Written answer concepts Flashcards
Petty and Brinol professional performance study
Body posture is used to communicate information. Participants asked to list 3 positive or negative personal traits relating to future professional performance in confident or doubtful posture. Found confident posture positive statements had high self attitudes and confident posture negative attitudes had low self attitudes
Smile mimicry study
Gunnery asked people to fake genuine smiles or imitate smiles (with eye change) from photos and raters were asked to judge genuineness. Found that genuineness of faked smiles was correlated with ability to produce smiles with eyes. Krumhuber asked participants to watch fake or genuine smile videos while facial musculature was observed. Zygo and Obi increase in genuine and Corru decreased
Co-laughter study
Co-laughter is simultaneous laughter between individuals in social interaction. Laughs can be spontaneous (genuine) or purposeful (volitional). Participants were better at identifying whether people are friends or not from laughter. Female-female friends were highest and female-female strangers were lowest. Geographical location does not change ratings
Marinovic proxemics study
Children watched videos depicting ostracism of someone else or videos of simple interaction. Measured how close child would sit next to an experimenter and found ostracism group sat closer
Fredrickson’s broaden and build theory
We experience positive emotions that leads us to broaden our cognitions (perception, decision making, action ideas) then build resources (psychological, social, physical) which leads to greater wellbeing and then more positive emotions (this is an upward spiral)
Bartlett gratitude study
Participant and confederate do joint task then hard individual task. Computer then either breaks and confederate fixes it or it doesn’t break. Gratitude group will spend more time helping confederate, will give more tokens to confederate, will throw ball to confederate
AirBnB study
Prejudice is a preconceived opinion not based on reason. The AirBnB study #1 had places with no rating, mediocre rating and 5-star rating with hosts with norwegian or norwegian-somali names. Found that no rating and mediocre rating had higher bookings for norwegian name but 5-star was the same. Study #2 had white or African American guest names with no review or positive review and no review had higher White acceptance but positive was the same. Then included non-positive review and found same for both groups.
Latent negative stereotype study
Expressing positive stereotypes signals that one holds underlying negative group-based beliefs. Gender study tried to recruit women to hospital saying ‘women are nurturing’ and found increase negative stereotype, sexist ratings and depersonalisation. Ethnicity study had people asking for math help saying ‘Asians are smart’ and found increased negative stereotype, racist ratings and depersonalisation. Ethnicity comparison study either had categorisation condition (i’m white, you’re asian) or positive stereotype (asians are good at math, i’ll do the other stuff) and found positive stereotype had higher negative stereotype, racist ratings and depersonalisation
Target stereotype study
Study #1 had women read neutral content or positive unrelated stereotype content or positive related stereotype then completed a math test. Positive related stereotype had lowest performance but only for women who cared about math. Study #2 had men read neutral content of positive related stereotype content. Men reading positive related stereotype had lower socio-emotional test performance but only for men who cared. Study #3 had men, women and Asian participants complete identity-salience task after taking easy test in stereotyped domain. Found that activation of positive stereotype increased belief in good performance in past and future performance of similar tasks
Correlational FB studies
Ryan measured social, family and romantic loneliness with self-reported usage patterns (active vs passive) and found users had higher family loneliness, equal romantic loneliness and lower social loneliness to nonusers. Phu measured loneliness, happiness, number of FB friends and FB persistence and found positive correlation between number of friends and happiness and negative correlation with loneliness. FB persistence was associated with higher loneliness
Longitudinal FB study
Teppers had Belgian HS students measure parent-related and peer-related loneliness and motives for FB use and found peer-related loneliness lead to social skills, decrease loneliness and personal contact motives at a later time period. Social skills and meeting people motives lead to peer-related loneliness at a later time.
Experimental FB study
Deters looked at intervention of posting more status updates than usual or learning about posting rates on loneliness and found increase of 8 posts per week and reduction in loneliness for intervention group explained by daily social connectedness and wasn’t affect by comments or likes
Types of love
Liking, companionate, empty, fatuous, infatuation, romantic, CONSUMMATE
Gottman’s main findings
Physiological calm (listening and empathy), trust (maximise benefits for both people), commitment (cherishing and nurturing). 6 year divorce or marriage conflict study.
Narcissism SM study
Selfie frequency and attractiveness ratings positively correlated with narcissism and all forms of narcissism correlated with self-interested motivation of SM use
Emotion contagion study
Emotional experiences spread through social pathways. Showed more or less positive emotional posts on FB and found if you saw more positive emotional posts you would post more positive and less negative content and opposite was shown for more negative emotional posts being shown
Types of aggression
Reactive aggression (impulsive, hostile), instrumental aggression (terrorism, fraud) violence (severe physical harm), indirect aggression (destroy reputation)
Goals of violence
Escape from aversive situations, attain a goal, release of negative affective arousal, resolve conflicts, gain respect, attack an enemy
Why do men and women fight
Men fight for status, competition of women and when opportunities to obtain resources are bleak. Women fight when fear of retaliation is low, when low risk forms of aggression can be used and when there is competition for men
Genes for aggression
Gene variants of MAOA and OXTR combined with life adversities lead to aggression (epigenetics). Low MAOA + adverse environment → biased development of neural systems → hyperactive amygdala and underactive vmPFC → increased negative emotional salience and increased likelihood and intensity of aggression
General aggression model
Personal (traits and attitudes) and situational (pain, weapons present) influence internal state through cognition, affect or arousal, leading us to appraise a situation leading to either a thoughtful action or impulsive action
I-cubed theory
Instigation (exposure to something that create an urge to aggress) + impellance (personal or situational factors that increase effect of aggressive behaviour inclinations) + inhibition (personal or situational factors that increase likelihood that people will not result in anger)
Dominance confrontations with cortisol
Cortisol increases when social stress among subordinates increases but decrease when social support increases due to the varying levels of status challenges
Social evaluative theory and cortisol
When we could be negatively judged by others, there is a pronounced response of cortisol levels. Seen in high cortisol levels in public speaking and high SET and subjective social status when individuals give speech in front of linguistic experts while doing mental arithmetic
Testosterone in winners
In tennis players, winners and losers have same levels of testosterone at start of game but losers lose testosterone quicker. Women who win an aggression paradigm increased testosterone 10 minutes post aggression but didn’ really increase cortisol
Testosterone and competing again
Mehta had participants told that they would be competing against each other on test on important type of intelligence (spatial processing speed) and losers who had an increase in testosterone had an increase in desire to compete again rather than doing an alternative task
9-player testosterone competition
Given either testosterone gel or placebo and competed in a 9-player competition to compete for rank position by responding fast to targets on screen. Participants with extra testosterone had a greater competitive effort when they were low ranking and low ranking unstable players wanted to play again in testosterone group
Oxytocin and aggression
Acute oxytocin administration can increase aggression after Trier social stress test and cold pain task. Individuals asked about inclinations for intimate partner violence and high physical aggressive individuals who had oxytocin had higher inclinations
Ethnocentrism and oxytocin
Individuals asked about uniquely human words and who they associated them with. The oxytocin group were more likely to attribute it to the in-group than out-group. When given moral dilemmas (blow up 1 person to save 5 and kick someone off a lifeboat) the oxytocin group chose the out-group more whereas the placebo group equally split it
Social salience hypothesis
Oxytocin enhances perception of social stimuli, enhancing responses to positive and negative stimuli and accounts for socially desirable and undesirable effects of oxytocin (magnifying prosociality with trusted people but diminishing it when interacting with out-group)
4 responses to provocation
Expression suppression, cognitive reappraisal, rumination, distraction
Trait reappraisal and suppression study
Participants completed emotion regulation questionnaire and measured baseline SBP, DBP and state anger. They gave a 2 min talk about life plans with bogus student who gave negative feedback and measured changes in SBP, DBP and state anger. Provocation increased anger, SBP and DBP but trait reappraisal attenuated responses to provocation but trait suppression didn’t
Reappraisal and heart rate variability study
Undergraduate women watched video of another student arguing the opposite position to their viewpoints on important political manner. They were asked to either reappraise, suppress or watch the video as normal and found that reappraisal had high change in heart rate during video but went back to normal at the end of the study
Bushman punching study
Undergraduates received bad essay feedback and were asked to punch a punching bag thinking of the person who made them angry (angry rumination), punch it while thinking of getting physically fit (distraction) or sit quietly for 2 minutes (control). Found that angry rumination had highest level of aggression and control had lowest
Reducing hatred through emotion regulation with cognitive reappraisal
Jewish-Israeli individuals assigned to reappraisal vs control condition and asked to read passage critical of Palestinian citizens within Israel. Right-winged individuals had a reduction in negative emotion and intolerance when in reappraisal group
Hatred
Group cannot change, behaviour repeated over long time, no forgiveness, appraisal of stable, malicious intentions to outgroup
Problems of social neuroscience
Interpretive ambiguity, time resolution, spatial resolution
Obstacles in bridging mind-body gap
Cost, invasiveness, inadequate technical knowledge, data acquisition, faulty inference
tDCS insulting feedback study
Send electrical stimulation into right or left side of the brain, asked 1 participant to write a persuasive essay on controversial issue and the other participant evaluate it. Either increase right or left PFC activity or sham. Participants were given insulting feedback and then completed the Taylor Aggression Paradigm where half of the trials were won and they could noise blast the loser with varying noise levels and duration.Found increase in aggression after insulting feedback in relation to increase left PFC activity, minor increase for right and minor decrease for sham for angry participants
Ostracism tDCS study
Completed cyberball activity with tDCS stimulation to right or left PFC, got to pick a partner of the opposite sex to be 1 or the 2 others playing, ostracised by this partner or not. Excluded individuals with left PFC increase had higher levels of jealousy
Dissonance reduction
Subtract dissonant cognitions, add consonant cognitions, increase importance of consonant cognitions and decrease importance of dissonant cognitions
Batson belief disconfirmation
Teenagers at church camp completed measures of religion then read an article claiming jesus was a hoax and measured belief in jesus and article. 24% accepted disconfirming article as truth. Part 2 had them read an anonymously published article with confirmation jesus isn’t real. Measure of religious belief increased posttest for believers who did doubt the existence of jesus in the first part
Burris shooting article study
Religious participants read studying about innocent kid who died by shooting when grandmother and father prayed for protection. The grandfather (baptist minister) quoted to say we must believe in the lord. Measured transcendence and affective reactions. Transcendence condition completed the scale after the news article and no transcendence condition completed it before the article. Participants who engaged in more transcendence after article had less agitation. Then made them complete no questionnaire, distraction questionnaires or religious affirmation questionnaires and found religious affirmation had least agitation.
Error justification study
Women participate in sex discussion with some listening to group discussion, some having to read erotic words to experimenter before listening and some reading erotic stories to experimenter before listening. Those who had to read erotic stories rated discussion as less boring and more interesting
Hypocrisy paradigm study
Students made speech about AIDS and safer sex to video camera that may be shown to HS students or developed message but didn’t give the speech. Then asked to list circumstances surrounding past failures to use condoms or not. Given opportunity to purchase condoms with money at end of the study. Speech and condom failure group purchased more condoms than other groups
Swann’s self-verification theory
Receiving positive information about oneself can cause dissonance for someone with a negative self view
Aversive consequences
Feeling personally responsible for producing foreseeable negative consequences will result in an attitude change
Kool-aid experiment
Drank pleasant or unpleasant kool-aid drink and had to write statements that says they liked beverage under low or high choice and high choice unpleasant group had higher rating than low choice unpleasant group
Action based model of dissonance
Conflicting cognitions interfere with affective decision making and sometimes they have to make hard decisions. View what you chose to do as more positive and what you reject as more negative. Induced compliance paradigm, given high or low choice to write counterattitudinal essay. Found high choice group had more left frontal cortical activity but when you reduce this through training for 4 days, their attitudes revert back to attitudes of rejected choice
Supine body posture experiment
People completing a difficult task in upright positive have greater liking of incentive but when in a supine position they don’t have this liking and also nullifies the chosen/rejected choice change in attitudes
Contonia conspiracy study
Individuals were shown two speeches (1 boring, 1 interesting) and asked to rate how entertaining they found the article, their emotions and rated conspiracy beliefs about the article and they found the entertaining test was rated as more entertaining, higher emotional intensity and more conspiracy beliefs. A similar study was conducted using Jeffery Epstein’s death with a conspiracy condition that he was murdered and a control condition where he committed suicide and the same results were found. These studies then included an evil perception measure and found a significant indirect effect for both evil perceptions.
Berlin airport conspiracy study
Participants read conspiracies about the Berlin airport having a secret basement hiding a military base and measured belief in conspiracy when manipulating state anger (neutral memory recall vs angry memory recall). Found that there was an interaction between trait anger and manipulated anger. The higher the scores on trait anger leads to higher conspiracy belief only when anger is recalled.
Psychological processes involved in conspiracy theories
Pattern perception, agency detection, threat management, alliance detection
Inoculation conspiracy study
Participants were either completing a news-sharing task or rating the accuracy of a single headline unrelated to covid before the news-sharing task. Found that the non-covid accuracy group were more likely to share the real headlines in the news-sharing task compared to the control group. This is because it nudges people to think about accuracy before sharing
Terror management theory
Desire for self preservation + uniquely human awareness of death = potential for overwhelming terror (managed by cultural worldviews and death-transcendence)
Culture anxiety buffer
A set of beliefs about the nature of reality shared by a group of persons
Anxiety buffer hypothesis
If a psychological structure provides protection against anxiety, we should strengthen it to reduce anxiety. Negative correlation between self-esteem and anxiety. Raising self-esteem reduces anxiety in response to graphic death-related videos and reduces physiological arousal in response to anticipation of electric shock
Mortality salience hypothesis
Reminders of mortality should intensify efforts to bolster and defend our worldviews and self-esteem. Judges creating bonds for prostitutes completed a death anxiety scale or neutral scale before sentencing and death anxiety scale had higher bond. Uni students who were asked about mortality students had more unfavourable views towards prostitutes
Self-esteem and worldview defence
Manipulated self-esteem prior to mortality salience and reactions to pro- and anti-US essayists, raised SE mortality salient group were less positive towards supporter of worldview (protection from MS) whereas neutral SE were more positive
Aggression mortality study
Participants reminded of death or not then given an essay either supporting or not supporting their political views. Then did a second study on allocating an amount of hot sauce to the author of the essay. Those who had worldview threatened and were reminded of mortality gave higher amount of hot sauce
Climate change and mortality salience
Told of global climate change or local catastrophe and were reminded of mortality or dental pain. Global climate change MS group showed more support for peacemaking
