Exam One
What is social psychology?
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A scientific discipline.
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The study of how our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings are influenced by others (real or
imagined).
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Social psychologists are motivated by the desire to:
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Resolve social problems - motivated to have direct impact.
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Reduce prejudice and racism.
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Study social processes that result in unjust legal practices.
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Increase conservation and access to natural resources.
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Increase self-esteem and confidence, promote health and well-being in people of
all ages, and reduce depression and anxiety.
The self
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Self concept: our beliefs about ourselves, including attributes, who and what we are.
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Self-concept includes self-identity and it’s more expansive (takes on more) than
self-identity.
■
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Self-identity is more about the roles we take on.
Self-representations: attributes (causal explanations) that we (uniquely) pair with
ourselves.
Social cognition
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How we think about ourselves and the social world.
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How we interpret, recall and use social information.
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Our expectations can sometimes prevent us from perceiving the world accurately.
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Fundamental attribution error: overestimating dispositional causes and
underestimating external causes.
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False sense of security - attributing to internal causes lets you protect
yourself, causing the impression that you’re not vulnerable to something
similar - since it wasn’t caused by an external, uncontrollable factor.
The influence of groups
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Formation and functions of groups:
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Effects of groups on individual behavior.
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Group processes (groupthink, helping or not helping).
Research
Research methodology: how social psychologists do research
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Our own “folk” theories are susceptible to belief systems and values, which then
influence our interpretations.
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Confirmation bias, Hindsight bias.
Scientific theories:
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Rely on scientific method.
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Provide meaning; they go beyond describing behavior to making predictions.
Cognitive dissonance: when there’s a dissonance between your own beliefs and your
behavior, and it causes an ‘unpleasant tension state’.
○
For example, smokers know that smoking is unhealthy, which causes anxiety for
them, but they continue to do it.
The empirical process: Theory refinement
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A theory is a hypothetical prediction of a certain phenomenon.
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A theory is developed, specific hypotheses are derived from that tested theory.
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Based on the results obtained, a conclusion is made by either accepting or rejecting the
hypothesis.
Research methods
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Experimental methods.
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Independent variable, dependent variable, control variable.
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Experiments should be high in internal validity.
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Probability level (p<0.05).
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Experiments should be high in external validity.
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Psychological realism: are they behaving, thinking and feeling in ways
that are similar to real life situations.
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How can researchers tell whether the processes they’re studying are universal?
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We need to ensure that the participants are randomly selected from the
population.
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One of the best ways to increase external validity is by conducting field
experiments.
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Random selection - internal validity; random assignment - external
validity.
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Observational methods.
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Correlations:
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Correlation coefficients range from -1 to +1.
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Positive correlation: when one increases, the other increases.
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Negative correlation: when one increases, the other decreases.
In everyday life, perfect correlations are rare.
Ethical issues:
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Social psychologists are concerned with the welfare of their research
participants.
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The benefits to society - benefits must outweigh costs.
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Researchers must create vivid events that are involving for the participants.
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For researchers testing children, there’s an assent form. The researcher is
required to explain in kid-friendly language that the child is allowed to leave the
study at any time, and make sure the kids understand their rights.
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Guidelines to ensure the welfare of participants:
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Having an Institutional Review Board (IRB).
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NH committees - review research proposals and protocols.
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APA ethics code.
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Informed consent.
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Debriefing participants.
Unethical experimentation
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1946-1948, 696 Guatemalans were deliberately infected with Syphilis and Gonorrhea to
find out if penicillin would work - they didn’t inform the participants or receive their
consent.
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Started with using prostitutes to infect men in prison, then moved on to army
barracks and psychiatric institutions.
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Infected children from orphanages; inserted needles in their spine to draw out
liquid, pried open their legs to examine and insert cotton wool into them.
■
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“Treating us like we’re animals”.
From the 1930s to 1970s, in Tuskegee in Alabama, researchers found African-American
men infected with Syphilis - they left them untreated in order to observe the
development of the disease.
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The participants weren’t told the disease could be treated.
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Dr. John D. Cutler headed these experiments - after being told to shut down the
study in the US due to the illegality of the method, he took advantage of the lack
of human rights in Guatemala.
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In Nazi Germany, experiments were conducted on prisoners of war without informed
consent - these horrific research methods led to the establishment of the Nuremberg
Code of Ethics.
The Self
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Self-concept: our knowledge about who we are.
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Judgements others make of us, our thoughts about the judgements they make,
and social comparisons we make of ourselves or someone else makes of us.
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Upward social comparison: when you’re comparing yourself to someone better
than you - creates greater mental disorders.
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Downward social comparison: when you’re comparing yourself to someone who’s
in a worse off situation - is (for the most part) beneficial for the mental health of
the person in a superior position.
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Self concepts are made of self-schemas, which are mental representations or templates
that people use to organize self-knowledge.
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Like a mental criteria that makes you identify as an athlete, for example.
What determines our self-concept?
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The roles we play.
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The social identities we form.
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The comparisons we make with others.
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How other people judge us.
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Surrounding culture.
Self-reference effect: a tendency to remember information better if they relate to it
themselves.
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For example, it’s easier to remember a friend’s birthday if it’s one day before
yours as opposed to a few months.
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The self is a multifaceted view, including how we see ourselves over time and how one’s
sense of self evolves and changes.
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The self is not a fixed entity, it’s influenced by a number of factors and does change over
time.
Forming a self identity
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Self-awareness: the act of thinking of ourselves.
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Self recognition emerges around two years old in humans, this is when they can look in
the mirror and recognize themselves.
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The looking glass self: self-perception as a result of how we think others see us.
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People tend to see themselves as being more physically attractive than they are.
Spotlights and Illusions
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Spotlight effect: belief that others are paying more attention to one’s appearance and
behavior than they really are.
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Illusion of transparency: the illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be
easily read by others.
Knowing yourself via introspection
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When thinking about reasons, people focus on attributes of the attitude object that are:
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Accessible in memory.
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Presumed to be plausible causes.
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Easy to verbalize.
People do not have perfect access to the reasons for their attitudes - those that come to
mind may be unrepresentative of actual causes.
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Even when we rely on introspection, the reasons for our feelings and behavior can be
hidden from conscious awareness.
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Biases through mental contamination, affective forecasting.
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Misattribution of arousal mood.
The two-factor theory of emotion
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Emotional experience is the result of a two-step self-perception process in which
people:
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Experience physiological arousal, and then...
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Seek an appropriate explanation for it.
Misattribution of arousal
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The process whereby people make mistaken inferences about what is causing them to
feel the way they do.
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Misattribution: Attraction (Dutton & Aron, 1974).
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The experimenter was a woman, and the participants were heterosexual men.
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They conducted an experiment where there was a 400 foot suspended bridge.
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In condition 1, the female experimenter stood in the middle of the bridge, and
they were asked to do a survey and the woman gave her a card asking them to
call if they have questions.
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Almost 40% of the men called.
In condition 2, the female experimenter stood on the ground and approached
men for the survey and gave them her card.
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Only 9% of these men called.
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When a male experimenter was used instead, only 9% called the male
experimenter on the bridge and 5% called the male experimenter on the ground.
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Misattribution: Life satisfaction.
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A study proved that the weather conditions in the area the participants live in
affected their overall life satisfaction.
Self-awareness theory
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When we focus attention on ourselves, we compare our current behavior to our internal
values.
Averting attention from self-identity
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Consumer drugs or alcohol.
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Engage in other unhealthy activities (binge-eating).
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Self-harming behaviors (cutting, suicide attempts).
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Spiritual practices.
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Meditation and yoga.
Self-perception theory:
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When our attitudes and feelings are uncertain or ambiguous, we make inferences about
them by referencing our past behavior and the situation in which the behavior occurred.
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Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation:
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Classic study Greene, Sternberg, and Lepper.
Social Cognition
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Quick and automatic: outside of awareness, without reflection, acting on subconscious
ideas.
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When an unarmed man of color was shot by a cop who assumed he was armed;
he was acting on this type of thinking, by reflex and quickly.
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Prejudice and discrimination result from automatic or conscious, deliberative
thinking.
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While this type of thinking may have several negative consequences, it’s an
evolutionary phenomenon that aids survival.
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Controlled: intentional, voluntary, and effortful.
Social cognition: Low-effort thinking:
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People often size up a new situation very quickly: they figure out who is there, what’s
happening, and what might happen next.
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Schemas: encompass our knowledge about many things:
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Other people, ourselves, social roles (what a librarian vs an engineer is like),
specific events (what usually happens when people eat at a restaurant).
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Stereotypes: when applied to members of a social group, schemas are referred to
as stereotypes.
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Can be applied rapidly and automatically when we encounter other
people.
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Schema activation:
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Accessibility: when schemas are at the forefront of your mind, and thus
likely to be used when making judgements about the world.
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Priming: the process by which recent events increase the accessibility of
the schemas.
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Used in advertising.
Schemas are difficult to change even if evidence is presented to disprove the idea
- for example, when a jury is asked to disregard a piece of evidence or a
statement made by someone.
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Self-schema: the way we mentally represent information about ourselves.
How do you make decisions?
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Mental shortcuts - heuristics: efficient and usually lead to good decisions in a short
amount of time.
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The availability heuristic: cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in
terms of their availability in memory.
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People are more likely to die of lung disease than car crashes, but we tend
to assume crashes cause more deaths because more examples of it are
readily available.
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The representative heuristic: tendency to presume, sometimes despite contrary
odds, that someone or something belongs to a particular group if resembling the
typical member.
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Assuming the profession of a certain person depending on their interests,
the way they look, or any other features we think are typical to members
of that profession.
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The simulation heuristic: the ease of mind with which we’re able to construct
alternative outcomes.
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We place more weight on outcomes with alternatives, which are more
likely to influence our judgements and emotional reactions to these
events.
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Are chronic worriers more susceptible?
Counterfactual thinking: mentally undoing the past.
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What makes “if only” psychology maladaptive?
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When a family member is ill and they delay going to a physician, and if when
they go they are diagnosed with something life-threatening, you may think “if
only” I told them to go earlier.
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The easier it is to mentally undo an outcome, the stronger the emotional reaction to it.
Overconfidence barrier (Fischhoff, Slovic and Lichtenstein, 1977).
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Decrease overconfidence by teaching people about other views - allowing them to
understand there are other views - and teaching people about statistics or probabilities
of events.
Fundamental attribution error: the tendency for observers to underestimate situational
influences and overestimate dispositional influences upon others’ behavior.
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Like assuming question show hosts are more intelligent than the contestants, when in
reality they’re given all the answers beforehand.
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Why do we make the attribution error? Because we tend to observe people as objects,
and they’re the center of our attention at that point so we tend to temporarily ignore the
environment.
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Dispositional attribution.
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Situational attribution.
Cultural differences: individuals in collectivist societies are less likely to perceive others
in terms of personal dispositions.
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A Western culture tends to attribute errors to dispositional causes; this may
differ across cultures.
Exam Two
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Attitudes are made up of three components:
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Affective.
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Where do affectively based attitudes come from?
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Religious beliefs and values.
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Social standards: people with more symmetrical faces are
generally considered more attractive.
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Cognitive.
Conditioning.
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Behavioral:
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Behaviorally based attitude: an attitude based on observations of how
one behaves toward an attitude object.
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According to Bem’s self-perception theory, under certain
circumstances, people don’t know how they feel until they see
how they behave.
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People only infer their attitudes from their behavior only under certain
conditions:
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Initial attitude has to be weak or ambiguous.
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Only when there are no other plausible explanations for behavior.
Attitudes are directed towards qualities or characteristics that are relevant.
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What functions do attitudes serve?
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Predict future behavior.
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Form self-identities.
Implicit attitude:
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Affective priming: looks at affective responses to attitude object.
Attitude-behavior match:
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Assessment of attitudes:
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Be specific.
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Include intervening steps.
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Address other social factors (like stereotypes).
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Attitudes are a more distal predictor of behavior than intentions.
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Attitudes → intentions → behavior.
Abstinence-violation effect: occurs when someone, who has committed to abstaining from
engaging in certain unwanted behavior, has an initial lapse during which they engage in the
substance or behavior at least once.
Cognitive dissonance:
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Any two elements of knowledge can be consistent with one another or inconsistent.
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Ways we try to reduce cognitive dissonance:
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Changing behavior to reduce dissonance, justifying behaviors to reduce
dissonance.
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Internal vs. external justification
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Counterattitudinal advocacy: stating an opinion that contradicts one’s personal
beliefs or values.
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Dissonance effects:
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Dissonance and person perception:
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Derogating the victim.
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Ben Franklin effect.
Post-decision dissonance: dissonance aroused after making a decision that’s typically
decreased by enhancing the attractiveness of the chosen decision and negating the
positives of the alternative decision.
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When making a decision, you’re in doubt - but once you’ve made the decision,
you justify why it’s the best choice.
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Has a lot to do with irrevocability of the decision or how hard it is to revoke - so
you’re more motivated to agree with the decision.
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Insufficient punishment: the dissonance aroused when lacking insufficient external
justification for having resisted a desired activity - devaluing a forbidden activity.
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Less severe the threat of punishment is, the less external justification there is,
and the less external justification, the greater the need for internal justification.
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The power of mild punishment:
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Rach child asked to rate the attractiveness of toys, the most attractive
ones were then prohibited - the kids weren’t allowed to touch them.
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If they played with the toy, they’d receive either mild (“I will like you
less” ) or severe punishment (“I will be very angry”).
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No child touched the toys.
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When the experimenter returned, those in the severe threat condition
touched the toys and they rated the toy as more desirable - “I didn’t play
with it because of the punishment”.
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Children in the mild threat condition, they rated the toy as less attractive
- since the punishment was mild (insufficient), didn’t touch the toy
because they then thought “I didn’t touch it because I mustn’t have liked
it that much”.
Self-persuasion: a long-lasting form of attitude change that results from attempts at
self-justification.
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Large reward or severe punishment → external justification (I do or think this because I
have to) → temporary change.
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Small reward or mild punishment → internal justification (I do or think this because I’ve
convinced myself this is right) → lasting change.
Self-affirmation: one additional way of reducing dissonance is by trying to bolster the
self-concept in a different domain.
Conformity.
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Stanley Milgram.
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Participants: older men.
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Nervous laughter, smoking, jittery.
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People went up to 350v.
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Variations of the experiment:
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The subject has to force the victims hand onto a shock plate - obedience
dropped.
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Experimenter wasn’t present - orders were given by telephone; obedience
was three times more when the experimenter was present.
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Subjects could see the victim and his reaction to the shocks - obedience
dropped significantly.
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Experiment was moved off the Yale campus (because Yale is considered
with prestige and admiration) - obedience dropped again.
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“The results...were disturbing” - Milgram - people could perform this task
“...without limits of consciousness as long as they perceive the commands come
from someone of authority.”
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The results of the Milgram experiment:
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Average maximum shock delivered was 360 volts, and 62.5% went all the way,
delivering the 450V shock.
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A full 80% of the participants continued giving the shocks even after the learner
cried in pain and said his heart was bothering him.
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What affected the results?
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Proximity to the victim.
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Credibility of the experimenter and the institution of Yale.
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Presence of an authoritative figure (experimenter).
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Transference of responsibility: one of the participants even asked if the
experimenters take responsibility, and when given an affirmative
response, the participant continued delivering shocks.
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Rationalization of behavior and discrediting one’s own role in the
experiment by transferring responsibility.
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Reasons we obey:
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It was hard for the participants in Milgram’s study to abandon the norm
to obey for three reasons:
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The fast-paced nature of the experiment.
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The fact that the shock levels increased gradually.
Ethics of Milgram’s study:
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Critics said the experiment stressed the participants against their
will - when Milgram polled the participants, they said they
haven’t been stressed.
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But the critics argued that because participants have
obeyed the experimenter once, they could be lying to him.
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Argued that the participants’ self-concepts may have been
altered.
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Milgram stated that the ethical controversy was “terribly
overblown”.
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Conformity is divided into acceptance and compliance:
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Private acceptance: conforming out of a genuine belief that what others are
doing or saying is right.
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Public compliance: conforming publicly without necessarily believing in what
others’ are doing or saying.
Social influences
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Consequences of resisting social influences:
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If you disregard the norms of the group by failing to conform, two things would
likely happen:
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Members of the group try bringing you “back into the fold”, mostly
through increased communication,
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If you continue to resist, they may say negative things or leave you
behind.
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Informational social influence:
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Sherif (1936): made use of the autokinetic effect.
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In the study, participants estimated how much a light 15ft away moved.
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Independent variable (IV): if they were alone or with others.
Everyday life:
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The degree to which eyewitnesses conform to others when picking
suspects out of police lineups depends on the importance of the task.
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Those who expected to receive $20 for accurate identification were
correct most often when alone.
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When you’re highly motivated and it’s an easy task, people are
less likely to conform.
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“Mass psychogenic illness”: LeRoy illness, stress induced disorder where psychological
stress and anxieties manifested in a physical form.
○
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TCE (trichloroethylene) causes neurological disorders.
Mass psychogenic illness is the occurrence, in a group of people, of similar physical
symptoms with no no physical cause.
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Mass media may contribute to the worsening of mass psychogenic illness, by
acting as a stressor for those involved; but it can also help alleviate the
symptoms by educating people about the illness.
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There’s a social component to mass psychogenic illness, and it’s also relative to
an individual’s threshold of stress.
Persuasion
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Persuasion: process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or
behaviors.
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What paths lead to persuasion?
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Central route: occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and
respond with favorable thoughts.
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With this route, you’re thinking about things - how will this help me,
what’s the message?
■
○
More durable and more likely to influence behavior.
Peripheral route: occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a
speaker’s attractiveness or flashiness.
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Focuses on cues that trigger..
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Superficial and temporary attitude change.
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Seeing something you like, if you see someone familiar or likable or
famous, those positive vibes will transfer from that person to the product.
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Elements of persuasion (aka the Yale Attitude Change Model):
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Source of communication (who’s saying it):
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Perceived expertise or status of person delivering the message.
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We’re evaluating that individual and trying to figure out to what
extent we believe them and how they embody the ideals
associated with what they’re talking about.
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Likeability.
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Identification: the degree to which a person presents an ideal
image of the person we want to become.
○
For example, if you go into a voting booth, and you don’t
know much about the candidates, you’re more likely to
vote for a name that’s familiar.
■
So the signs and ads exposing the candidates to
voters does impact voting.
○
Trustworthiness: extent to which they’re making eye
contact, extent to which they argue against their own
self-interests.
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Impact of the source of communication has a less enduring impact - the
message carries most weight with long-term chance.
■
Impact of source:
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May change over time.
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Role of discounting cues.
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When people are exposed to a message containing a
discounting cue, they’re more likely to be persuaded over
time - sleeper effect
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For example, a discounting cue is when a pharmaceutical
ad has a “doctor” in the ad, but at the bottom it says “this
doctor is a paid actor”.
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Sleeper effect.
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Message
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Audience: how old they are, demographics.
Elaboration-likelihood model (ELM):
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If you’re highly motivated, you’re more influenced by central route
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If you’re less motivated, you’re more influenced by extraneous factors - leading you
down a peripheral route.
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Personal relevance of topic: more important, more influenced by central route.
○
The higher the relevance of the topic to them personally, more influenced by
stronger vs weaker arguments.
○
If it’s not personally relevant, people tend to pay less attention to arguments and
take shortcuts (heuristics) and go down the peripheral route (attractiveness of
speaker).
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How to achieve long-lasting attitude change
○
Those who base their attitudes on careful analysis of arguments will be
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More likely to maintain the attitude change.
■
More likely to behave consistently with the attitudes.
■
More resistant to counter-arguments.
Fear-arousing communications:
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Works best with moderate amounts of fear - more believable.
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If something extreme is shown, something that’s probably unlikely, people tend to
discount the message - if you make someone really anxious without giving them tools to
overcome the anxiety - they don’t associate with the message.
○
If a anti-smoking ad shows the effects of oral cancer, smokers tend to discredit it
because it’s an extreme and unlikely effect.
○
But, if you showed them the graphic film AND gave them an instruction manual
on how to quit smoking - this is most effective in reducing the likelihood of
smoking.
●
When do fear-arousing communications fail?
○
If it’s so extreme, that people are overwhelmed and:
■
They won’t think rationally about the issue.
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They will deny the importance of the message.
■
Reactance theory (people will do something if they think you’re taking
away their freedom to do this thing).
Reactance theory:
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Importance of freedom + magnitude of threat to freedom → reactance → mental effects
(perceptual or judgemental changes) + behavioral effects (opposition, aggression).
Heuristic-systematic model of persuasion:
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Explanation of the two ways in which persuasive communications can cause attitude
change:
○
Systematically processing merits of arguments.
○
Using mental shortcuts (heuristics) - “experts are always right”.
●
Longer messages tend to be stronger than shorter ones.
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Emotions can act as heuristics - “how do I feel about this?” impacts our attitudes - if we
feel good, positive attitude and if we feel bad, negative attitude.
●
Successful attitude change techniques
○
If an attitude is cognitively based, change it with rational arguments.
○
If an attitude is affectively based, change it with emotional arguments.
Resisting persuasive messages:
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Attitude inoculation: making people immune to attempts to change their attitudes by
initially exposing them to counterarguments.
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How do you protect yourself against persuasion?
○
Being alert to product placement.
○
Avoiding ads when possible.
○
Teach kids to be aware of product placement.
○
Also teach younger people to be aware of the influence of peer pressure.
Exam Three
Direct Intergroup Conflict
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Robber’s Cave Study:
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Week 1: ingroup formation - rattlers and eagles in separate cabins; formed close
attachments to others in their own group.
○
Week 2: friction phase - groups brought into competition with one another;
groups developed strong prejudices.
○
Week 3: integration stage - subordinate goals introduced (eg., obtaining drinking
water for the camp).
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The study’s implications:
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Hovland & Sears (1940): correlation between economic conditions and racial violence.
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An experiment was conducted (Greenberg & Pyszczyski) where two debaters (one black
and one white) were ranked.
○
Control group: both debaters tied → no comment was made.
○
Experimental: white debater won → non-racist comments were made.
○
Experimental: black debater won → racist comments were made; disbelief that a
person of color won the debate.
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Blatant vs Modern:
○
Modern racism consists of outright denial that there’s discrimination against
minorities.
○
Blatant discrimination has decreased in the US in recent years - younger people
tend to view racial differences as stemming from social and economic factors,
not from inherited biological factors.
●
The contact hypothesis:
○
Contact is effective under certain conditions:
■
Groups roughly equal in status.
■
Contact involves cooperation and interdependence.
■
Contact is friendly, informal; social norms of equality.
■
Interaction must permit disconfirmation of negative stereotypes (eg.,
getting to know several outgroup members is key).
○
Reducing prejudice vis cognitive interventions:
■
Stereotypes can be reduced if people can be made to engage in
attribution-driven processing about unique characteristics of individuals.
■
Give people incentive to think accurately about others (eg., outcomes
that impact all individuals irrespective of group membership).
Social categorization
●
Ingroup-outgroup distinction affects attribution:
○
Desirable behaviors → ingroup → stable/internal causes.
○
Desirable behaviors → outgroup → unstable/external causes.
○
For example, if one group is doing a lot of community service, and you think “we
do more community service than them, they must be required to do it”. This is
outgroup attribution.
●
Ultimate attribution error:
○
Takes the fundamental attribution error a step further.
○
When ingroup members attribute negative outgroup behavior to dispositional
causes and attribute positive outgroup behavior to external factors (situational
causes or an exceptional case).
Social identity theory:
●
There are three mental processes involved:
○
Categorization: what is the social norm and how does that influence
categorization?
○
Social identification: we adopt the identity and behaviors of the group we
categorize ourselves to; our self-esteem and self-concept are tied to the social
group.
○
Social comparison: personal versus group characteristics; self-identity is defined
based on the group as a whole; look down on members of another group and
think favorably of your own.
Illusory correlation:
●
Perceiving a connection between two factors when no such connection actually exists;
this happens especially with stereotypes.
●
For example, feeling threatened around people of color because you perceive them to be
dangerous.
Ingroup-outgroup homogeneity effect:
●
Due to less exposure to out-group.
●
Cultural component: Americans really show OHE compared to other cultures (because
it’s a more individualistic culture).
Regressive racism:
●
A pattern of interracial aggression in US that causes individuals to regress to historical
modes of racial behavior when negatively aroused.
○
Historically “whites” discriminate against “blacks” and “blacks” also
discriminate against other “blacks”.
■
People discriminate between people of their own groups to preserve a
feeling of power and for an outlet for frustrations.
●
Mediating factors (exhibiting aggressive towards members of outgroups):
○
Anonymity: more likely to act out if their identity is exposed.
○
Threatened retaliation: when targets can act out and retaliate, aggressors are
less likely to be aggressive.
○
Victim’s expression of suffering: can stop aggressive behaviors; if the aggressors
view the group as less human, this might not be effective.
Direct intergroup conflict:
●
Groups may be in competition for scarcity of resources.
●
Even perceived threats (relative deprivation) can lead to prejudice.
Prejudice
●
Documentary: “Frontline”: teaching third graders about discrimination by putting them
in the shoes of a “minority”.
○
The kids were divided based on eye color, and asked to wear collars to distinguish
between the inferior and superior groups.
○
●
What is prejudice?
○
●
●
Experienced discrimination, teasing, alienation.
Defined by impact on the targets.
Definitions:
○
Prejudice: attitudes.
○
Stereotype: generalizations.
○
Discrimination: behaviors.
Racism: prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward people of a given race.
●
Sexism: prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior toward people of a given sex
(not defined in terms of gender identity, looks at biologically based genders).
○
Racism and sexism are institutional practices that unfairly target one group over
another.
●
Prejudice: implicit and explicit.
○
●
Dual attitude system:
■
Explicit (conscious).
■
Implicit (unconscious, automatic, implicit association test).
Most black adults have negative views about the country’s racial progress - study
reflecting black adults views on how the country has made “progress racially”.
Groupthink: The Challenger Explosion:
●
Why did they decide to go ahead with the launch despite the concerns of engineers?
○
Normative influence.
○
National and social pressures/time pressures.
○
Authority figures, undermines the concerns of engineers.
○
Desire to prove critics wrong (there was skepticism about NASA’s mission to
make Challenger flights routine).
○
Physical distance between NASA and the engineering firm - NASA was based in
Alabama and the engineering teams were based in Salt Lake City, so there was a
disconnect.
○
Multidisciplinary interactions between NASA and the engineers;
misunderstanding of technical terms can increase cohesiveness (which isn’t a
bad thing until there’s faulty decision making).
●
●
Antecedents of groupthink:
○
Highly cohesive.
○
Group is valued and attractive, and people really want to be members.
○
Group is isolated, protected from hearing alternative viewpoints.
○
Directive leader, who controls the discussion and makes his.her wishes known.
○
High stress: members perceive threats to the group.
○
Poor decision making.
Symptoms of groupthink:
○
Illusion of invulnerability: group is invincible, can do no wrong.
○
Metaphysical belief: “God is on our side”.
○
Self-censorship: people decide not to voice their concerns because they don’t
want to “rock the boat” and provoke negative consequences.
○
Pressure on dissenters to conform.
○
Illusion of unanimity: illusion that everyone agrees by not calling on people
known to disagree.
○
●
●
●
●
Mindguards: group members protect the leader from contrary viewpoints.
Defective decision making:
○
Incomplete survey of alternatives:
○
Failure to examine risks of favored alternatives.
○
Poor information search.
Avoiding the groupthink trap:
○
Remain impartial.
○
Seek outside opinions.
○
Create subgroups.
Groupthink and Cults:
○
Charismatic leader.
○
Isolation from non-group members/lack of external influences.
○
Induced dependency/fear of letting down group members or leaders.
Group polarization: group-produced enhancement of members’ preexisting tendencies;
a strengthening of the members’ average tendency, not a split within the group.
○
If you’re among a group of liberals, and you’re a liberal, and there’s a discussion
about politics, you’re likely to become more polarized (become more supportive
of liberalists).
■
●
Completely unintentional.
“Risky shift” phenomenon:
○
Occurs not only when a group decided by consensus; after a brief discussion,
individuals too will alter their decisions:
■
●
Business committees, military organizations, juries.
Groupthink: the process of making decisions as a group in a way that decreases
individual creativity and reduces individual responsibility.
●
How groupthink may have negative consequences: “Challenger: A Rush to Launch” - the
Challenger launch that was supposed to take a teacher (Christa McAuliffe) to Space but
failed and resulted in casualties because the teams working on the launch didn’t want to
postpone it.
Social facilitation: presence of others energizes us.
●
Increases performance on simple or well-practiced tasks.
●
Presence of others can hamper performance on difficult tasks::
○
○
Arousal and dominant response:
■
Dominant response: the reaction elicited most quickly.
■
Evaluation apprehension.
Zajonc: tested how quickly roaches can solve a maze; they solved easier mazes
more quickly in the presence of other roaches, but took longer to solve difficult
ones when grouped together.
Social loafing: people tend to put in less effort into tasks when placed in groups; individual
efforts cannot be evaluated → no evaluation apprehension → relaxation.
When brainstorming is ineffective:
●
Process loss: any group interaction that inhibits good problem solving:
○
●
Who’s the most competent group member? Can they disagree?
Failure to share unique information.
Transactive memory: the idea that the combined memory of two people is more effective than
the memory of either individual.
Groups
Groups: two or more people who have direct interaction, and have different goals, but influence
each other; tend to be alike in age, gender, beliefs or opinions.
○
Important for self-identity and social identity.
○
Groups tend to be homogenous - for cohesiveness.
■
Group cohesiveness: qualities of a group that bind members together and
promote liking; promotes members staying in the group, promotes
pursuing similar activities, and recruiting like-minded people.
●
Ostracism:
○
Prevalence is high - research suggests that most people encounter at least one
episode of ostracism each day (and ostracize others once per day too).
■
Harmful to feel excluded or experience periods of “silence” from those we
want to affiliate with.
■
In more severe situations, deadly ostracism happens when someone
refuses to have any form of contact with you.
○
Starts from a quite young age; can be traumatic psychologically.
●
Social norms: specify how all group members should act.
●
Social roles: specify how people occupying certain positions should act.
○
Potential costs to social roles: people lose sense of personal identity, forcing
people to act in ways inconsistent with their beliefs.
■
Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment: participants, even Zimbardo, got
lost in the social roles because of the imbalance of power, the secrecy and
lack of accountability.
■
●
Sense of deindividuation.
Deindividuation: getting lost in the role (in the crowd), causing people to engage in
behaviors that individuals would not do on their own/independent of others.
○
Mullen (1996) studied lynchings in the US - more people = greater brutality.
○
Watson (1973) did a cross-cultural analysis on warriors - hidden identity (masks,
face paint) = more killings and mutilations of enemies/prisoners.
○
Makes people feel less accountable (less likely that anyone will be singled out or
blamed.
○
Increases obedience to group norms.
○
Doesn't always lead to aggressive or antisocial behavior (depends on groups
norms).
Exam Four
The warning signs:
●
Criticism.
●
Contempt.
●
Defensiveness.
●
Stonewalling (a pattern where one person shuts down, often misinterpreted as being
calm).
Reciprocal liking:
●
People with a negative self-concept respond differently.
●
Physical attractiveness and liking: the beautiful are thought to be more sociable, sexy,
extraverted, happy, popular, assertive.
●
Similarity, Propinquity, Familiarity.
Zternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love
●
Based upon the strength of three components: passion, intimacy and commitment.
○
Consummate/passionate love: high levels of passion, intimacy and commitment.
○
Companionatelove: high intimacy and commitment, but lower passion.
Social exchange theory (an economic model):
●
How people feel about their relationships will depend on:
○
Perception of rewards.
○
Perception of costs.
○
Perception of alternatives.
■
Comparison level → satisfaction with relationship → commitment and
stability.
●
Equitable relationships are the happiest and most stable.
●
Inequitable relationships result in one person feeling:
○
Over-benefited.
○
Underbenefited.
How can we increase helping?
●
Reduce ambiguity, increase responsibility.
○
Personalized appeal: personalized request, eye contact, stating one’s name,
anticipation of interaction.
●
Socializing altruism.
○
Attributing helpful behavior to altruistic motives.
■
Overjustification effect (bribing people to do what they already like doing
→ makes it seem like their actions are extrinsically appealing, not
intrinsically motivating).
■
Get people to make a commitment in the future.
○
Modeling altruism: real-life modeling and media modeling.
○
Learning by doing: helpful actions promote the self-perception that one is caring
and helpful, which promotes further helping.
Genuine altruism
●
Our willingness to help is influenced by self-serving and selfless considerations.
●
Empathy: vicarious experience of another’s feelings.
●
The Holocaust:
○
Nicholas Winton saved over 650 children from Nazi Prague, Irena Sendler saved
over 2500 children when their parents were being sent to concentration camps.
○
Rescuers who helped Jews possessed an inner core of unshakable values and
beliefs that enabled them to take a stand against horrific injustices.
■
They acted in accordance with their own belief systems while living in an
immoral society.
●
9/11 attacks:
○
Rick Rescorla is credited with saving 3,700 people during the attack.
■
He was a highly decorated veteran, and was in the South Tower when it
was hit because he was trying to save more people.
●
The Bystander Effect:
○
○
Number of bystanders.
■
We’re less likely to notice a situation if we are not alone.
■
Illusion of transparency.
■
People are less likely to help when there are other bystanders.
Socio-economic status has an effect on whether people help.
Extraordinary altruism
●
Psychopathic behavior: poorer recognition of other’s fears (inability to recognize
distressed emotions → lack of compassion), amygdala is unde- reactive to fear,
amygdala is smaller.
●
Extraordinary altruists: better recognition of fears, hyperreactive amygdala, larger than
average amygdala (the opposite of psychopathic).
○
●
Not self-centered, their social circles are not centered, high humility.
Empathic distress: feeling traumatized and victimized when you give too much/are too
compassionate.
●
●
Empathy vs sympathy vs compassion.
○
Empathy: feeling what others feel.
○
Sympathy: understanding what others feel, but not necessarily feeling it.
○
Compassion: willingness to relieve the pain of others; capacity to help others.
Social Exchange and Social Norms:
○
Social exchange theory: theory that human interactions are transactions that
aim to maximize one’s rewards and minimize one’s costs.
○
Rewards: internal and external.
■
Internal rewards:
●
Guilt (feel bad = do good).
●
Exceptions to the feel-bad/do-good scenario?
○
Effect occurs only with people whose attention is on
others.
●
Feel good, do good.
○
■
Positive mood can dramatically boost helping.
Costs and rewards of helping:
●
Helping can be dangerous to yourself.
■
For eg., more likely to stay in a romantic relationship if the rewards you
get outweigh the costs.
○
Social Norms:
■
Reciprocity norm: expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who
have helped them.
●
Helps define social capital (supportive connections, information
flow, trust and cooperative actions → keeps a community healthy.
■
Social-responsibility norm: expectation that people will help those
needing help.
●
If we attribute someone’s need for help to external factors →
sympathy → helping.
●
If we attribute someone's need for help to dispositional factors →
no sympathy → no helping.