Social Psychology (CH13) Flashcards
Social Psychology
Study of causes and consequences of sociality
- Social behaviour: how people interact with each other -how it solves problems
- Social influence: how people change each other -3 basic motivations that make people susceptible to influence
- Social cognition: how people understand each other -how people use information about another person’s affiliations and actions to make judgments and to make mistakes
Aggression
Behaviour whose purpose is to harm another (to obtain scarce resources)
Frustration-aggression hypothesis
Animals aggress when and only when their goals are frustrated
ex. The chimp wants the banana (goal) but the pelican is about to take it (frustration), so the chimp threatens the pelican with his fist (aggression).
Cooperation
Behaviour by 2/+ individuals that leads to mutual benefit
- Risk vs. Trust
- Prisoner’s Dilemma: trustworthiness
- Wason’s Card-Selection Task: capacity to detect cheaters that surpasses capacity for logical reasoning
- Ultimatum Game: rather get nothing that be cheated
Group
Collection of people who have something in common that distinguishes them from others
-Tend to treat those in your group nicer
Prejudice
+‘ve/-‘ve evaluation of another person based on group membership
Discrimination
+‘ve/-‘ve behaviour toward another person based on group membership
Deindividuation
When immersion in a group causes people to become less concerned with personal values (thus, tend to adopt group’s value that own & steal/vandalize other’s property)
Diffusion of responsibility
Individuals feel diminished responsibility for action because they are surrounded by others who are acting the same way (less likely to help others in need or more likely to engage in bad behaviour)
Altruism
Behaviour that benefits another without benefiting oneself
ex. birds and squirrels give alarm calls when they see a predator even if it increases their risk of being eaten
ex. ants and bees spend life caring for queen’s offspring rather than have offspring of their own
Kin selection
Process by which evolution selects fro individuals who cooperate with their relatives (thus not really altruistic)
*Promote survival of relatives to promote survival of own genes
Reciprocal altruism
Behaviour that benefits another with the expectation that those benefits will be returned in the future (thus not really altruistic)
Mere exposure effect
Tendency for liking to increase with frequency of exposure
Passionate love
Experience involving feeling of euphoria, intimacy and intense sexual attraction
Compassionate love
Experience involving affection, trust, and concern for a partner’s well-being
Social exchange
Hypothesis that people remain in relationship only as long as they perceive a favourable ratio of costs to benefits
Comparison level
Cost-benefit ratio that people believe they deserve or could attain in another relationship
Equity
State of affairs in which the cost-benefit ratios of 2 partners are roughly equal
Social influence
Ability to control another person’s behaviour
Hedonic motive
People are motivated to experience pleasure and avoid experiencing pain
Approval motive
People tend to be accepted and to avoid being rejected
Accuracy motive
People are motivated to believe what is right and to avoid what is wrong
Normative influence
Occurs when another person’s behaviour provides information about what is appropriate
Norm
Customary standard for behaviour that is widely shared by members of a culture
Norm of reciprocity
Unwritten rule that people should benefit those who have benefited them
Door-in-the-face technique
A strategy that uses reciprocating concessions to influence behaviour
ex. ask for something more valuable than you want, when refused, ask for something that you really want (increase chance to get it since you “compromised” and they are more likely to as well)
Conformity
Tendency to do what others do simply because others are doing it
ex. Asch’s conformity study (line length test)
Obedience
Tendency to do what powerful people tell us to do
ex. Milgram’s Obedience Study
Attitude
Enduring +’ve/-‘ve evaluation of an object or event
-What we SHOULD do
Belief
Enduring piece of knowledge about an object or event
-How to do what we SHOULD do
Informative influence
Another person’s behaviour provides information about what is good or right
ex. see a crowd running and screaming for exit, you will do the same
Persuasion
Person’s attitudes or beliefs are influenced by communication from another person
ex. election
Systematic persuasion
Process by which attitudes or beliefs are changed by appeals to reason
-Appeals to logic and reason (strong evidence and arguments for persuasion)
Heuristic persuasion
Process by which attitudes or beliefs are changed by appeals to habit or emotion
-Appeals to habit, emotion
Cognitive dissonance
Unpleasant state that arises when a person recognizes the inconsistency of his or her actions, attitudes or beliefs
ex. ask homeowners to install “drive carefully” sign -most say no
ex. ask homeowner to sign petition to promote safe driving then ask to install sign -if signed petition already, will install sign too
- “invent comfortable illusion to rationalize less favourable solution”
ex. Pay for something because you value them, but really you value something more because you paid for them
Social cognition
Process by which people come to understand others
Stereotyping
Process by which we draw inferences about others based on knowledge of categories to which they belong
Perceptual confirmation
Tendency for people to see what they expect to see
Self-fullfilling prophecy
Tendency for people to cause what they see
Subtyping
Tendency who are faced with disconfirming evidence to modify their stereotype than abandon them
ex. exception to the “rule” but does not change stereotype itself
Attributions
Inferences about the causes of people’s behaviours
- Situational attributions: caused by some temporary aspect of the situation in which it happened
- Dispositional attributions: person’s behaviour was caused by his/her relatively enduring tendency to think, feel or act a particular way
Covariation model
3 kinds of information: consistency, distinctiveness and consensus
ex. Neighbour didn’t mow his lawn last weekend; is he lazy (dispositional attribution) or did bad weather keep him indoors (situational attribution)?
Need to consider regularity, generality and typicality to determine
- If neighbour usually mows his lawn on the weekend, “not mowing” is inconsistent. If he fixed the screen door and poianted the kitchen last weekend, his action is distinctive. If no one else on the block mowed their lawns last weekend, his action is consensual with the actions of others. *Situational attribution
- If neighbour rarely mows lawn, “not mowing” is consistent. If he avoided every other form of work last weekend, lawn mowing is not distinctive. If everyone else on the block mowed lawns last weekend, not consensual. *Dispositional attribution
Correspondence bias
Tendency to make a dispositional attribution even when a person’s behaviour was caused by the situation
(aka. fundamental attribution error)
Actor-observer effect
Tendency to make situational attributions for our own behaviours while making dispositional attributions for the identical behaviour of others
