Social Psychology

Question 1

In what ways are we influenced by others?

Answer 1

Obedience is explicit social influence
Direct order= no explicit need to act
Power imbalance= power equality

Extreme obedience can lead to evil acts
-Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report in the banality of evil (Arendt, 1963)

The Stanley Milgram studies (1963)

• 75v grunt of pain
• 120v shouted that it was too painful
• 150v demanded to be let out
• 180v complained of his heart
• 300v refused to carry on and agonised screams
• 330v silence

Was it ethical?

Question 2

Why do we so readily obey?

Answer 2

Personal responsibility- 92.5%
-agent mode of thinking

Perceiving legitimate authority
-uniforms increase obedience (Bushman, 1988)

Gradual abdication of responsibility
-compiled 22 times by 330v

Question 3

What work did Allport do in 1924 on social influence/social facilitation?

Answer 3

40 schoolchildren
6 trials of alternating conditions/eliminated practice and fatigue effects
Those that positively stimulated by competition did better (n=20) and those that were overstimulated (n=10) or not at all (n=10)

Question 4

What is the Stanford prison experiment (Haney, Banks & Zimbardo 1973)?

Answer 4

Most dramatic social psychology of norms
24 male participants assigned to mock guards and prisoners
Study intended to last 2 weeks but had to stop after 6 days
Deindividuation: individuals are deprived of their sense of identity and more likely to behave in an extreme manner

Question 5

What did Adam and Galinsky 2012 experiment?

Answer 5

Participants wearing a while coat showed improved performance on an attention task when it was “pitched” as a “doctors coat” compared to a “painters coat”

Question 6

What is an attitude?

Answer 6

“The affect for or against a psychological object”

Thurstone 1931

Question 7

What is the ABC model of attitudes?

Answer 7

Affect Killing foxes is barbaric
Behaviour Sign petitions/anti hunt
Cognition Doesn’t control populations

Measurement of A and c is used to predict B

Question 8

What is the Mere exposure effect? (zajonc 1968)

Answer 8

People tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them, this effect is something’s called the familiarity principle

Question 9

What is associative learning?

Answer 9

Classical conditioning e.g. Adverts

Instrumental conditioning e.g. Good behaviour

Question 10

What is self-perception?

Answer 10

Inferring environmental attitudes from previous behaviour (Freedman & Fraser 1966)
E.g. Drive safely signs

Question 11

What is a self report measure?

Answer 11

Likert scales (1932) 5/7/9 point evaluative scale 
Assumes that attitudes can be quantified and meanings are the same for everyone

Question 12

What are covert measures?

Answer 12

Body language, physiological cues, implicit attitudes (IAT implicit association test)

Question 13

What is the IAT (association test)?

Answer 13

Can reveal unconscious or ‘hidden’ attitudes

Weapons fit a ‘black stereotype’ and are identified faster than tools (Payne 2001)

Question 14

What is cognitive dissonance?

Answer 14

The state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioural decisions and attitude change
E.g. When people smoke (behaviour) and they know smoking causes cancer (cognition), they are in a state of cognitive dissonance

Question 15

How do people maintain attitude stability?

Answer 15

Attitudes fluctuate over time
When people are asked to think about why they feel the way they do about an attitude object, they often change their minds about how they feel

Question 16

How do we change attitudes?

Answer 16

The source- credible and likeable
The message
The audience - individual differences apple eg self esteem
(Hovland et al 1953)

Feeling happy makes us like and consume products more (Winkelman & Berridge 2004)
Fear arousing messages - moderate fear works best (dental fear, Janis & Feshback 1953)

Question 17

What is Festingers cognitive dissonance theory 1957?

Answer 17

Motivated to maintain consistent thoughts
Inconsistency is uncomfortable
So if we behave in a counter-attitudinal way, we will be forced to change our attitudes to explain our past behaviour

Question 18

How do people form impressions?

Answer 18

Gestalt model of impression formation

• central traits influence the overall impression
• peripheral traits have less influence

Primary effect- early information has disproportionate influence on final overall impression (Asch 1946)

Question 19

Describe the illusions involved in perceiving people

Answer 19

First impressions
Negative information - negative bias in impression formation, negative impressions harder to change , may be because they are unusual and distinctive and may signal potential danger
Schemas- our knowledge of how people tick helps categorise them, implicit personality theories (halo effect, occurs with little information e.g. Names - Harari & McDavid 1973)
Stereotypes - can result in a them and us mentality, can influence how we treat others and how we think about ourselves, can result in a noticing bias and illusory correlations (self-fulfilling prophecy of late bloomers - Rosenthal & Jocobson 1968) and how stereotypes can slow you down - Bargh et al 1996

Question 20

What is the illusion of transparency?

Answer 20

Can others read our emotions?
Perceived anxiety from public speaking(Savitsky and Gilovich 2003)
Overestimate how well they understand others personal mental states

Question 21

What are the key aspects of attribution theory?

Answer 21

How the perceiver uses information to arrive at casual explanations for events. It examines what information is gathered and how it is combined to form a casual judgement (Fiske & Taylor 1991)
Internal attribution- the process of assigning the cause of behaviour to some internal characteristic, rather than to outside forces
E.g. We attribute the behaviour of a person to their personality, motives or beliefs
External attribution- the process of assigning the cause of behaviour to some situation or event outside a persons control rather than to some internal characteristic
E.g. When we try to explain our own behaviour we tend to make external attributions such as situational or environment features

Question 22

What are the key theories of emotion?

Answer 22

James - Lange theory (1842-1910)
Emotion is the by product of physiological responses
Situation elicits behaviour
Sensory feedback is sent to the brain
Feedback is emotion-I’m afraid because I’m running
Evidence? E.g. Tripping up
Cannon-Bard theory (1927)
Subjective experience and physiological arousal are independent responses to eliciting stimuli
Sensory information is sent to the thalamus, it sends messages to the cerebral cortex (emotion) and internal organs (arousal)
Schacters 2 factor theory (1962)
Physical arousal played a primary in emotions, but they suggested that this arousal was the same for a wide variety of emotions so physical arousal alone could not be responsible for emotional responses
The process begins with a stimulus, which is followed by the physical arousal, added to this is the cognitive label which is immediately followed by the conscious experience of the emotion i