Social Psychology Part 2

Question 1

Attitudes

Answer 1

our feelings or opinions about people, objects, and ideas; How you form and maintain those attitudes; how they change; how it changes others

Question 2

Can attitudes predict behavior?

Answer 2

Sometimes, there are times with people believing in certain things, and they either do or do not create actions falling in line with those beliefs

When attitude is strong, behavior more likely to fall in line with that belief

When person is made aware of attitudes, they are likely to act in line with that for at least a period of time

Question 3

Can behavior predict attitudes?

Answer 3

Sometimes, self-perception theory to consider

Question 4

Self-perception theory

Answer 4

“derive beliefs from behavior”; attitudes follow behavior, doing becomes believing

If forced to have certain behavior over period, attitudes can shift and align more with what you are doing

If done something towards organization, more likely to do it again and agree to something larger in future

Question 5

Why does foot-in-the-door technique work? Why are people more likely to change their beliefs after engaging in behaviors that go against them?

Answer 5

Cognitive Dissonance

Question 6

Cognitive Dissonance

Answer 6

conflict or anxiety we feel when there is an inconsistency between our beliefs and our actions; discovered by Leon Festinger in 1957

Question 7

Examples of Cognitive Dissonance

Answer 7

Do you know junk food is unhealthy, but you eat it anyway?

You know exercise can keep you healthy too, but do you do that everyday?

Smoking: Can resolve by changing thinking to justify behavior(“smoking is not that bad for me, better about it than others”); Can change behavior(I know smoking is bad for me, so I will quit!)

What do you think more people do often?
People more likely to change thinking instead of changing behavior!!

Question 8

Social Behavior

Answer 8

Includes altruism and reflective thoughts of how/why people do what they do

Question 9

Altruism

Answer 9

unselfish interest in helping another person

Question 10

Why do people help other people?

Answer 10

Reciprocity, Egoism, and implicit rules of society(including factors of mood, empathy, and the bystander effect)

Question 11

Reciprocity

Answer 11

“Doing unto others as they will (hopefully0 do unto you”

Question 12

Eogism

Answer 12

“Doing unto others because it somehow benefits ourselves”

Question 13

Implicit Rules of Society

Answer 13

“Others are helping, so I will help too”

Factors that influence helping behavior:
Mood: happy = helping

Empathy: seeing ourselves in the person who needs help; Tend to help those who look and behave like us

The Bystander Effect: “Let someone else do it…” Diffusion of responsibility

Question 14

Social Influence

Answer 14

influences others can have on another, can relate to Conformity and Obedience

Question 15

Conformity

Answer 15

changing one’s behavior to align with the group or group standard; “when people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other”

Question 16

Asch’s conformity study

Answer 16

Which line is the same as exhibit 1?

Told to be a Visual perception test; 6 of the people are actors and 1 is a participant; The participant does not know about the actors

Will the participant go with the right or wrong answer?

They usually do not conform to the answers at first, but they will conform more over time; Participants tend to not conform when only two participants, when participants are children

Question 17

Why did the people conform in Asch’ study?

Answer 17

Informational Social Influence: the influence people have on us because we want to be right

Normative Social Influence: the influence people have on us because we want to be liked

Question 18

Obedience

Answer 18

behavior that complies with the specific demands of an authority figure; “YOU MUST behave in this way”

Question 19

Milgram’s Obedience study Background

Answer 19

**Right after WWII(Think of Holocaust); Guards were just following orders, did not have a choice, would be killed if did not follow

But it is always argued they always have a choice

Question 20

Milgram’s Obedience Study in America

Answer 20

Question: would you harm someone if an authority figure told you to do so?

Was not thought through to cause traumatic, negative consequences to the subjects

Advertised that the study was about the punishments of learning; Not really this, about behavior; Punishments given to create learning

Actor/confederate and real volunteer (Confederate would be the learner of word pairs); Volunteer would be the teacher, giving the learner electric shocks if they got answers wrong

THE SHOCKS are FAKE, not really happening, but the volunteer does not know that

Actor/learner has lines; Actor/learner gets first few right, then supposed to get one wrong so they are “shocked” and respond negatively; Voltage gets higher and higher as “learner” misses more and more(Actor/learner being more and more dramatic in the pain)

Milgram with Lab Coat is Authority Figure; Does not punish volunteer, just says “please continue”

Question 21

Answer to Milgram’s Obedience Study Question

Answer 21

2/3 of participants so in the Milgram study; most continued until they thought they had killed someone; Milgram and actor would come out and explain afterwards

But still psychologically traumatizing(we have predisposition to obey authority), parents, teachers, etc.

authority hard to overcome when not prepared to

Many debates about ethical nature of study, it was psychologically traumatizing (**Not until late 1970s did they have rules over ethical treatment of human subjects in studies)

Question 22

Intergroup Relations

Answer 22

Includes Deindividuation, Social Contagion, group performance, Social facilitation, Social loading, and groupthink

Question 23

Deindiviuation

Answer 23

being a part of a group reduces one’s sense of personal responsibility; Happens when gathered in large group of people and more emotional(vandalism, aggression, etc.)

mob mentality(“just one of the herd”)

more likely to perform certain behaviors when in a group than alone

Ex: May 4th memorial turning into riots in early 2000s, highly intoxicated people performing

Question 24

Social Contagion

Answer 24

the spread of behavior, emotions, and ideas

Examples: Laughing even if you aren’t sure what’s funny; Yawning; Fads (“on fleek”, “same”)

Question 25

Group performance: How do you perform when others are present?

Answer 25

Can be a variety of answers; some do better, while others do worse; Just really depends; Can depend on difficulty of task as well

Question 26

Social Facilitation

Answer 26

people tend to perform better when others are present IF the task if EASY or well-learned; people tend to perform WORSE in front of others IF the task is DIFFICULT or new

Question 27

Social Loafing

Answer 27

the tendency for people to underperform when in a group because of reduced accountability

Question 28

Groupthink

Answer 28

Impaired group decision-making that occurs when making the right decision is less important than conforming to the group

Group harmony is seen to be better than say what we really think; can be problematic