Chapter 4

What situational factors would create the highest levels of conformity?

1. High situational ambiguity (ex. when the lines are hard to tell apart), 2. high unanimity, larger group size ( at least 3), and people that we know (or of higher status) 3. people that value their personal relationships a lot (because you can expect to see these people again) 4. public response, 5. non-prior commitment, 6. low self esteem (sociometer theory of self esteem 7. collectivistic culture.

What percentage of people continued the shocking until the last uppermost level?

65% of people. Which is way more than people had thought.

What was the Brehm object rating study?

8 objects were rated for their desirability. The control group had no choice and was given one of the highest rated objects. The experimental group had to choose between two equally rated valued objects. Then the groups rated the objects again. With no choice, there was no change in perception. With the choice, however, the chosen object is rated higher and the unchosen object is rated lower even though they were previously rated equally.

What is conformity?

A change in belief or behavior occurring as a result of real or imagined group pressure.

What is a role?

A set of norms that defines how people in a given social position should behave.

What is selective exposure?

A way to minimize dissonance. People tend to seek information and media that agree with their views to avoid dissonant information

What is reactance?

Acting contrary to the wishes of others to protect or restore a sense of freedom. This is related to the romeo and juliet effect (dating someone only because your parents do not agree with it), and the social network effect, whatever that means.

At what point in the Milgram study did most people either stop or continue going on?

At 150 v, when the learner asks to be let out. Up until that point people had assumed that the learner was willingly participating in the experiment.

How is perceived trustworthiness achieved?

Argue against self-interest (related to augmenting principle) Don't be too obvious, otherwise people will come up with a counter argument before you even start.

What did asch's experiment show?

Asch conducted a perceptual judgement experiment. A standard line was compared to a group of comparison lines. it was pretty obvious as to which one was correct. Asch then had 6 confederates give the incorrect answer to see if the participant would give the incorrect or the correct answer. Out of 18 trials 12 were "critical" where the 6 would give the wrong answer. Many participants conformed.

What is impression management theory? (Self-presentation)

Attitude may change to appear consistent with others even there is no actual change in beliefs.

What is subjective probability influenced by?

Attitudes ( evaluation, and the consequences of something), subjective norms, and subjective perceived control

What is the difference between self-perception theory and cognitive dissonance theory?

Cognitive dissonance assumes that you know what your attitudes are and self-perception theory instead assumes you really don't know what your attitudes are.

How might the self persuasion effect occur?

Cognitive dissonance theory, self perception theory, and self preservation theory.

What is the frog pond effect?

Comparisons with a few people have a stronger influence on us than comparisons to a larger group of people

What is the difference between compliance and obedience?

Compliance is conforming to a request but with a private disagreement. Obedience is when compliance is caused by an authority.

What are the main determinants of social influence?

Conformity (norms), compliance (authority) , and obedience (authority).

What are the attribution errors?

Correspondence bias, (which leads to) fundamental attribution error, the actor-observer effect, defensive attribution, self-serving attribution.

What is the actor-observer effect?

Differences in the availability of information leads to differences I attributions. Actors attribute behavior to the situation, observers attribute it to the actor. *only true if the behavior is negative. This is self-serving bias.

How is dissonance reduced?

Directly by changing the attitude or behavior and indirectly by acquiring information (consonant cognition) or minimizing the importance of the inconsistency. Indirect means focus on the unpleasant feeling that accompanies dissonance rather than actually fixing the misaligned attitude and behavior.

What did the bond and smith meta analysis reveal about conformity?

Females are more likely to conform, the majority size needs to be 2 and stops having much of an effect at 13. It mattered if there was an in group or out group majority, and finally CULTURAL DIFFERENCES are the biggest contributor variable to conformity.

What is learned helplessness?

If you learn that nothing you can do changes the situation, you tend to give up. This is related to depression.

What is the IAT?

Implicit association test is based on the notion that we have implicit attitudes and by comparing the speed of response, we can measure effect. The longer time difference, the stronger the association. This is due to the underlying association that attitude influences behavior.

How do cultures engage in attributions differently?

Individualistic cultures are more likely to believe people have free agency and then will attribute behavior more to internal factors whereas collectivistic cultures will be more likely to attribute behavior to external factors.

What does it mean to be self-monitoring?

It is a personality dimension where people constantly monitor what they are doing and how they are acting. High self monitors are much more likely to conform

How is the who, the source of the persuasion evaluated?

Is the source credible? They will appear more so by dressing well, being older, being well known, confident, and having a nice title. Percieved expertise and trustworthiness are also evaluated.

What does the peripheral route of persuasion focus on?

It uses shallow processing that doesn't require effort. It is influenced by peripheral cues and heuristics. Following the expert is an example of this.

What did the Hoffling nurse study show?

Many nurses followed an unknown doctors order to administer a high dosage of an unknown drug to a patient even though they had previously said it was against their code of ethics and against hospital policy. High obedience plus low awareness is a particularly lethal combination.

What inspired the Milgram study?

Milgram was fascinated by what had happened in Nazi Germany, and he wanted to know what the power of the situation was over the people. Other people were making internal attributions about the Germans, and this was the self-serving bias at work for other nations. They were making the fundamental attribution error.

What happened in the Nisbett and Borgida study involving skin sensitivity shocks?

Most people willingly received shocks to test skin sensitivity, most people would not help someone appearing to have a seizure because of the shocks. Given accounts that someone took the shock or didn't help, people attributed their behavior to their personalities, failing to consider the consensus (covariation theory) and making the base-rate fallacy. This might occur because we want people to be free agents.

What influences explain conformity? What are the differences between them?

Normative influence (need to be liked, at the base of compliance), and informational influence ( need to be right, at the base of acceptance). Normative influences only change behavior. An informative influence changes both the belief and the behavior, and thus behavior is much more likely to be continued. Informative influence occurs in more ambiguous circumstances.

What are norms? What are the types of norms?

Norms are a code of behavior. Injunctive norms determine what ought to be done (laws) , and descriptive norms determine what is normal.

Where do attitudes come from?

Operant conditioning, classical conditioning, and our experiences.

What is self-perception theory?

Our own observable behavior is a way to know about internal values and attitudes. It assumes there is not a big discrepancy between behavior and attitudes. It's downfall though is that it cannot explain the negative feeling.

What is an attitude?

Our tendency to think, feel and act towards something. ABC affect, behavior, and cognition. Ex. Cognition makes you think a movie looks good affect makes you feel like you like an actor, behavior is that you will watch that movie.

What is the self-persuasion effect?

People stand for what they believe, but they tend to also believe in what they stand for. This is the basis for the foot in the door phenomenon.

Who has particularly high defensive attribution?

People that score high on just-world belief.

What was Festigner's experiment with getting paid for lying?

People were paid either $1 or $20 dollars for lying to a subsequent participant that an experiment was interesting. The experiment measured how much people rated enjoying the experiment after they had lied. The $1 liar claimed the most happiness because he had experienced the most cognitive dissonance and had thus changed his attitude because his behavior had already been carried out. The $20 liar had sufficient justification for lying and then did not experience dissonance.

What is the lowball technique?

People who agree to the initial request (low price) will continue to comply even when the requester asks for more ( increasing the price, fine lines).

What is consonant cognition?

Reasons for why a=b when it really doesn't. This can be found when positive parts are emphasized or nervous laughter.

What happens with insufficient justification?

Reduction of the dissonance by internally justifying ones behavior when the external justification is insignificant

What is the less leads to more effect?

Rewards just barely sufficient to cause dissonance cause greater attitude change than larger rewards.

What was the Olson and Fazio study with Pokemon?

Some Pokemon were shown with positive adjectives and atothers were paired with negative adjectives. When showed Pokemon again, people associated the positive paired Pokemon more positively. This is the basis of advertising!

What is salience?

Something in the environment that catches your attention, involved with the police interview study. Whatever is made salient in the environment effects perceived behavior. The more salient, the more likely it will be attributed to the person

What happens with over justification?

Start paying people to do what they like and they no longer have the insufficient justification that made their attitudes so positive.

What happened in the Stanford prison study?

Students were randomly assigned as prisoner or guard. Guards could not use physical force, but they could do anything else to maintain order. The lines between blurred and guards acted maliciously and the prisoners started to believe that they were inferior. This suggests the power of role-playing.

What is just world belief?

The idea that we possess that the world is fair. Therefore bad things only happen to bad people and vice versa.

What is the locus of control?

The degree to which you can control something. This influences motivation, expectations, etc. This effects attributional styles (optimistic or pessimistic) and is related to the idea of learned helplessness.

What is the chameleon effect?

The effect that by being with other people, you start to display the same behavior as them.

What is the principle of aggregation?

The effects of an attitude are most apparent when you look at a persons average behavior rather than isolated incidents.

What is the mere-exposure effect?

The more you see something, the more you come to like it. This is because the more you see something the easier it is for your brain to process it. We mistake the fluency of processing to the fact that we like it. This isn't as likely to happen with negative information because positivity and negativity promote different types of thinking. Positive thinking is more likely to be automatic, negative thinking is more conscious therefore it is less likely for this effect to occur.

What variables affected the rate of continuation in the shocking experiment?

The responsibility that the teacher felt, emphasis of pain, proximity to the authority figure, legitimacy of that authority, dissent among other members of the experiment, the foot in the door effect.

What are the two theoretical models for behavior?

Theory of planned behavior, attitude to behavior process model.

What is the theory of planned behavior?

There is a mediating factor between attitude and behavior. The mediator is the behavioral intention:the subjective probability of how we intend to behave.

What did the moscovici color perception study show?

There were 2 confederates in a group of 4 participants. They were asked to look at slides (blue) and the confederates were to say that the slides were in fact green. People in the experimental group got it wrong 8% of the time. This proves that minorities can have an impact on the group, but in order to produce change they needed to be consistent and unanimous.

What is defensive attribution?

This defends the illusion of control. It is a specific case of correspondence bias that happens concerning victims of a situation. It is a control problem, we like to blame victims for what happens so we can continue to think we have control over what happens to us in our lives. *rape victims

What is the sleeper effect?

This describes a phenomenon where a message that was originally discounted because of its source increases its impact over time.

What is self-affirmation? How is it related to self-complexity?

This is a strategy when the dissonance occurs in a strongly held area of the self. We resort to affirming the goodness of a different aspect of the self. The more independent roles you play, the more likely it is that you will have other areas to affirm and therefore self esteem is less effected.

What did the langer et al study in automatic processing show?

Tried to determine what the most persuasive arguments were for cutting in line at the copy machine. He manipulated the number of copies people had (how much of a inconvenience they would cause) and what people would say. 1. no explanation 2. valid reason for cutting 3. stupid reason for cutting (vacuous). The reasons for cutting worked with the small amount of papers because they were handled by automatic processing. But with the large stack of people people could only skip when they had the good reason. The people in line handled the request with conscious processing.

How are the biological origins of attitudes studied?

Twin studies.

What is the cognitive dissonance theory?

We feel tension when somebody is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions, and to reduce this, we often adjust our thinking. We can actually measure the negative arousal as a physical phenomenon.

What is the optimal distinctiveness theory?

We have a need for both similarity and uniqueness. Group membership is a common way to fulfill this need.

What happens in an attributional crisis?

When in a unique situation we can't explain other's behavior, and there is concern about how others would perceive this dissent. This doesn't really happen in real life situations.

What is the foot in the door phenomenon?

the tendency for people who have first done a small task to agree to a larger one

What are the steps in the fundamental attribution error?

1. When looking at the behavior assuming that the behavior was determined only by the person (internal attribution). 2. Taking into account the situation (allowing for external attribution). When we skip step 2. We make the f.a.e. The first step is automatic, and the second step requires conscious thought, and can therefore only be done when we have the time and resources for it.

What factors predict conformity?

1. ambiguity of the situation, 2. unamity, size, and status of the majority, 3. group cohesion, 4. private vs public response, 5. prior commitment, 6. self esteem, 7. type of culture environment.

What is the autokinetic phenomenon?

A perceptual illusion in a dark room, when a small light is shown it appears to move.

What do attitudes most strongly predict?

Behavior with church, safe sex, cheating, voting, and dieting.

What are the two routes to persuasion?

Central and peripheral.

How is decision making related dissonance resolved?

By highlighting the positive things about the thing we chose and highlighting the negative things about the one we didn't choose.

What is the difference between classical and operant conditioning?

CC is associated with unconscious learned association placing a formerly neutral stimulus before a reflex. OC involves punishment or reward after a behavior, and is conscious and voluntary.

What is persuasion?

Change in a private attitude or behavior as a result of receiving a message.

What happened in the Taylor and Fiske visual field experiment, and later in the Lassiter experiment with police?

Confederates converse in front of a people strategically placed. The person in the visual field is perceived as setting the tone and deciding what info is to be exchanged. People in the middle perceived the conversation as being evenly lead. With a police study (part 2) people were shown the video with the camera on the criminal or the camera on the cop or in the middle showing both equally. When the camera was on the criminal people thought they were more guilty, when focused on the cop the criminal was seen as less guilty.

What are the four distinctions between conformity and obedience?

Conformity occurs under: high peer influence, performance of a modeled act, implicit pressure, and people tend to deny it. Obedience occurs with: hierarchical structure, performance of a required act, explicit pressure, and people acknowledge the authority figure.

What does the central route of persuasion focus on?

Critical examination of the message. This takes effort and attention, therefore the validity of the message is really important. This route is more likely to produce long lasting attitude change.

What does the elaboration likelihood model explain?

Explains what situations cause the message to be consciously or automatically processed. this is related to the dual process model of automatic and conscious processing.

What makes the source extra awesome?

How attractive and likable the person is. Ex. hippies asked other hippies for ten cents, they were more likely to get the ten sense. we listen to people like us more.

What did sherif's study show?

Participants were asked to tell how far the light moved in the autokinetic phenomenon. Participants were tested individually and then in groups. On day 1, everyone saw the light differently, and on day 2 the perceptions start to get closer. By day 4 all the people in the group make the same assessment. This showed how norms were formed and is related to the chameleon effect.

What happened in the Jones and Harris study involving Castro essays?

Participants were given pro and anti Castro essays and were asked to rate the authors attitude from 1(anti) to 70 (pro). When told the author had free choice in which they chose, they rated the essays accordingly. When told the author did not have choice in which essay they chose, they still rated the pro Castro and anti Castro essays too far apart on the scale. They committed the fundamental attribution error.

How is perceived expertise achieved?

Say something to begin with that the audience agrees with, be introduced by a knowledgeable person, speak confidently, quickly, and without studying, avoid having a foreign accent.

How can attitudes be measured?

Self report measures (attitude livert scale), bogus pipeline method, lost letter technique, IAT. The problem with self report measures is that people want to present themselves well (self-presentation). The way to get around this is the bogus pipeline method which hooks people up to a fake lie detector. The lost letter technique sought to infer attitudes. Letter to nazi party vs doctor association , how many of the letters reach their destination?

Where do strong beliefs come from? What is belief perseverance?

Strong beliefs usually come from personal experiences. Belief perseverance is the fact that we like to stick to our ideas, it is difficult to change them

What did the litter experiment prove?

Subjects were given a chance to drop litter. IV1 was a clean vs a littered env. IV2 was if a confederate dropped litter or not. The effect of descriptive norms were stronger when the confederate reinforced that norm.

What is correspondence bias?

Tendency to discount the power of the situation when interpreting someone's behavior.

What did the followup Burger experiment show?

The followup experiment ended after 150 V, the point at which participants would either stop or continue on with the experiment. They made a very detailed screening of participants, with immediate debriefing. He tested the base condition (almost identical to the Milgram study) and then a model refusal condition in which 2 participants (1 confed) and when the first confed asks to stop and refuses to step in the other participant is called in to finish the experiment. There was little change from the 1963 rates, but this could have been because of the screening problem and they did not receive the same level of shock that the Milgram participants had.

What is the social identity theory? What are intergroup versus intragroup comparisons?

The idea that self concept includes category membership. Intergroup comparison looks at similarities and differences with members from the same group. Intragroup comparison puts your group against another group.

What is the attitude to behavior process model?

This occurs when we don't have time to consider factors and when we act impulsively. The situation activates an attitude which produces behavior. This may be directed by social norms, but in general attitude and behavior are directly linked. Ex. Cockroaches.

What happened with the ecstasy questionnaire?

Verified theory of planned behavior because behavioral intention could predict behavior.

When do attitudes predict behavior?

When attitude is specific to a certain behavior (global attitude will not predict a specific behavior), with regard to the person ( those who are high self monitors are more likely to conform, the situation, and the attitude (strength, intensity, and accessibility). In other words when attitudes are specific and potent and when social influences are minimal.

When do attitudes predict behavior?

When other influences are minimal, the attitude is specific to the behavior, and the attitude is potent

What causes dissonance?

When someone does something counter-attitudinal and it is freely chosen (low situational influence) , and therefore have insufficient justification. It can also occur with decision making.

What is self-perception theory?

When we are unsure of our attitudes we infer them like someone observing us would- by observing our behavior.

What are the three components in affecting persuasion?

Who ( the source), what (the message) , and to whom (the target)

What was the difference between asch's and sherif's studies?

With the autokinetic phenomenon there was no right answer. With asch's experiment there is a clear right and wrong answer.