Social Psychology Exam 4 pt1 Flashcards
Social psychology:
the study of how people think about influence and relate to one
another.
Attributions
what caused someone to act a certain way: someone’s behavior.
Dispositional
Due to a person’s personality, that how they are like, they have a specific trait
about them
Situational
They just acted that way because of the situation. Decisional attribution.
Fundamental attribution error:
the most basic type of attribution error. less likely to take in the fact that they acted that way because of the situation they are in.
Underestimate situational causes and overestimate dispositional causes.
The fundamental attribution error was demonstrated in an experiment with Williams
College. Students talked, one at a time, with a woman who acted either cold and
critical or warm and friendly. Before the conversations, the researchers told half the
students that the woman’s behavior would be spontaneous. They told the 1582 other
half the truth—that they had instructed her to act friendly or unfriendly. Did hearing
the truth affect students’ impressions of the woman? Not at all! If the woman acted
friendly, both groups decided she really was a warm person. If she acted unfriendly,
both decided she really was a cold person. They attributed her behavior to her
personal disposition even when told that her behavior was situational—that she was
merely acting that way for the purposes of the experiment.
When likely to be used – actor/observer effect:
when we are asked to rate why acted a certain way(actor), we tend to say we acted
that way because of a situation. We don’t tend to make up with deposition causes to
situations. They way we explain other’s actions attributing them to the person or the
situation can have important life effects. Ex was a shooting a malicious, or an act of
self-defense? Does a managers mean tone reflect a job threat or a bad day?
Attitude
feeling that makes us more likely to act in a certain way towards feeling objects or
events.
Persuasion
The attitudes we hold influence our actions. When we try to persuade, we try
to influence our attitudes to affect how someone will act.
Peripheral route persuasion
uses attention getting cues, or surface cues to trigger emotion-based judgments. Trying to make someone buy something you are more likely to have someone famous to do it to try to get us to think a certain way.
They lead to weakly held attitudes, not deeply just loud and flashy. Influenced by someone’s attractiveness.
Central route persuasion:
Offers evidence and arguments that aim to trigger careful
thinking. Involves statistics or why we should vote for this person, this person did
this for the last two yours so they will be consisted for you since they were for
those past years. It needs people to be interested in and have the attention for it.
Attitudes become are stronger.
Consistency – actions affect attitudes:
we change our feeling about a certain thing
depending on how we think about it.
Cognitive dissonance:
Changing attitudes to be consistent with their actions:
bringing our attitudes to line with our actions.
unpleasant feeling that arises when a person realizes there’s an inconsistency with
our thoughts and actions. People can change the way the feel about something based
on the actions that they took.
Conformity
when we adjust either our thinking or behavior to coincide with the group
standard.
. Normative influence – Asch’s normative studies
Influence that comes from a person’s desire to gain approval or
avoid disapproval. We seem more likable by acting in a certain way; we do not want
to be unlikable.
Asch
did classical studies on social influence. He found that 75% od people across
studies go along with what the group says even though the answers were wrong. 35%
did not go along with the conformity. A desire to want the approval of group of
people that we do not know at all.
When there are at least a group of 3 other people we tend to increase the chance of
normative influence.
