 - couples with disagreements.
Couples attributed own behaviour to situational factors, but partner’s behaviours to dispositional factors.
Possible explanations (Jones and Nisbett 1971)
Focus of attention - visual field of observer includes actor, visual field of actor dominated by environment.
Different information.
Self-serving attribution bias
We are motivated to protect our self-esteem/ self concept.
Therefore, we attribute failures to situation, success to disposition.
Lau & Russell 1980 - newspaper accounts of athletes attributions after victory and defeat.
More external attribution in defeat group.
Ultimate attribution error
Self-serving bias on group level (Pettigrew 1979)
Ingroup success = internal. Ingroup failure = external.
Outgroup success = external. Outgroup failure = internal.
Linguistic intergroup bias effect - Maass 1999 - abstract language when describing positive ingroup (and negative outgroup) behaviours - concrete language when describing the opposite.
Ties to social identity theory - part of our identity is derived from group memberships, so we strive for positive group image.
False consensus
Belief that own behaviour is widely shared and common.
Ross et al. 1977 - asked students if they would wear a board around campus. Some said yes, others no - but both groups predicted 66% students would make same decision. Both can’t be true.
Reasons - people surrounded by similar others + need for stable perception of reality, so exaggerate degree of support.
Social cognition
How people attend to, perceive, store and respond to social information (Martin et al. 2019).
Heider’s balance theory
Suggests that when there’s an imbalance (e.g., a person likes another person who dislikes something they like), there’s a motivational drive to restore balance, either by changing attitudes or perceptions.
Explains balance in triadic relationships (three people or 2 people and an object/situation).
Triadic relationship is balanced when there is no negative relationship or 2 negative relationships (enemy of my enemy is my friend.)
Relationship is imbalanced and uncomfortable when there are 3 negative relationships or one.
Cognitive algebra
Our evaluation of others is based on judgments of danger and safety - Anderson 1978.
We assign values to traits, and evaluate people based on their traits.
Summation - larger number of positive traits - positive impression.
Averaging - negative traits bring down average.
Weighted averaging - traits are averaged, but some more important - best explanation of impression formation.
Asch’s configural model
Suggests impression formation is more complex than simple addition of traits - done in a more holistic way.
Idiosyncratic views on what is important - some might look for intelligence, others agreeableness - personal constructs.
Disproportionately important traits called central traits.
Asch (1946) gave a hypothetical person trait “warm” or “cold” in a list of traits. Warm participants judged person as more happy and altruistic.
When “polite” or “blunt” were substituted - less difference.
Biases in impression formation
Primacy effect - first information we process most important.
Asch 1946 - intelligent… envious person treated better than envious… intelligent person.
Negativity bias - we pay more attention to negative features than positive - perhaps because it can signify potential danger or harm.
Halo effect - first impressions based on appearance because no other info is available.
Heilman and Stopeck 1985 - companies hire more attractive people who are worse at their jobs.
Schema and categories
Schema is a mental framework - organises information about something. We have schemata for people, groups events etc.
Schema can be prototypes (general attributes) or exemplars (specific instances).
E.g. - drinking and ginger hair for Irish people - prototype.
Andrew Scott for Irish people - exemplar.
Basic level categories - default categories we use to generate schemata - skin colour, sex and dress.
Group schemata and stereotypes
Shared schemata of social groups - stereotypes.
Learned early in childhood through normal socialisation (Tajfel 1981).
Children’s use of stereotypes peaks around age 7 and declines by 8 or 9 - Aboud 1988.
Key component of prejudice is that the “out-group” is dissimilar to “in-group.”
Stereotypes ignore within group variation and lead to prejudice.
Automacity of stereotypes
Once someone is categorised into a certain group, the group schema is activated and helps form our impression of them.
Stereotypes automatically and unconsciously activated.
Devine 1989 - people presented with negative African American primes - too quick to be noticed.
Participants then interpreted a subsequent neutral act with negative stereotypes of African Americans.
Implicit association test (IAT) - Greenwald et al. 1998, 2002 - elicits hidden prejudices.
However, meta analyses have found IAT scores are not good predictors of racial discrimination.
Stereotype content model
Explains how and why we hold stereotypes - when we meet someone unfamiliar, we ask 2 questions - do they intend to cause harm and are they capable of it.
Reflects in 2 stereotype dimensions - warmth and competence. E.g. - low competence, high warmth = older and disabled people. (pity)
High competence, low warmth = rich people, lesbians, Jews. (envy)
SCM can explain and predict societal inequalities - health, income - Durante et al., 2013
Stereotype threat
Cognitive and emotional effect - people exhibit stereotypes they are primed with.
Shih 1999 - Asian women maths test. Women prime inhibited performance - Asian prime improved it.
Could be due to anxiety of confirming stereotype.
Domain identification - stereotype threat only works if people care about their performance. (Steele 1997)
Cognitive load - stereotype threat bigger when people under high cognitive load, extra pressure to disconfirm stereotypes.
Mixed evidence - Ganley et al. 2013 - no evidence of stereotype threat on maths performance.
Meta analysis - evidence of stereotype threat but also publication bias.
Heuristics
Cognitive shortcuts - how system 1 makes judgments. Reduces complex problems to easy ones.
Representativeness heuristic - objects assigned to categories that share similar attributes.
Farmer/librarian example.
We don’t think statistically - base rate fallacy.
Availability heuristic - something is more important if easy to remember - e.g. people think crime is more common because they see it on news.
Anchoring effect - judgments influenced by “anchor” - Kahneman lottery wheel African countries study.
Conjunction fallacy - is Linda a businesswoman or a businesswoman and feminist. Slovic et al. - probability of combined estimate is overestimated.
Robbers Cave
Sherif et al., 1961 - two groups of 11-12 year old boys - normal as possible - field experiment.
First week: groups seperate - Rattlers and Eagles.
Second week: contact - competition and conflict.
Third phase - groups put together and made to do cooperative tasks - became allies again.
Demonstrates ease with which antagonism can be created. Behaviour followed pattern of stereotype/prejudice/ discrimination.
Stereotypes / Prejudice / Discrimination
Stereotypes - beliefs about typical characteristics of members of a social group.
Underestimate variability. More likely when info about individual is ambiguous.
Kunda 1993 - construction worker stereotyped as more aggressive than housewife in ambiguous situation.
Prejudice - affective response towards a group or its members. Evaluative - usually negative.
Discrimination - negative behaviour towards individuals based on group membership.
Blatant (Nazi Germany) or subtle - sexist jokes reinforce sexist norms (Ford et al. 2001)
Theories of intergroup relations
Cognitive account - people perceived as members of groups rather than individuals.
Even minimal groups - people categorized according to arbitrary similarities still experience ingroup bias - e.g. Rattlers and Eagles.
Motivational account - social identity theory - perception of others/self in group terms. We compare our group with others and strive for a positive group-image.
Economic account - society composed of groups that differ in power, status etc.
Realistic conflict theory (Levine and Campbell 1972) - prejudice arises from conflict over limited resources.
Improving intergroup relations
Contact hypothesis (Allport 1954) - bringing together people from different groups will decrease stereotypes and discrimination.
Not successful in Robbers Cave.
Necessary conditions for intergroup contact - personal interaction, equal status, cooperation, supportive environment.
Reducing prejudice - minimising salience of individuals - stressing individuality. Shift attention to alternative group memberships - cross-categorisation.
Three-component view of attitude
Attitudes are evaluations inferred from: feelings, beliefs, behaviours.
Affective, cognitive, behavioural aspects.
Affective component - influenced by classical and vicarious conditioning.
Mere exposure effect - affects attitudes.
Behavioural component - motivation to behave in way consistent with cognitive and affective aspects.
People don’t always behave in line with attitudes - LaPiere 1934 - Chinese couple.
Wicker (1969) meta analysis
Reviewed 42 studies - found few studies where behaviour/attitude correlation was greater than .30 (.15 average).
We behave in ways that do not align with our attitudes.
However, Wicker’s conclusion may be wrong.
Davidson and Jaccard 1979 - oral contraceptive attitude study - behaviour becomes more predictable when attitude measured is specific.
Attitudes not only determinant of behaviour - social influence.
Theory of reasoned action and planned behaviour (Ajzen 1989)
Behaviours are performed when we have the behavioural intention to perform them.
This intention is determined by:
our attitude to the behaviour
subjective norms
TRA is limited - problems in predicting behaviours that require resources, cooperation and skills.
Ajzen extended TRA - theory of planned behaviour. Includes perceived control over behaviour.
Control influences our intentions, which indirectly influences behaviour.
Control also directly influences behaviour - e.g. we are more likely to stick with a behaviour if we feel we have control over it.
Cognitive dissonance theory
Proposed by Festinger 1957 - we experience when cognitive dissonance when we experience an inconsistency between behaviour and attitudes.
Festinger 1959 - participants performed boring tasks - paid $1 or $20.
Participants paid only 1 dollar enjoyed tasks most - had to justify doing task.
How to induce cognitive dissonance:
making people do a task that doesn’t align with their attitudes
making people choose between equally attractive options
exposing people to info against their attitudes
Elaboration likelihood model
Dual-process theory of attitude change. Central route - thinking critically about argument. Peripheral route - change associated with positive stimuli - e.g. selling product by associating it with hot model.
