Social Psychology Part 2 Flashcards
What is a social group?
a collection of individuals who interact with each other in cohesive structures involving norms and common goals.
What are the 3 things that make up a social group?
Group cohesion, group norms/social contract, common goals
What is group cohesion?
a sense of unity, belonginess, and group efficacy (the ability to carry out goals as a group).
What are group norms/ social contract?
rules that govern the privileges and the costs of group membership; often implicit.
Useful to think about them through the lens of privilidges (things you get from the group) and costs (Things you give for the group). Things you get to do because you are a member of that group
Are group norms often implicit or explicit?
implicit
What are common goals?
the set of objectives that the group would ideally like to collectively work towards.
Could be a political party or just a couple of friends in a group having a common goal of having fun together and supporting each other emotionally
Explain how “UBC Students” is a social group
You have some sense of cohesion, feeling a sense of identity and (hopefully) positive emotions for being a member of this group.
You have some privileges (you can be on-campus, you can take classes, you can go to office hours, etc.), but also some costs (you must pay tuition, you must pass most of your classes, etc.)
The student body has some common goals (e.g., to get best education for everyone, to organize extracurricular activities, to increase student health funding, etc.)
Explain why “people walking around in a mall” is usually not a social group
Although you may be together in the same space, you are unlikely to have a sense of belonging or positive emotions with people around you.
Although there are some general social rules for how you should behave, they are usually more general cultural rules and not specific to the mall.
Although many people are there with the same goal, you are not coordinating to meet those goals together.
Where do most groups begin from/ what is usually the most reliable way to start a group?
Most groups begin from a recognition of common goals, and build norms
and sense of belonging afterwards.the emphasis of a common goal is usually the most reliable way to start a group
What is the robbers cave experiment?
Twelve-year old boys participated in two-week study where they attended a summer camp in which certain resources (e.g. baseballs) were made purposefully scarce.
One group was randomly assigned to the “Eagles” and the other to the “Rattlers”. After two days, the boys coordinated to acquire resources for their group and deny it to the other, and became very hostile towards the other group, believing them to be inferior.
What are 3 important things to note about the robbers cave experiment?
- the mere labelling already started to exert a sense of belonging and develop a shared goal of getting resources for their group.
- This led to a strong sense of belonging and cohesion as well
- they believed that the reason they were put together was because they all had a secret superior trait
What is boundary formation?
members determine the criteria for who can become a member, and what types of behaviors are permissible within the group.
Is boundary formation mostly invisible? What does it lead to?
This process is mostly invisible, and leads to rapid classification of people as in-group or out-group
What is ingroup?
members of the same group who have common goals and a set of common traits that allowed them into the group.
What is outgroup? Example?
people not in the group because they lack common goals and/or traits that would allow them into the group.
Ex: the robbers cave experiment, the eagles formed an ingroup, the other group was determined as being incapable of being in their geroup because they were lacking something that makes them as good as us
What is ingroup positivity?
attributing positive traits to members of the
ingroup. This means you think you share the same positive traits as others in the group
What is outgroup negativity? What are the three main forms of negativity?
a attributing negative traits to members of outgroups.
- Possessing more negative traits (e.g., they are dumber, lazier, etc.).
- More homogenous than the ingroup (“all of them are the same!”). (we think the ingroup is wonderfully diverse, but the outgroup are all the same and possess those negative traits)
- Acting badly for dispositional reasons, while ingroup for situational.
What is social facilitation?
situations in which groups of people perform better together than any single individual within the group would perform on their own.
What are 3 examples of social facilitation?
Groups can combine effort to do more than any single person can. Groups can divide labour so that each person can become specialized. Groups can pass knowledge to each other over time.
When is social faciliation maximized (3 ways)?
Group cohesion is high: group members know what to expect of each other and trust each other.
The common goal is well-defined and not too difficult: with poor goal definition, too much time is spent on deciding how to do something collectively.
Credit and blame can be easily given: otherwise some individuals may try to cheat and not work as hard (groups in which an individual can do something and not be recognized, or individuals can make mistakes and not be caught, this doesn’t work well, (Ex: group project)
When the group isn’t too large: as the size of the group grows, so does the tendency to disagree and not work as hard. (The size of the group tends to predict how much individuals contribute to it. )
What are the 4 common situations in which groups paradoxically do worse than individuals?
worse than individuals:
1. Diffusion of Responsibility.
2. Group-Think.
3. Conformityand Deindividuation.
4.Reduced Cooperation with Other Groups
What is diffusion of responsibility?
a diminished sense of responsibility experienced by individuals in groups; the larger the group, the more diffusion occurs.
What are 2 types of diffusion of responsibility?
social-loafing
bystander effect
What is social loafing?
the tendency to expend less effort in a group than alone; this is especially likely when there is no way to catch the amount of effort.
What study was focused on social loafing?
Rope-tugging experiment:
people in a rope-tugging competition exert significantly less effort in a group than individually; the size of the group correlates with less effort.
What does the bystander effect tell us we should not assume?
If you see somebody needing help and nobody else is helping, don’t assume that the person doesn’t require help! You may be suffering from the bystander effect and the person could be seriously hurt and in immediate need of assistance!
What is groupthink?
a situation in which the group maximizes cohesion/unity ahead of making an effective decision; especially likely when the group’s identity is threatened. (means the group makes a poor decision because they over value cohesion over making a good decision, the gorup will make a decision that no individual would on their own)
In what 4 ways does group think usually occur through?
Illusion of agreement: falsely believing all members have same belief.
Self-Censorship: not voicing your outlier view to maintain unity.
Extreme outgroup negativity: belief that the outgroup is attempting to dissolve
the group. (we often beleive that the outgroup is out to get us and we need to maintain cohesion to not be affected)
Illusion of invulnerability: belief that the group couldn’t make a bad decision.
What is group polarization?
groups tend to make decisions that are more extreme or
polarizing than any single member would have on their own.
What were the results of the racial prejudice experiment?
in the 1970s, a group of psychologists recruited participants that were openly racist and those with moderate prejudice.
They were then asked to debate on a number of issues surrounding racial equality.
By the end of the experiment, both the high and moderate prejudiced participants self-reported as being even more prejudiced than before.
In other words, if you hang around people with extreme opinions, you are more likely to become more extreme yourself.
What is conformity?
the change of one’s own values, opinions, and actions to be more consistent with the norms of the group; most often done to demonstrate membership and increase belonging.
What are 2 things tat conformity can resmble? In what circumstances?
Sometimes the conformity is temporary but public (compliance), and resembles indirect intimidation.
Other times, conformity leads to more enduring changes in beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours (conversion) either publicly or privately.
What is the Asch conformity Experiment?
participant are brought in and asked to a identify which of three presented lines is the same length (easy task).
What were the results of the Asch conformity experiement?
Only one person is a real participant; the others are actors who purposefully choose the wrong lines to see if the participant conforms.
70% of participants identify the obviously incorrect line as the correct answer, conforming to the group.
The effect grows with the size of the group.
Do groups come with important benefits? What are they?
Groups come with important benefits, including increasing our chance of survival,
allowing us to specialize, etc.
What are three costs of groups that ae high and unavoidable?
But the costs of groups are also high and unavoidable:
Groups diffuse responsibility, making them sometimes less efficient at dealing with problems compared to individuals.
Groups make decisions to maintain harmony, making them sometimes less optimal in decision making compared to individuals.
Groups suppress individual differences, resulting in conformity.
Do groups tend to discriminate against other groups?
yes
What combine to shape your behaviour?
challenges posed by different contexts, other people’s expectations, and your own past experiences combine to shape your behaviour.
How can social psych be contrasted with personality psych?
Social psychology’s focus on how the immediate environment changes our behavior can be contrasted against personality psychology’s focus on an individual’s stable characteristics and their effects on behavior.
What do social psychologists want to understand? how does this contrast with personality psychologists?
social psychologists: why people act differently in different situations
Personality psych: why people act consistently across those situations
What do contemporary researchers recognize about behaviour and personality today?
both individual disposition and situational context often combine to explain the variability in how people behave
What stops people from changing their actions inconsistently from situation to situation?
people carry a host of core motivations that underlie their actions ( a fundamental need to bond and form trusting relationships with others, to percieve ourselves and our group positively, understand the world and feel a sense of control over our actions, and outcomes)
what is the result of us making accurate impressions of people?
interactions go more smoothly because we can better predict what they might do, feel, or say
When we meet a person, what is one of the first things we notice? Which brain region is responsible for this?
their face. the fusiform face area. The FFA
How do we form impressions?
using schemas : our mental representations that organize the associated pieces of information we know about a person
What can schemas be compared to?
a mental file folder
What two key dimensions when we make impressions capture our attention most? How do these affect our categorizations of people
how warm or trustworthy the person is (helps us determine friend or foe), and how competent the person is (allows us to gauge status or competence in social pecking order)
What are the judgments we make about people who fall on different areas of the 2 key dimensions when we make impressions that capture our attneiton most?
We look up to, depend on, and aspire to be like those who are both warm and competent; we fear those who are competent but lack warmth; and we pity or feel protective toward those who are warm but incompetent. Our deepest disdain is reserved for people who we see as lacking both of these characteristics, such as the homeless or drug addicts
What tendency do people have when making impressions of homesless people?
we have a tendency to deny their humanity, showing less activation of the neural networks that process information about people
How quickly do we form our impressions of people? Are we usually accurate?
quickly (within a fraction of a second of exposure) and automatically. We are often surprisingly accurate
why are our first impressions often accurate?
this accuracy stems from a reliance on knowledge about what people are like on average plus some adjustments to account for a person’s distinct characteristics.
when are we more likely to make accurate impressions of people?
when we are motivated to pay attention to their individual attributes
when we don’t form impressions effortfully, what od we often resort to? What specific types do we use?
heuristics (mental shortcuts)
- applying the schemas or mental representations we have of similar people we already know
what is transference (heuristic)?
a tendency to assume that a new and unfamiliar person has the same traits as another, known person who he or she resembles in some way.
What is false consensus (heuristic)?
the tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people’s beliefs and attitudes are similar to our own (we use ourselves as an anchor)
What is impression management (heursistics)
a series of strategies that people use to influence the impressions that others form of them
What does impression managment imply?
lots of people use a persona to mask those characteristics we don’t want others to see and we advertise the traits and skills we wish to be known for
are we less likely to use impression managment around people we are comfortable with?
yes
What are the 5 tools we use for impression management? What are their definitions? examples?
- self promotion: to be seen as competent
- ex: mentioning a recent reward you recieved while on a job interview - ingratiation: to be seen as likable
- ex: congratulating your friend on a recent success - exemplification: to be seen as dedicated
- ex: volunteering to work an extra shift at your job - intimidation: to be seen as dominant
- ex: sneering at an opponent during a sports competition - supplication: to be seen as needy
- tearing up and holding your knee after falling and getting hurt
Why are we motivated to explain and understand why people do what they do?
becuase people can be unpredictable
What is attribution?
assignment of a causal explanation for an action, event, or outcome
when can people override the fundamental attribution error? What is the trouble with this?
when they stop to consider things external to the person that might be affecting their behaviour. The problem is, people must be motivated and have the cognitive resources to spend time and effort doing this mental work
when are we more likely to engage in effortful attributions?
when a person’s actions are more surprising or negative
Why do we often lack key insights into our own motivations and experiences?
our motivation to think positively about ourselves can bias what we can see and what we believe about who we are and what we do. Another issue is that we don’t have direct access to all the mental processes that underlie our thought and action. As a result, we can fail to appreciate not jut what has guided our choices in the past but how we will react in the future
Why has our motivation to preserve a positive view of the self often mean that we don’t have any insight into the causes of our behaviour?
we rely on self serving attributions
what are self-serving attributions?
the attributions people make for their own behaviours or outcomes: we tend to make dispositional attributions for positive events but situational attributions for negative events
What do we often do when we want to explain the good things we have done or our successes?
we tend to favor internal and often stable explanations (I am so smart. I have real talent).
what are affective forecasting errors? Why does this happen?
People’s inability to emotionally predict how they will feel about something in the future
- happens because people overestimate the influence of some factors and underestimate the influence of others
what is an attitude?
an oreintation towards some target stimulus that is composed of an affective feeling, a cognitive belief, and a behavioural motivation toward the target
what do studies show about the link between our attitudes and behaviours? Why?
there is actually a weak link
- sometimes our attitudes are about abstract topics, whereas behaviours are much more specific. This difference is important because our attitudes towards specific issues can be best predicted by specific behaviour
when do we feel stronger about the link between our attitudes and our behaviour?
when we are certain of our attitudes and they apply to situations we have directly experienced
what are implicit attitudes? How are they learned?
an automatically activated evaluation of a stimulus ranging from positive to negative. often learned through repeated exposure to a person, place, thing, or issue
what are explicit attitudes? What can these be shaped by? how are they updated?
the consciously reported evaluation a person has in response to a target stimuli. these can be shaped by our values, social norms, and other beliefs about the target stimulus. Updated by being provided new information
are implicit or explicit attitudes harder to change? When can they be changed?
implicit. Can be changed from repeat exposure ot new associations
What type of theory is the elaboration likely-hood theory of persuasion?
a dual processing theory
do attitudes last longer when from the central or peripheral route?
central
who are dispositionally more likely to favour central route processing over peripheral?
naturally deep thinkers
what is social proof
a compliance strategy that lists all the other people in the community who contributed
what is the scarcity principle?
a compliance strategy that uses the idea that people evaluate things higher if they are in short supply
when can dissonance actually change our attitudes?
when we cannot avoid situations that cause dissonance or otherwise justify our actions. this kind of attitude change happens only when people feel that they have behaved in a way that they cannot attribute to the situation alone
what is post-decision dissonance?
focusing on the negative aspects of a forgone option that we did feel positviely toward in order to resolve dissonance
what is effort justification?
justifying past behaviour etc simply by evaluating the reason as being more positive
How is dissonance realized in eastern countries?
more emphasis is placed on mathcing behaviour with other people’s beliefs and attitudes. Thereofre, people in these cultures experience dissonance more when their behaviours are out of sync wiht others beliefs and atitides
what is conformity?
the process by whch people implicitly mimic, adopt, or internalize the behaviours and preferences of those around them
What is informational social influence?
pressure ot conform to others beliefs or actions based on a desire to behave correctly or gain an accurate understanding of the world.
what is normative social influence?
pressure ot confrom to others actions or beliefs in order to gain approval from others or avoid social sanctions
on a basic level, what can boost motivation?
simply being around others or feeling a sense of social connection
What happens to our motivation when our need for belonging is met?
our engagement with the world around us is heightened and performance becomes more fluid
What is social facilitation?
an enhancement of the dominant behavioural response when performing a task in the mere presence of others; easy or well-learned tasks are better performed, but difficult or novel tasks are performed worse.
