Unit 10 (Chapter 15) Flashcards
Big ideas in social psychology
1) Situations are powerful, and may lead us to go against our values, morals, etc.
- The situations we encounter exert a strong influence on how we think, feel, and behave
- It’s not that individual dispositions do not matter—but they do so in interaction with the situation
2) We often fail to appreciate the power of the situation
- Fundamental attribution error
3) The history of the situations we have been in shapes our ongoing perceptions of and interactions with other people
4) Our perceptions of people & social situations are constructed and do not represent a direct read-out of reality
Fundamental attribution error
The tendency to underestimate situational influences on behaviour and to overestimate the influence of personal dispositions.
Social psychology
The scientific attempt to understand and explain how the feelings, thoughts, and behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual or perceived feelings, thoughts, and behaviours of others.
Obedience
In an unequal power relationship, submitting to the demands of the person in authority.
E.g., following the orders of an experimenter, police officer, a parent, or a professor.
Stanley Milgram’s experiment and his findings
Tested the extent to which participants would inflict harm on another (administer a shock of increasing voltage), after being instructed to do so. Varied proximity of the teacher to the learner, the proximity of the authoritative figure, and the location of the experiment to see how different factors affected obedience.
Ethics:
- Spurred the creation of Institutional Review Boards
- Is inflicting this kind of psychological turmoil justified? Careful debriefing post-experiment
Generalizability:
- Perhaps, on some level, participants knew they could not really hurt the learner
Methodological concerns
- Some evidence that experimenter had gone off script
Milgram study replication (Burger, 2009)
- Motivated by Burger’s students’ assertions that Ps in 1960s were fundamentally different
- Semi-replication—only went up to 150 volts (”Now or never” moment in original study, where 4/5 Ps would have kept going until the end if they passed this point)
- 70% of Ps willing to administer next level of shock (165 volts) vs. 82% in Milgram’s study
Factors driving obedience in Milgram’s study
- Release from responsibility
- Step-by-step involvement
- Lack of intimacy with the victim
- Immediacy and power of the experimenter
Release from responsibility
The feeling of responsibility for one’s actions is transferred to other people.
- In the Milgram study, the experimenter stated that he was responsible for everything that happened.
- Provided a cover for their actions; for example, “It was his fault; I was following orders.” Or “They volunteered for this.”
Step-by-step involvement
People can get caught on a “slippery slope” because of the step-wise nature of demands.
- In the Milgram study, each increment is only 15 volts, so each one seems like a small step, but step by step it gets to an extreme point.
- Situational factor we probably don’t take into consideration when thinking about how we would behave in this situation.
Lack of immediacy of the victim
Variations of the Milgram experiment varied the proximity of the learner.
- No visual or audio feedback; audio feedback; same room (visual and audio feedback); and touch proximity
- As the learner became more present (increased feedback and proximity), the rate of obedience (shocks delivered) decreased
Immediacy & power of the experimenter
Variations on the immediacy & social power of the experimenter.
- Experimenter gives orders over the telephone; experimenter has lower status; experimenter is contradicted by another experimenter.
- As the immediacy & social power of the experimenter decreased, rates of obedience decreased.
Conformity
Changing one’s behaviours or beliefs to match those of others, usually in response to real or imagined group pressure.
- May not involve direct appeals or requests to change our behaviour.
Costs and benefits of conformity
In Western cultures, conformity is often viewed negatively:
- Seen as a lack of individuality or critical thinking.
- Can prevent us from challenging erroneous or harmful group norms.
BUT Conformity also serves important social functions.
- Facilitates smooth social interactions.
- Helps us adhere to the “unwritten rules” of society (social norms), making social life more predictable and harmonious
Automatic mimicry
Some forms of conformity may be automatic. This is the most subtle form of mimicry.
Ex: Yawning videos with monkeys,
Research ex: Ps interacted with confederate who would either rub their face or shake their foot. Ps would unconsciously imitate the behaviors of the confederate.
Empathy
The ability to understand and share feelings of another person.
Role of automatic mimicry in social interaction
- Mimicry may facilitate empathy
- Mimicry may build social rapport and lead to pleasant social interactions:
§ People like individuals who mimic them better than those who don’t
§ People who are mimicked engage in more prosocial behavior afterward - Mimicry is stronger for people with a drive to affiliate with others
Informational social influence
The influence of other people that results from taking their comments or actions as a source of information about what is correct, proper, or effective.
- In an ambiguous situation (as in the Sherif study), other people can serve as frame of reference.
- Informational social influence is more likely when:
§ the situation is ambiguous or difficult
§ we feel low in knowledge or competence about the topic (ex: in a study group).
Research ex: auto-kinetic illusion study, “how far did the light move?”
Internalization
The private acceptance of a proposition, orientation, or ideology.
- Not just mimicking the group’s response—rather, adopting the group’s perspective
- Effects of informational influence can be long-lasting: group norms influenced individual judgments a year after individual was last tested. Norms can also persist through several group “generations”
In Sherif auto-kinetic illusion studies, the newly emerged group norm continued to influence participant responses when they were subsequently tested alone.
Normative social influence
The influence of other people that comes from the desire to avoid their disapproval and other social sanctions (ridicule, barbs, ostracism).
Research ex: Ash line judgement study, where 75% of participants conformed at least once, and participants conformed 33% of the time
Persuasion
Intentional effort to change other people’s attitudes in order to change their behaviour.
Attitude (and its ABCs)
An evaluation of an object (e.g., a specific person, a category of people, a type of food, a political cause) along a positive or negative dimension.
- Includes three components (the ABCs):
§ Affective (how we feel)
§ Behavioural (what we do)
§ Cognitive (what we think)
Example of the ABCs of attitude: pineapple on pizza
- Affect: I like it (I have positive feelings about it)
- Behaviour: I ate Hawaiian pizza 10 times last month
- Cognition: I think that the sweetness of the pineapple provides a perfect balance to the savoury flavours
Dual-process model of cognition
System 1: Intuitive System:
- Quick & automatic
- Little or no effort
- Relies on heuristics (“rules-of-thumb”)
System 2: Rational system:
- Slow, effortful & controlled
- Based on rules & deduction
The elaboration likelihood method (ELM)
A model of persuasion maintaining that there are two different routes to persuasion—the central route and the peripheral route.
- Which route is taken depends on the motivation and ability to think about (elaborate on) the information being presented (no one size fits all!!!)
The central route to persuasion
Followed when people think carefully & deliberately about about the content of a persuasive message, attending to its logic and the strength of its arguments, as well as to related evidence.
o Thus, attitudes will be influenced primarily by the strength of the arguments
o Tends to produce longer-lasting attitude change
The peripheral route to persuasion
Followed when people primarily attend to peripheral cues (i.e. distracted, unmotivated, busy, etc.)—superficial, easy-to process features of a persuasive communication that are tangential (peripheral) to the persuasive information itself.
E.g., # of arguments, attractiveness of the source of the message.
Central or peripheral route to persuasion?
Motivation and ability (sufficient time, cognitive resources) both determine which route we will engage in when responding to a persuasive message.
o Variability within- and across-persons. E.g., individuals high in need for cognition more likely to enjoy and engage in effortful cognitive processes.
Ex: Buying a car = central route since more motivation
Compliance
Agreeing to the explicit request of another person.
- Compliance techniques more focused on changing outward behaviour rather than internal attitudes
Examples: agreeing to do someone a favour, getting people to donate to a charity
Norm of reciprocity
People generally agree to help others who have helped them in the past or might help them in the future. AKA You should provide benefits to those who have provided benefits to you. Related to the DITF technique, as people feel as though they owe you for bringing down the price, time commitment, etc…
Ex: Solicitations for donations more successful when gift is included.
Door-in-the-face (DITF) technique
A compliance approach where the target request is preceded by a more extreme request that is likely to be rejected. Since effect is being driven by the perception that the requester has compromised with you (obligating you to compromise in turn), efficacy of the technique should be diminished if a different person makes the second request.
Research ex: Asked to volunteer at the jail for 2 hrs/week for two years, then asked if they would do it for one afternoon or evening. More likely to any yes to second request if first one was also asked.
Foot-in-the-door technique
People are more likely to comply with a larger request if they have already complied with a smaller initial request. Underlying mechanism is a shift in self-perception.
o After the initial favour, a person “may become, in his own eyes, the kind of person who does this sort of thing, who agrees to requests made by strangers, who takes action on things he believes in, who cooperates with good causes”
E.g., charities often first ask for very small donations, then later ask for bigger donations.
Research ex: People were more likely to put big ugly sign in yard, if agreed to put small one in window first.
Research on first impressions
- Ps asked to rate faces on trustworthiness, competence, aggressiveness, likability and attractiveness
- Time given ranged from 100 to 1,000 ms; compared with ratings by people given unlimited time
- Judgments made after a 100 ms exposure correlated highly with judgments made in the absence of time constraints
- Automatic process—cannot help doing this
Dimensions along which faces are thought to be evaluated
Warmth: may help us tell friends from foes.
Competence: enables us to gauge the person’s ranking in the social order.
- We are drawn to individuals who are high in both warmth and competence
- We are wary of people who are competent but lack warmth
-We disdain those who are low on both dimensions
- We feel pity and protective urges toward those who are warm but incompetent
Baby faces and why were attended to them
- Infantile features (large eyes, large head, small jaw) automatically evoke nurturing response in adult perceivers.
- Baby-faced adults assumed to be warmer, more honest, more naive, and weaker (overgeneralization).
- From an evolutionary perspective, this could be due to the fact that we must protect babies, and couldn’t afford to miss out on a potential cue from one (may lead to death).
Bottom-up processing
Impressions are shaped by someone’s appearance or actions (data-driven, “bottom-up” approach).
Ex: “I like your bracelet” from mean girls
Top-down processing
Impressions are also shaped by the pre-existing knowledge and expectations we bring to a social interaction (“top-down” approach).
Ex: Cady connecting Regina’s fake attitude to when she complimented her bracelet.
Schemas
Internal cognitive structures containing generalized knowledge about the world.
- Serve as frameworks that guide our perceptions and interpretations of incoming information, and help us organize our knowledge about the world.
Person schemas
Contain information about specific individuals.
E.g., appearance (blonde, pretty), personality (super shady), likes (shopping, gossiping, butter), dislikes (Gretchen), behaviours (manipulates others), etc.
Transference
Schemas from previous social relationships may influence perceptions of new people we meet.
E.g., targets resembling ex-romantic partners evoke the same feelings that the ex-partner did.
Event schemas
Let us know what we can expect in given situations and how we should behave.
E.g., in high school girl world, Halloween is for dressing cute, not scary.
Stereotypes
Mental representations, or schemas we have about groups (e.g., women, Asians, gamers).
- Can pick up stereotypes from people around us and the culture we are embedded in
Are stereotypes ever accurate?
§ Yes, sometimes; they can reflect average group differences
§ But can lead us to exaggerate differences between groups
§ Problematic when we rely on them too strongly when reasoning about individuals.
Activating schemas
- Priming: exposure to stimuli that “activate” or bring to mind a particular schema.
- May occur below threshold of awareness (subliminally)
- Schemas influence how we interpret information (particularly under conditions of ambiguity)
Ex: Ps primed around bravery or recklessness and then read paragraph about “Donald”.
Self-fulfilling prophecies
Expectations and beliefs that lead to their own fulfillment.
- We create the social reality that we expect
Ex: “Late bloomer” study where teachers gave them more attention, and then students ended up performing better.
Attribution
The causal explanations we make for behaviour.
- E.g., student arrives late to lecture
Cause could be external:
§ Metro broke down, had a family emergency they had to deal with, etc.
Or it could be internal/dispositional:
§ The student is not conscientious
Fundamental attribution error
People tend to give more weight to internal causes (person) and not enough to external causes (environment).
Self-serving attributions/bias
We perceive our actions and outcomes in ways that cast us in a positive light.
- Good events are attributed to internal factors, while bad events are attributed to external factors
- Extends to our interactions with other people, e.g., having a fight with a romantic partner (“my fault, your fault”)
Good grade: “I’m smart, I studied well.”
Bad grade: The test was unfair!
Erroneous social judgements
- Base first impressions on limited information
- Often rely on overgeneralized schemas & fail to make corrections for the individual (don’t see the person for who they truly are)
- Our expectations shape our behaviour towards people, which elicits the behaviour we expect, thereby confirming our initial expectations (ex with negative stereotypes, resulting in cold behaviour from other group/person)
- We fail to take situations into account (which includes our own influence on the person)
- Tend to interpret our behaviour in self-serving manner (which extends to our social interaction)
Impression management (erroneous social judgements)
People often mislead us by acting in ways that don’t reflect their true attitudes or belief. Ex:
- Self-promotion = highlighting one’s achievements & abilities to appear competent
- Supplication = presenting oneself as needy or dependent to elicit help or sympathy
False consensus effect (erroneous social judgements)
We tend to overestimate the degree to which others share our views and opinions.
Ex: US election
Link between attitudes and behaviour
Assume that attitudes drive behaviour but research from various domains shows that attitudes are often poor predictors of behaviour—for example:
§ Attitudes toward cheating & cheating behaviour
§ Attitudes toward religion & worship attendance
§ Racial attitudes & behaviour
Why? Attitudes may conflict with other influences on behaviour: social norms, other conflicting attitudes, and situational factors.
However, behaviours can be good predictors of attitudes. Attitudes may change in order to be consistent with behaviors.
Cognitive dissonance theory
Postulates that inconsistencies among a person’s thoughts, sentiments, and actions cause an aversive emotional state (cognitive dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency.
Reducing cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance can be reduced by changing thoughts, feelings, or behavior to restore consistency.
E.g., smoking may cause cognitive dissonance because it is bad for health, most people want to be healthy, & and are motivated to see themselves as rational actors acting in their own best interest.
o Dissonance can be reduced by changing behaviour: quitting smoking. But behaviour change is hard!
o Can also reduce dissonance by changing or adding thoughts and feelings: “My grandfather smoked every day and he lived to be 100 years old” or “Yes, I know it’s bad for me, but it helps me relax.”
Ex: Nixon Watergate hearings real-life study.
Confirmation bias
Tendency to seek out, pay attention to, and believe evidence that supports what we are already confident we know.
Effort justification
Tendency to reduce dissonance by justifying the time, effort, or money devoted to something that turned out to be unpleasant or disappointing.
- Greater effort expended leads to more dissonance and more attempts to rationalize behavior.
Ex: Infiltration and study of doomsday cult. Other examples include frat hazing.
The IKEA effect
We tend to value things more if we made them ourselves.
Research example: Ps ascribed higher value to their own assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, & built sets of Lego.
Decisions creating cognitive dissonance
Any time people make a choice between two alternatives, there is likely to be some dissonance
- Dissonance aroused by the inconsistency of accepting the negatives of one choice + rejecting the positives of the rejected alternative
- The more difficult the choice = more inconsistent elements = more dissonance
Spreading the alternatives
Decision dissonance typically resolved by 1) emphasizing the positives and minimizing the negatives of the selected choice, and 2) emphasizing
the negatives and minimizing the positives of the unselected choices.
Ex: Choosing to live in a big city or a small town:
- If the big city is chosen, people may emphasize how great it is to go to restaurants and museums and minimize how frustrating the traffic is.
- If the small town is chosen, the opposite is true.
Research ex: Choosing between two objects close in desirability resulted in spreading of alternatives to diminish dissonance.
Induced/forced compliance
Compelling people to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their beliefs, attitudes, or values. This will elicit dissonance.
Insufficient justification
When we see the subtle social influence as insufficient to justify our actions, we feel compelled to change our views to reduce dissonance (since we can’t take the behaviour back).
Research ex: lying for 1$ vs lying for 20$.
Group polarization
The tendency for people to become more extreme in their positions after discussion with like-minded others. Factors that are likely to combine to contribute:
- Exposure to additional arguments in favor of one’s preexisting opinion strengthens that opinion. Supporting evidence: simply reading others’ arguments is sufficient to produce group polarization.
- Compare self to others, with the drive to “outdo” others. If others express similar opinions, we may take a more extreme position to differentiate ourselves. Supporting evidence: being told about others’ positions (without being exposed to
their actual arguments) produces the group polarization effect, but effect not as strong.
Ex: Reposting things from people who share your political views.
Groupthink
A mode of thinking resulting from situations where the group’s desire to reach or maintain unanimity overrides motivation to critically appraise alternative courses of action.
o Occurs during group decisions when individuals feel pressure to maintain allegiance to group leader or make difficult decision under time pressure
o Exacerbated by the presence of an authoritarian leader
o Prevents individuals from voicing dissenting or unpopular opinions
How to reduce groupthink?
1) Emphasize right decision over quick decision
2) Advise leader to moderate, not steer, discussion
3) Explicitly assign someone to play devil’s advocate
4) Promote critical evaluation over consensus
5) Encourage brainstorming and openness to all ideas
6) Form diverse groups, where members bring different expertise and perspectives
Bystander effect
Finding that people are less likely to help in the presence of other bystanders.
Research ex: Elevator study where research assistants “accidentally” dropped coins or pencils during 1,497 elevator rides. Likelihood of getting help decreases as number of bystanders increases.
Decision-making model of helping
1) Noticing the incident
2) Interpreting the situation as an emergency
3) Assuming responsibility
4) Trying to help
Noticing the emergency
Before we can intervene in an emergency, we need to notice that there is an emergency.
Research study: Participants seated in waiting room, either alone or in groups of 3. The room begins to fill with smoke. When alone, typically noticed the smoke within 5 seconds. When in groups, typically took 20 seconds to notice the smoke.
Interpreting the emergency
Once you notice the emergency, you have to interpret it as an emergency. Many events we encounter are ambiguous:
§ Are those kids hurting each other? Or just playfighting?
§ Is that woman being attacked by a stranger? Or just having a lovers’
spat with her boyfriend?
§ Is that smoke from a fire? Or something harmless?
Informational influence
Looking to others to define the situation.
If everyone is calm and indifferent, you’re more prone to go back to what you were doing, and the cycle repeats itself with others in the room doing the same as you, leading to pluralistic ignorance.
Pluralistic ignorance
Failure to realize that others are thinking and feeling the same thing we are. OR People are collectively unaware of each other’s true attitudes or beliefs.
75% of the alone participants in the Latané & Darley study reported the smoke, on average within 2 minutes of first noticing it. When tested in groups, only 1 (out of 24) reported the smoke within before 4 minutes (before the room got REALLY smoky).
Due to calmness of others, answers to “What caused the smoke?” Included: “air conditioning vapours”, “truth gas”
Diffusion of responsibility
We are less likely to take responsibility for helping when there are other people around who could help.
Research example: P having “seizure” and crying out for help over intercom discussion system. Alone participants rushed to help, while those lead to believe they were in a group assumed another participant would help them. Still concerned about their well-being afterwards, though.
Proximity
Closeness/nearness. Basic, powerful factor that drives liking.
Westgate housing study; ranking neighbours; higher proximity, higher ranking.
Mere exposure effect
We tend to like people and things more after we have been repeatedly exposed to them and they become more familiar to us. This will not, however, work for stimuli that we already dislike.
“Student” confederate study.
Facial symmetry, and its attractiveness
Perceptual fluency explanation: average (“prototypical”) and more symmetrical faces are easier to process, and ease of processing is associated with feelings of pleasantness.
Evolutionary explanation: facial symmetry is indicator of reproductive fitness (capacity to pass on one’s genes to next generation). Pronounced asymmetry may be indicative of issues during prenatal development (e.g., injuries in utero, infectious disease experienced by the mother).
Ex: Declining health in macaques associated with declines in facial symmetry. Some evidence that facial symmetry is linked to better health in humans as well.
The “averageness” effect
Faces that are “average” are seen as more attractive. We tend to perceive a composite image of many faces “averaged” together as more attractive than the individual faces of which the composite is comprised.
Self-disclosure
Sharing personal information about the self.
- Central to development of intimacy
- Tend to like those who share personal information with us
- Also tend to like people better after disclosing personal information to them
Research example of question sets to get closer.
Responsiveness
Degree to which:
- You believe that your partner understands your situation, emotions, needs, opinions
- You believe that your partner values, respects, and validates your self
- You believe that your partner acts in ways that care for and support the self
Key aspect of the development of intimacy
Implicit attitudes
Automatically activated associations, which are often learned through repeated exposure to a person, place, item, or issue. In some cases, we may be predisposed to learn these automatic associations, because they would have been adaptive for survival in our evolutionary past.
Explicit attitudes
Attitudes we explicitly report that we feel or believe about a person, place, item, or issue. These may be shaped by our values, social norms and other beliefs about the target stimulus.
Social proof
People tend to copy the actions of others to determine how to behave in a given situation. Marketers use social proof as a compliance technique to influence consumer behaviour, through showing a potential customer that their friends/family/neighbours have also bought/agreed to/done the same thing.
Scarcity principle
Compliance technique where you rely on the fact that people tend to place higher value on things that are in short supply.
Social facilitation
The mere presence of others can boost arousal in a way that facilitates the dominant response, or most likely behavioural reaction to that task.
Social loafing
The tendency for individuals to expend less effort on a task when they are doing it with others rather than alone.
General aggression model
A framework for knitting together various factors that, in combination, predict the likelihood that people will act aggressively.
Kin selection
An evolved or adaptive strategy of assisting those who share one’s genes, even at a personal cost, as a means of increasing the odds of genetic survival.
Empathy gap
The inability to accurately simulate the mental suffering of another person.
Prejudice
A negative attitude towards a group or its members. Theories that may explain why it arises: realistic group conflict theory, and social identity theory.
Discrimination
A tendency for individuals to receive different treatment or outcomes as a result of their membership in a given social group.
Realistic group conflict theory
Negative intergroup attitudes can develop whenever groups compete against one another for access to the same scarce resources.
Social identity theory
People tend to think positively about themselves, and that is automatically extended to their social groups, or ingroups.
Symbolic racism
The tendency to redirect one’s prejudice toward a racial or ethnic group to the policies that might benefit that group.
Implicit racial bias
Differential treatment resulting from the automatic activation of, or failure to control, negative attitudes or stereotypes about members of a racial group.
Aversive racism
A tendency, even among egalitarian-minded people, to have unconscious negative reactions to people of other racial or ethnic outgroups.
Contact hypothesis
The suggestion that prejudice can be reduced through friendly or cooperative interactions between members of different groups.
Ex: Robbers Cave Experiment where groups of boys were driven apart (realistic group conflict theory) then brought together through cooperation.
Parental investment theory
Suggests that women’s greater expenditure of time and effort leads to far greater caution in selecting a single, long-term mate who will stick around to provide support and protection.
Triangular theory of love
Suggests that passion, intimacy, and commitment are the points of a triangle, and various combinations of these elements create different variations of what love can be.
Need to belong theory
The need-to-belong theory in social psychology is the idea that humans have a fundamental need to form and maintain social connections. This theory suggests that this need is innate and nearly universal, and that it shapes human behavior, cognition, and emotions.
