Chapter 12: Social Psychology

How are attitudes shaped?

1) Classical conditioning: pair a deodorant with a celeb, later look at the deodorant and get a + feeling 2) Operant conditioning: Rewarded with good grades => positive attitude towards studying. 3) socialisation: (caregivers, peers, teachers, religious leaders) e.g. form an attitude about fashion influenced by brother's beliefs.

What are the two factors that diminish conformity?

1) Group size: one or two, naive participant not conform; three or more - more likely to conform; levels off at a point - 13 members are not likely to conform than 7 members. 2) lack of unanimity.

Briefly describe Milgram's shock experiment.

1) One condition, teacher shock from another room 2) the other con, teacher sit next to the student being shocked. 3) Results: 1st condition, 2/3 obeyed 2nd condition, fewer than 1/3 obeyed. 4) conclusion: people will do evil things given by insistent authority figures, but they would be less willing if they are more personally responsible.

What are the 3 strategies used to influence others to comply?

1) foot-in-the-door-effect: If people agree to comply to a small request they will more likely to agree to a larger undesirable request 2) door in the face: introducing a cheaper product after offering a much more expensive. Makes use of reciprocity - seller already compromised to customer must also. 3) low-bailing strategy: seller increasing the price after the initial offer. the big decision was to buy the product so most would not decline the higher price.

What are the ways that aggression can be expressed?

1) nonhuman animals: fighter over a mate or defending territory from intruders 2) Humans: physical violence is common amongst children; Adults use words or symbol to threaten, intimidate and emotionally hurt others.

What are the factors that can trigger aggression?

1) observational learning 2) media violence 3) social rejection can trigger defensive mechanisms (e.g. school shootings) 4) heat (e.g. more crimes occur in the summer)

What are some of the factors that increase compliance?

1)people in good mood 2) fail to pay attention because people want to avoid conflict and do the requests without carefully considering. Therefore give a reason for requesting somebody even if it makes little sense.

What areas are activated when we see people in pain?

1. Mirror neurons are generally more activated when considering in-groups in pain. 2. In general the fusiform face area, the nucleus accumbens, the insula and the amygdyla are differentially activated when considering members of in groups vs. out groups.

Does the fundamental attribution error occur across cultures?

Cultures differ in terms of interpreting the situational factors, they all place the same emphasis on personal factors. For example, Easterners are much more likely to take situational factors into account.

What is attitude accessibility?

Ease to retrieve attitude from memory. They are predictive of behaviours, more stable and resistance to change. (e.g. more easily you recall you like psych, the easier you will attend lectures and read the textbook.)

What does the desire to become a good group member and to not get ostracized lead to?

Engaging in behaviours they would otherwise condemn.

How are implicit attitudes like implicit memories?

Access this attitude from memory quickly with minimal effort like how we just know how to ride a bicycle without thinking too much about the specific steps. (e.g. buying a product endorsed by a celeb even though you don't have conscious memory of seeing them use it. It might just appear familiar).

What do all aggression triggers have in common? and what does this mean for the brain?

Any situations that lead to aggression involve negative emotions. Emotions interfere with the brain region associated with controlling behaviour to function correctly.

Define aggression

Behaviours with the intention to harm others.

What aspects of personality are more likely to be obedient?

Concerned with how others view them.

What is the role of prefrontal cortex?

Controlling emotion and behavioural reaction signals produced by the amygdala.

What is the correspondence bias?

Expectancy that people's actions correspond with their beliefs and personality. For example, someone follows orders to inflict harms is assumed to be an evil person.

Social norms?

Expected standards of conduct which influences behaviour.

What are personal attributions?

Explanations of people's behaviour that focuses on personal characteristics such as ability, effort and trait.

What are situational attributions?

Explanations of people's behaviours that focuses on situational factors such as luck, weather, accidents or other people's actions.

What's the difference between explicit and implicit attitudes?

Explicit attitudes are those that you can declare (I hate America) and implicit attitudes influence people's behaviours at an unconscious level.

What are considered nonverbal behaviour?

Facial expressions; gestures; mannerisms and movements by which people use to communicate.

What is the bystander intervention effect?

Failure of those around an emergency situation to offer help.

Why do people develop negative attitudes about something more easily than a positive attitude?

From an evolutionary standpoint, events that are dangerous are more crucial to survival. We can forgo a positive event more easily than an event hat might affect our lives. Therefore negative things are always a stronger motivating force than positive things.

How does human pass on the ability to live in social groups?

From an evolutionary standpoint, those who are left out of a group received dire consequences, thus people are motivated to stay in the group.

Extension from the previous question: Why do people behave this way?

From an evolutionary standpoint, those who work together and keep resources within their own group has a selective advantage over those who don't when it comes to competing for scarce resources.

What are the advantages and dis advantages of forming groups? And what do these lead to?

Group provides mating opportunities, protect from predators, assistance in hunting and gathering food. One downside is that there is competition for resources. Ultimately, this leads to the categorization of friends (suppliers) and foes (competitors).

What is the risky-shift effect?

Groups often make riskier decisions than do individuals.

What are the contacts that reduce prejudice and discrimination between hostile groups?

Have groups work towards superordinate goals - goals that make people cooperate.

What is Hamilton's concept of inclusive fitness?

He said that natural selection occurs at a genetic levels rather than personal. That is, transmitting genes is more important than protecting the individual.

What is Daniel Batson's view of why humans are prosocial?

Humans are prosocial because of empathy - this is the sharing of other's emotions.

What is Robert Cialdini's view of why humans are prosocial?

Humans have selfish motives: wanting to release negative mood or maintain a good public image.

Where does deindividuation occur?

In a crowd where their responsibilities are distorted (fail to intervene in suicidal attempts); anonymous (rioting by fans)(fans doing the wave); aroused; under pressure in a group (Stanford experiment)

What is minimal group paradigm?

In an experiment, ingroup members gave more money to each other despite knowing that giving money to outgroups wouldn't result in any negative effects. This occurs eventhough they were told that their group was arbitrarily chosen and hence the minimal group paradigm.

What is fundamental attribution error?

In explaining other people's behaviour, overestimate personal attributions and underestimate situational attributions. For example, Alex Trebek knows the answers in Jeopardy! before hand. Its not that he's smart.

What do we call groups that people belong to and groups that people don't belong to?

In groups and out groups

How can group thinking be prevented?

Leader must not express opinion too strongly at the beginning of meetings; carefully weighing pros and cons of each option.

Post decisional dissonance?

Makes us focus on our chosen options positives and focus on the negatives of other options instead of focusing on the positives every single of the options.

Thin slices of behaviour

Making a accurate judgment based on a few seconds of observation. For example, participants were asked to rate the teaching abilities of a lecturer using a silent clip. Result: rating similar to the ratings by instructor's students.

What is the meaning of the term groupthink?

Making a bad decision because group is concerned with group cohesiveness. For example, in 1986, Challenger was launched despite a problem with a part.

What is the out group homogeneity effect?

Members of outgroups are all alike. For example, Univ of Missouri students thinking that USC student body is not diverse whereas they think that their own student body is diverse.

Is MAOA entirely a violence gene?

Nope; a particular form of it is involved with antisocial behavior (not sure)

What is one down fall of IAT?

Not a good predictor of racial and ethnic discrimination attitudes.

What are the observable actions of a group when they are about to group think?

Not carefully process the information available to it; dissent discouraged; group members assure each other they are doing the right things.

What are the conditions for reciprocal helping to occur?

Occur among animals living in a social group; benefits must outweigh costs.

What is kin selection?

People are altruistic towards people who they share genes with. Increases the chance of its genes passing on.

Define in group favouritism.

People are more likely to distribute resources to ingroup members than outgroup members. For example, they might be more inclined to do their ingroups a favor or forgive them for their mistakes.

What is the elaboration likelihood model?

People can change attitude in 2 ways: 1)central route: this leads to actively considering the arguments presented using cognitive processes and change attitude accordingly. These are strong attitudes that last overtime 2)peripheral route: message is minimally processed. This route is much more impulsive . People change behaviours mainly on peripheral cues such as whether the person making the argument is attractive. More impulsive actions in this route which means attitudes are weak and prone to change.

What do other theorists say about why humans are prosocial?

People have an inborn tendency to help others. Young infants become distressed when seeing others crying.

What was the point of Milgram's experiment?

People obey insistent authorities. "People can do horrible things when ordered to do so by authorities."

When does persuasion most likely to occur?

People pay attention, understand and think that it's convincing. Message must also be memorable so that impact lasts.

What is attitude?

People's evaluation of objects, events or ideas.

Briefly describe Sherif's study of competition and cooperation.

Phase 1: compete; Phase 2: work together to achieve a common goal; Results: competition creates hostility. After cooperation, boys began to make friends with one another. Conclusion: Cooperation can reduce hostility between hostile groups.

What is the social brain hypothesis?

Primates have larger brains - specifically the prefrontal cortex - because they live in complex social groups that require brain power to follow group norms and know things that we should/should not do to offend others.

Which species are social groups common in?

Primates: chimpanzees dolphins

What is altruism?

Providing help when needed, without receiving a reward for doing so.

How can we explain altruism towards non relatives?

Reciprocal helping - you scratch my back, I will scratch yours. Get help for social group when needed.

How does does testosterone relate to aggressiveness?

Small relationship - may increase aggressiveness because it inhibits brain regions that control impulses. In addition, testosterone might be the result of aggression - related to social dominance. (90% sure)

How strong is the power of group membership?

So strong that people exhibit favoritism eventhough the grouping happened randomly.

What is jig-saw classroom?

Students work together and each member is an expert on one aspect of the assignment. This makes every member equally valuable.

What is the autokinetic effect?

Subjective visual illusion. People would not conform, according to Sherif's results if the perceptions were objective.

What is social loafing?

Tendency of individuals to not work as hard in a group as when they are alone.

Normative influence?

Tendency of people to follow the crowd and look less foolish.

What is compliance?

Tendency to do things requested by others.

What is the gene that is responsible for aggression and what is its role?

The MAOA gene controls the MAO enzymes, which regulates of serotonin and norepinephrine. Another name for it in the media is the "warrior gene"

What is the part of the brain that becomes active when participants gave the correct answer in conformity test?

The amygdala is activated signalling a fear response.

What did the experiment by Gray and colleagues in 2014 show?

The game only consisted of 80 lines of code which shows that human grouping happens based on a minimal set of rules.

What is Norman Triplett's model of social facilitation (1897)?

The presence of others generally enhance our performance

What is group polarisation?

The process by which the initial attitudes of groups become more extreme over time. For example, Groups making decisions that was initially favored by the majority of individuals in the group.

Why are men less often to do the same with other men in the group?

They are afraid that others might doubt their sexual identity.

Why do most people conform?

They conform not because they know the answer is right, they conform because they are afraid that they would look foolish if they do something that the crowd is not. This is attributable to normative influence.

Why are men in some cultures more aggressive?

They subscribe to the culture of honour. This means they protect their reputation through physical aggression by responding very aggressively to personal threats.

What is deindividuation?

This occurs when people are not paying attention to their pernal standards. In these situations, people act in ways they would avoid if they were self- aware.

What are the conditions in which group thinking occur?

Under intense pressure, facing external threats and biased in a particular direction.

How can people asses implicit attitudes?

Using IAT (Implicit Association Test): testing people based on how responsive they are to certain parings of words. For example, they may respond more quickly to female = bad than female = good.

Why is the medial prefrontal cortex less active when people consider members of outgroups?

We tend to dehumanize out-group members. For example, in WW2, Nazis labelled Jews as vermin.

What is cognitive dissonance?

When attitudes contradict with one another or attitude contradict with behaviour. This creates anxiety and tension. People reduce this tension by changing their behaviours or trivialise the discrepancies - smoking will not kill them that quickly.

What is Robert Zajonc's model of social facilitation (1965)?

When people are aroused, their performance can be enhanced or further impaired base on what their dominant response is. This entails that the required response needs to be well learned so that the performer doesn't suffer. For example, crowds distract pro golfers less than they distract novice golfers.

Informational influence?

When people assume that the behaviour of the crowd is the correct way to respond.

How do people shape their attitudes?

When people hear of something, they go and explore about them.

Describe the actor/observer discrepency

When people interpret their own behaviour, they people focus on dispositions, when they interpret other people's behaviour they focus on the situation. For example, when people are late, they blame traffic but when others are late we think that they are lazy. A meta analysis found that this effect is not common and mainly happens for negative events. This effects also occurs when we judge people we know well.

Explain justifying effort.

When people put themselves through pain and embarrassment to join a group, they experience a great deal of dissonance (because they don't normally do these things). They resolve the dissonance by inflating the importance of the group. After all, they worked so hard to get in that they believe that it's more important than it actually is.

Why do women show more bias towards other women in a group?

Women depend on women for nurturing, both fear man violence and also can freely express their affection for each other.

How does the study about cultural violence tell when someone is more aroused?

cortisol and testosterone increases

What to groups have a powerful influence over its members?

deviant individuals are ostracised.

What are some of the prosocial behaviours?

doing favours; offering assistance; paying compliments; subjugate egocentric desires; resisting temptation to insult of hit another person; being pleasant and cooperative.

What is the brain region associated with knowing what other group members are thinking?

medial prefrontal cortex.

What are the two conditions critical for group formation?

reciprocity - you scratch my back I scratch yours and transitivity - sharing friend's opinion, If Person A and Person B are friends, then if Person A likes Person C and dislikes Person D, then Person B will also tend to like Person C and dislike Person D.

Factors that effect persuasiveness of a message?

source: who delivers, content: what's being delivered and receiver: who processes the message. Most effective sources are credible and attrative. More credible attractive if similar to listener.

Redraw the elaboration likelihood model.

txtbook pg 524

What are the Four Horseman of Apocalypse?

1) Being overly critical 2) holding the partner in contempt 3) being defensive 4) mentally withdrawing from the relationship.

What are the 4 reasons for bystander intervention effect?

1) Diffusion of responsibility: bystanders expect others to help 2) Social blunders: emergency situations are sometimes ambiguous and people don't want to risk making a fool out of themselves. 3) Anonymous: people are less likely to help if they are anonymous. Thus, when calling for help, specifically call a person. 4) people weigh in their options: harm or benefits of helping. (For example, if they have to forgo an important final exam, they will be less likely to help)

How can we predict attitudes?

1) Strong and personally relevant (e.g. growing up in a Democratic household) 2) Specificity (e.g. attitudes towards recycling would predict how likely you will take soda can to a recycling bin than general attitudes towards environment) 3) attitudes formed through direct experience: seeing a first child grow up will inform your attitude on child rearing techniques. 4) Ease of retrieval

What are the ways to reduce obedience as Milgram has found?

1) Teacher could see and touch the student 2) The authority was giving orders form the phone.

What are the things that satisfied couples do?

1) deliver criticisms in a lighthearted way 2) Stay calm in an argument and try to see things from each other's point of view 3) Optimism: is linked to satisfying relationships

What are some of the ways that prejudice can be reduced?

1) imagining positive social interactions without out-group members 2) Bilingual instructions in schools 3) explicit efforts to train people (e.g. associating women with counter-stereotypical qualities)

What does altering serotonin levels lead to?

1) increase amygdala response to threat 2) disrupt prefrontal cortex's control over aggressive impulses.

Describe the theory of love that is based on attachment styles.

1) secure attachment style (parents warm and supportive) => secured adult relationships: find it easier to get close to others and don't fear being abandoned. (60% adults) 2) insecure attachment style (parents cold and distant) => insecure adult relationships: hard to trust others, partners can make them uncomfortable (25%) 3) ambivalent attachment style => insecure: clingy, constant being afraid that partner might leave (11%). IMPORTANT: findings based on memory=> might be distorted. Attachment can also changed when paired with a partner with a different style.

What are the general personal characteristics that people like and would love to be friends with those who possess them?

Admirable personality - tendency towards group (e.g. kind, dependable , competent and trustworthy. Not too perfect b/c can be perceived as not human) and physically attractive.

What is conformity?

Altering one's behaviour to match those of other people of to match other people's expectations.

How to make arguments strong?

Appeal to emotions; Repetitive; one sided arguments for gullible crowds and both sides considered with skeptical crowds.

What is the the what is beautiful is good stereotype?

Attractive people are less likely to be perceived as criminals; are given lighter sentences when convicted of crimes; are typically rated as happier, more intelligent, more sociable, more capable, more gifted, more successful, and less socially deviant; are paid more for doing the same work

Are attractive people more better off?

Attractive people are like to become successful, but they are not necessarily smarter or happier. No correlation between grades and looks. Not happier because of the self-esteem issue that good things come to them because they are attractive, not because they deserve it. Also, looks can fade with age.

Why do stereotypes often lead to prejudice and discrimination?

Evolution: 1) only certain types of people are prejudiced 2) discriminate to protect self esteem. 3)treat others as scape goat for their daily problems. 4) MOST IMPORTANT: people tend to favour their own group over other groups and stigmatise those who pose threat to their group.

What does the evolutionary point of view tell us about how we are attracted to each other?

Females are attracted to faces that show status (higher testosterone shown by a higher width to length ratio) and males are attracted to physical appearance. Females behave this way because they seek someone to protect them and their off spring. And males behave this way because they seek fertility and youth to pass along their genes.

How do happy and unhappy couples differ in terms of attributional style?

Happy: Attrbute good outcomes to personal factors and bad outcomes to situational factors. Vice versa for unhappy couples.

Describe Payne's experiments on stereotypes and perceptions

Hypotheis: Stereotypes can influence basic perceptual processes 1) white participants are shown either a pic of a black man or a white man 2)After the viewing they are shown either a tool or gun and categorise them as quickly as possible. Results: participants who were shown a black man face identified a gun more quickly and even mistook tools for guns.Conclusion: stereotypes affect perception.

What is subtyping?

If people see something that is not typical of stereotype, they form a special category instead of altering the stereotype. For example, a racist who thinks Latinos are lazy may categorise Jennifer Lopez into an exception rather than changing the stereotype.

Discrimination

Inappropriate behaviours/treatments towards a group of people as a result of prejudice.

Define social identity theory.

Ingroup members perceive themselves to be in the same social category, thus value their group and take pride in their membership.

What is the "pratfall effect"?

Making small mistakes can lead people to like you more than if you're too perfect.

Prejudice

Negative feelings and opinions about a group of people.

What are stereotypes and are they all negative?

No, they are our brains streamlining of social information based on a person's subscription to a group so they can be processed quicker.

How can we inhibit stereotypes?

People can have stereotypes but can act in a nondiscriminatory way. Takes an amount of self control, using the frontal lobe, to override the amygdala response to threats.

What is compassionate love?

People experience passionate love early on but they also experiences compassionate love later on in enduring relationships. This love is based on trust and intimacy. Therefore it is more about caring and supporting each other.

What else do people find attractive?

People find average faces more attractive because of the mere exposure effect. However, attractive average faces are more favourable to unattractive average faces.

How do birds of a feather flock together?

People similar in attitudes, values, interests tend to like each other more. In high school people tend to be friends with those of the same year in school. (e.g. IB students are only friends with each other, soccer players.)

How can proximity and familiarity form relationships?

People tend to form friendships with people who are in the same group as they are. This is proximity because if you are in the same group with someone (e.g. club, dorm) you are more likely to run into them. Proximity can have its effects because of familiarity - people like familiar things much more than unfamiliar ones. HOWEVER, familiarity can sometimes product contempt because of how people are differnt from us. we prefer those who are similar to us.

What are illusory correlations?

People tend to take information that confirms their beliefs about stereotyping into account and disregard everything else. Therefore they see relationships that don't exist because they only notice the information that confirms the stereotypes in their heads. For example, stuck in traffic behind an older driver. Has a stereotype in mind that older people are bad at driving already. Match behavior to stereotype that older drivers are worse at driving. Form a false relationship between age and driving. Fail to notice the times stuck behind younger drivers.

What is passionate love?

Portrayed in the media; Intense urge to be together, when together, always sexually aroused. High activity in the dopamine reward system similar to drug use.

What is modern racism?

Prejudice that is more subtle which coexist with racist beliefs. For example, condemn racist attitudes towards Latinos but unwilling to help a Latino in need.

What is accommodation?

Respond positively or constructively to negative behaviours.

What type of face to people find most attractive?

Symmetrical ones.

Neophobia

Tendency of humans to fear anything new.

What is the matching principle?

Tendency of the most successful couple to be the most physically similar.

How does passion fade overtime?

The longer they are married, the less they will have sex and passionate love becomes compassionate love. Dissatisfaction would arise if they don't support each other socially and form an intimate compassionate relationship.

What is the mere exposure effect?

The more people are exposed to something the more they tend to like it. (e.g. we prefer the reversed image of ourselves)

Strategies to be in a healthy relationship?

Txtbook page 543

What are the racial differences in marriage retention?

US people 50% divorce; Asians most likely tor remain after 20 years. African American least likely to remain.

Can training reduce the effects of stereotype, using what training can officers become more just?

Using a computerised training where officers are trained to shoot armed targets without racial characteristics involved.

Why do people attribute behavior?

We live in a complex world and people crave predictability.

Do partners in good relationships idealize each other?

Yes - Those who love their partners most view partners better than others or better than how partners view themselves. Those with the most postive views on their partners are much more likely to still be in the relationship longer than those who have a "realistic" view of their aprtners. but can be unrealistic, needs to be from a good foundation - we want to be kind not unrealistic.

Who tend to have more symmetrical facial features?

biracial people more than uni-racial people.

Why is stereotyping necessary?

form impressions easier and deal with limitations of mental processing - due to limited resources people can't process every piece of information they encounter.

How we use perspective taking and perspective giving to override stereotypes?

perspective taking: actively contemplating the psychological experiences of other people; perspective giving: actively giving experiences of being discriminated against. Empowered group must be the one taking perspective. If the opposite happens, more resentment would occur.