Psych Chapter 16

What was the main conclusion of Milgram's studies?

-"Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process"

What happened in the Festinger & Carlsmith study?

-Asked people to complete a boring task in order to instill a negative attitude about the task, then offered the subjects either 1 or 20 dollars to persuade a new batch of subjects that the tasks were fun and interesting -Those in the 1 dollar group rated the tasks more highly than those in the 20 dollar group, because they had adjusted their own ideals on the task to fit the persuasion much more than the 20 dollar group had

Dispositional/internal attributions?

-Assuming a person's behavior is caused by personality -Some internal stable characteristic

What are attitudes? How do attitudes relate to actions?

-Attitudes -Beliefs and feelings that predispose our reactions -Attitudes seek actions, actions affect attitudes -We seek consistency

What are attributions?

-Attributions are inferences about the causes of behavior

How do these tend to change over the course of a relationship?

-Begins with passionate love, but that tends to be fleeting and companionate love seems to emerge over time

What is conformity? Compliance? Obedience?

-Conformity -Changing ones' belief or behavior to match that of a group due to unspoken group pressure -Compliance -Submission made to a request from someone who is not an authority figure -Obedience -Involves succumbing from a demand from authority

What did Jane Elliott do?

-Designated blue eyed children in her class as the superior group, and brown eyed children as inferior -Gave superior group greater privileges and put the brown eyed group at a disadvantage -Initially, there was no reaction to the superiority/inferiority, but then once given a justification for why the blue eyed children were superior, they became arrogant and their grades improved; while the brown eyed children became subservient and their academic performance suffered

What is diffusion of responsibility?

-Diffusion of responsibility refers to the tendency of a person to be less likely to take responsibility for an action or inaction when others are present

What is cognitive dissonance?

-Discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognitions simultaneously -Example: -Wanting to smoke but knowing that it is unhealthy

What is the foot-in-the-door technique? The door-in-the-face technique?

-Foot in the door technique -Start with small request, then larger intended request once small request is obeyed -Door in the face technique -Large request, then small request

What does the GRIT strategy entail? (see text and powerpoint)

-Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension Reduction -Strategy designed to de-escalate international tensions -Make a small, unilateral concession to the other side, while at the same time communicating a desire that this gesture will be met with an equal concession from the other side -If the other side responds positively, then another concession can be made, and so forth

What is group polarization? Groupthink? Under what conditions is groupthink most likely? (see text and powerpoint)

-Group polarization -tendency for groups to make decisions which are more extreme than the individual inclinations of its members -Groupthink -Group members try to reach a consensus through minimizing conflict and without critical evaluation of opposing ideals or viewpoints -Most likely when a group has links to one another and the group itself

What is social psychology?

-How we think about, influence, and relate to one another -How things affect us, and how we affect other people

What are some factors involved in helping?

-If need for help is clear -If people know each other -If person needing help is judged to be deserving -If person seems similar to us -If we are not in a hurry -If we are in a good mood -Population density -Costs and benefits

What are implicit attitudes? What do measures of implicit attitudes reveal?

-Implicit attitudes -Positive or negative thoughts, feelings, or actions towards objects which arise due to past experience which one is either unaware of or which one cannot attribute to an identified previous experience -Measures reveal how closely connected particular concepts are in our minds

How does the case of Kitty Genovese relate to the bystander effect?

-Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in an attack that took over 30 minutes and was witnessed by 38 people, none of whom helped her -This relates because many saw but no one offered help

What is deindividuation? (see text and powerpoint)

-Loosening of self-awareness in a group setting -causes antinormative and disinhibited behavior -Mobs

What happened in the Zimbardo prison study (aka Stanford prison experiment)? What is the main lesson of this study?

-Mock prison situation -Subjects took on their assigned roles much more immensely than Zimbardo had predicted -Guards subjected prisoners to obedience and sometimes psychological torture -Prisoners allowed this to happen, and some even prohibited other prisoners from resisting the obedience -Main lesson of the study is that people are easily convinced to obey a certain societal protocol when presented with social and institutional support

What happened in the Asch conformity experiments?

-One subject was placed in group with 6 other "subjects" -Other subjects were informed of goals of experiment -Had to answer question about length of lines on flashcards -Goal was to see if all of the subjects prior to the actual subject answered the question blatantly wrong, would the one real subject alter his answer? -Results showed that when presented with this situation it was extremely likely for the subject to change their answer to mimic the answer of the rest of the group

What is passionate and companionate love?

-Passionate love -Intense, sexual, emotional, and temporary -Companionate love -Deep, intimate, steady

What is the matching hypothesis?

-People have a tendency to form long-standing relationships with others who are equally as physically attractive as they are -Influenced by reality of choices, ease of obtaining the date, and desire of match

What is the bystander effect?

-People tend to not offer assistance in an emergency situation where others are present

Situational/external attributions?

-Person's behavior is caused because of the situation they're in

How do prejudice and stereotypes maintain inequality?

-Prejudice and stereotypes maintain inequality because they seem to justify it

What are mirror-image perceptions in terms of enemy perceptions? (see text and powerpoint)

-Reciprocal views of one another often held by parties in a conflict -Example: -Both parties may view themselves as the moral and just one, while viewing the other as wrong and aggressive

What factors influence attraction?

-Situational and personal factors -Environment -Physical proximity (geographic nearness) -Mere-exposure effect -Like something that's familiar -Similarity in attitudes, beliefs, interests, opinions, habits, SES, background, religion, race, education, intelligence -Physical attractiveness -More important in early stages -Perceive attractive people as having positive qualities

What are the social, emotional, and cognitive roots of prejudice? (social inequalities, learning, ingroup favoritism, scapegoating, confirmation bias, illusory correlations, just-world phenomenon, blaming the victim, hindsight bias)

-Social roots of prejudice -Existence of social inequalities -Justification by stereotypes -Learning -Emotional roots of prejudice -Ingroup favoritism -Tendency to prefer your own group -Scapegoating -Blame others when things go wrong -Enhances self esteem -Jane Elliot's brown eyes/blue eyes experiment -Cognitive roots of prejudice -Just-world phenomenon -Belief that people get what they deserve -Blaming the victim -Hindsight bias -Outcomes seem obvious after the fact -Blaming the victim -Privileged fail to notice their privilege -Confirmation bias -People prefer information which supports their own beliefs -Illusory correlation -Seeing a relationship one expects to see in a set of data even if it does not exist

What are stereotypes? What is prejudice? What is discrimination?

-Stereotypes -A popular belief about specific types of individuals -False assumptions that all members of a group are the same -Prejudice -Evaluations and judgements of a person based on group membership -Discrimination -Differential treatment of people due to group membership

What is the actor-observer bias?

-Tendency to make dispositional attributions and situational attributions for our own behaviors

What is the fundamental attribution error?

-Tendency to overestimate dispositional factors and underestimate situational factors when judging the behavior of others

What were the results of Milgram's study?

-The results were: -Before the study was administered, people were polled on whether the subjects would administer the final 450 volt shock to their counterpart, and almost all responded that only 1 out of 100 would actually do it. -In reality, 65% of participants administered the final shock, demonstrating the vast power of obedience in social psychology

What happened in Milgram's obedience studies?

-Volunteer given role as "teacher", and the confederate, the role of the "learner". Teacher and learner were separated into different rooms , the teacher was given an electric shock from the electro shock generator as a sample of the shock that the learner would get during the experiment when the learner got an answer wrong, which would increase each wrong answer. Each time the teacher looked as if they were going to stop because they could not take inducing pain on the learner, they were encouraged to continue by the people conducting the experiment. -Goal -See if study participants would perform acts that conflicted with their conscience

What do laboratory experiments indicate regarding the effects of exposure to pornographic films (see powerpoint and text, p. 702, last 2 paragraphs)?

Exposure to rape myths (i.e., depictions of resistance then enjoyment) Increases acceptability of coercion Increases self-reported likelihood of committing sexual assault Television and acceptance of rape myth Link between pornography use and sexual aggression Decreases attractiveness of partner, perceives friendliness as sexuality, more desensitized to sexual aggression

Do those who enjoy privilege in a society tend to be aware of their privilege?

No

What are social scripts and how might they influence sexual and/or aggressive behavior? (see text)

Recommended sentences half as long in re-enacted rape trial after exposure Increase in aggression directed specifically at women after exposure Effects strongest for violent pornography and depend on viewer's personality