Psych ch 12: Social Psych

Contact

- Most effective when contact is free of competition and equal status exists. - Across a quarter-million people studied in 38 nations, friendly contact with ethnic minorities, older people, and people with disabilities has usually led to less prejudice. - Contact is not always enough. Also important are cooperation, communication, and conciliation.

Neural Influences

- Neural systems facilitate or inhibit aggression when provoked Aggression more likely to occur with frontal lobe damage

Fundamental attribution error (FAE):

the tendency, when analyzing others' behavior, to overestimate the influence of personal traits and underestimate the effects of the situation.

Other-race effect

u(also called the cross-race effect and the own-race bias): The tendency to recall faces of one's own race more accurately than faces of other races.

uExplaining and attributing actions can have important real-life social and economic effects.

uA person's friendliness may be attributed to romantic interest or politeness. uUnemployment and poverty may be attributed to personal dispositions. The point to remember: Our attributions—to a person's disposition or to the situation—have real consequences

Foot-in-the-door phenomenon

uPeople agreeing to a small request will find it easier to agree later to a larger one uPrinciple works for negative and positive behavior

uSocial psychologists

uUse scientific methods to study how people think about, influence, and relate to one another uStudy the social influences that explain why the same person will act differently in different situations

Stanley Milgram's experiments (1963, 1974)

uintended to see how people would respond to outright commands. - Research participants became "teachers" to supposedly random "learners" and believed they were subjecting them to escalating levels of electric shocks. - More than 60 percent complied fully; other studies have shown even higher obedience rates. - People in these studies obeyed orders even when they thought they were harming another person.

Physical Attractiveness

•Affects first impression •Predicts frequency of dating and popularity Is influenced by cultural ideals and personal feelings.

Similarity

•Includes shared attitudes, beliefs, interests, age, religion, race, education, intelligence, smoking behavior, and economic status

Modern Matchmaking

•Internet-formed friendships and romantic relationships are on average slightly more likely to last and be satisfying. •A national U.S. survey showed that nearly a quarter of heterosexual and two-thirds of same-sex couples met online. •Speed-dating

Components of Prejudice

••Beliefs (stereotypes) ••Emotions (for example, hostility or fear) ••Predispositions to action (to discriminate)

Cooperation

••Cooperative contact, not contact alone, reduces conflict. ••A shared predicament or superordinate goal can have a unifying effect. ••Experiments with teens in 11 countries confirm that cooperative learning can maintain or enhance student achievement.

Conciliation

••GRIT (Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction) is alternative to conflict, to war or surrender.

Prejudice

••Means "prejudgment" ••Is an unjustified negative attitude toward a group and its members ••Often targets a different cultural, ethnic, or gender group

people are most likely to adjust their behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard when

••They are made to feel incompetent or insecure ••Their group has at least three people ••Everyone else agrees ••They admire the group's status and attractiveness ••They have not already committed to another response ••They know they are being observed ••Their culture encourages respect for social standards

Communication

••When real-life conflicts become intense, a third-party mediator may facilitate much-needed communication. ••Mediators can help each party to voice its viewpoint and to understand the other's needs and goals; change a competitive win-lose orientation to a cooperative win-win one.

blame-the-victim dynamic

Circumstances of poverty breed a higher crime rate, for example, which then can be used as a justification for discrimination.

Many streams of evidence confirm that attitudes follow behavior.

Cooperative actions, such as those performed by people on sports teams, feed mutual liking. Such attitudes, in turn, promote positive behavior.

Cultural Variation Over Time

Like biological creatures, - Cultures vary and compete for resources - Cultures evolve over time, and may change rapidly; cultural evolution is far faster than biological evolution - Cultural changes can be negative or positive Cultures shape our lives

Social exchange theory

Maximizing rewards and minimizing costs (accountants call it cost-benefit analysis; philosophers call it utilitarianism; psychologists call it social exchange theory)

Mirror-image perceptions

Mutual views often held by conflicting people, as when each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful and views the other side as evil and aggressive.

Conflict

Perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas in which people become enmeshed in potentially destructive processes that often produce unwanted results Among these processes are social traps and distorted perceptions

Social Influence on Behavior

Personality psychologists study qualities of the individual that might make a person shy, conventional, rebellious, and willing to wear a turquoise wig in public or a yellow shirt in a sea of blue. Social psychologists study the powerful role of social influence on how all of us behave.

Deindividuation

The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity. - Thrives in many different settings. - When we shed self-awareness and self-restraint—whether in a mob, at a rock concert, at a ballgame, or at worship—we become more responsive to the group experience, whether bad or good.

Social Inequalities

The privileged often developed attitudes that justify the status quo.

How We Reduce Cognitive Dissonance

change your behavior, change your cognition, or add a new cognition.

Self-disclosure

deepens intimacy

Attitudes

feelings influenced by beliefs, that predispose reactions to objects, people, and events. - Attitudes are especially likely to affect behavior when external influences are minimal, and when the attitude is stable, specific to the behavior, and easily recalled.

Equity

is an important key to satisfying and enduring relationship

Altruism

is an unselfish concern for the welfare of others.

Peripheral route persuasion

occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues; produce fast but relatively thoughtless changes in attitudes.

Central route persuasion

occurs when people are offered evidence and arguments to trigger thoughtful responses.

social identities

people associate themselves with certain groups and contrast ourselves with others.

Scapegoat theory

proposes that when things go wrong, finding someone to blame can provide an outlet for anger

social facilitation

(Triplett, 1898), the presence of others arouses people, improving performance on easy or well-learned tasks but decreasing it on difficult ones. - Our arousal heightens our reactions, strengthening our most likely response—the correct one on an easy task but an incorrect one on a difficult task. - Home advantage for team sports; doing something we do well in front of a friendly audience - Crowding effect; performers know that a "good house" is a full one

Milgram data

, 65 percent of the adult male "teachers" fully obeyed the experimenter's commands to continue. They did so despite the "learner's" earlier mention of a heart condition and despite hearing cries of protest after they administered what they thought were 150 volts and agonized protests after 330 volts. (Data from Milgram, 1974.)

Philip Zimbardo (2001) on terrorism

- "Fear and anger create aggression, and aggression against citizens of different ethnicity or race creates racism and, in turn, new forms of terrorism." - Prejudice levels tend to be high among economically frustrated people - In experiments, a temporary frustration increases prejudice - Negative emotions feed prejudice

Three causes of social loafing

- Acting as part of group and feeling less accountable - Feeling individual contribution doesn't matter and is dispensable - Slacking off, or free riding on others' efforts, which is especially common when there is lack of identification with the group

Aggression

- Any physical or verbal behavior intended to harm someone physically or emotionally - Examples of aggressive behavior: passing along vicious rumors, bullying in person or online, physical attack - Aggressive behavior results from interaction of biology and experience

Automatic Mimicry

- Behavior is contagious; what we see we often do. - Chartrand and colleagues (1999) demonstrated the chameleon effect with college students. - Automatic mimicry helps people to empathize and feel what others feel (mood linkage). - The more we mimic, the greater our empathy, and the more people tend to like us. - Suggestibility and mimicry are subtle forms of conformity.

Sexual Orientation Prejudice

- Dozens of countries have laws criminalizing same-sex relationships - Anti-gay prejudice, though rapidly subsiding in Western countries, still persists. In national surveys, 39 percent of LGBT Americans reported having "been rejected by a friend or family member" because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. And 58 percent reported being "subject to slurs or jokes" (Pew, 2013). - Higher rates of depressive, anxiety, and alcohol use disorders - Higher rates of cardiovascular deaths

Passionate Love

- Emotions have two ingredients: physical arousal and cognitive appraisal. - Arousal from any source can enhance an emotion, depending on how we interpret and label the arousal. - Sexual desire + a growing attachment = the passion of romantic love.

Aggression Genetic Influences

- Evidence from animal studies and twin studies; the male Y chromosome is a genetic marker, as is the MAOA gene - People who have low MAOA gene expression tend to behave aggressively when provoked

Explicit Ethnic Prejudice

- Explicit ethnic prejudice in North America has decreased over time. - Expressed support today for all forms of racial contact, including the once unpopular idea of interracial dating. - Overt prejudice has waned; subtle prejudice lingers. - Prejudice can be automatic and unconscious.

Forming Categories

- Humans categorize people by race: mixed-race people often identified by minority identity. - Similarities of others overestimated during categorization, creating "We" and "They."

Implicit Ethnic Prejudice

- Implicit racial associations Implicit Association Tests results: Even people who deny racial prejudice may carry negative associations - Unconscious patronization Lower expectations, inflated praise and insufficient criticism for minority student achievement - Race-influenced perceptions Fatigue can increase automatic reactions that amplify racial bias

Normative social influence

- Influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval - Conforming to avoid rejection or to gain social approval

Informational social influence

- Influence resulting from one's willingness to accept others' opinions as new information - Conforming because we want to be accurate - Conformity rates are generally lower in individualist cultures than in collectivist cultures, which put a higher value on honoring group standards

In-group

-us" - people with whom we share a common identity -Social definition of who we are includes who we are not

Media Models for Violence

- Media portrayals of violence provide social scripts that children learn to follow. - Viewing sexual violence contributes to greater aggression toward women. Playingviolent video games increases aggressive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

Just-world phenomenon

Good is rewarded and evil is punished.

Cultural factors

- individuals from individualist cultures (Westerners) more often attribute behavior to personal traits. - Individuals from collectivist cultures (East Asian, for example) more often attribute behavior to situational factors.

Hindsight bias

- often comes into play, promoting a blame-the-victim mentality (which also reassures people that terrible crimes couldn't happen to them). - People also have a basic tendency to justify their culture's social systems.

Outgroup

-"them" - those perceived as different or apart from our group

Gender Prejudice

- Overt gender prejudice has also declined sharply, but gender prejudice and discrimination persist For example, people tend to perceive their fathers as more intelligent than their mothers, despite equality between the sexes in intelligence test scores. - Gender inequality in wages For example, we pay more to those (usually men) who care for our streets than to those (usually women) who care for our children. - Worldwide, more women than men live in poverty, there are more illiterate women than men, 30 percent of women have experienced intimate partner violence, and sons are often valued more than daughters.

Obedience in the Milgram experiments was highest when

- Person giving orders was nearby and was perceived to be a legitimate authority figure - Research was supported by a prestigious institution - Victim was depersonalized or at a distance - There were no role models for defiance

The Power of Individuals

- Power of the individual (personal control) and the power of the situation (social control) interact. - A committed individual or a small minority with consistently expressed views may sway the majority. - The power of one or two individuals to sway majorities is referred to as minority influence.

Reinforcement, Modeling, and Self-Control

- Previous reinforcement for aggressive behavior, observing an aggressive role model, and poor self-control may all trigger aggression - Hot temperatures, physical pain, personal insults, foul odors, cigarette smoke, crowding, and a host of other aversive stimuli may also evoke hostility - "Manly honor" and "culture-of-honor" traditions may encourage aggressive behavior

Proximity

- Proximity—geographic nearness—is friendship's most powerful predictor - Provides opportunity for aggression or friendship, but much more often breeds the latter

Social Traps

- Situation in which conflicting parties, by each pursuing their self-interest rather than the good of the group, become caught in mutually destructive behavior - Social traps harm our collective well-being - Social traps challenge us to reconcile our right to pursue our personal well-being with our responsibility for the well-being of all. - Psychologists have explored ways to convince people to cooperate— - agreed-upon regulations - better communication, and - awareness of our responsibilities toward community, nation, and the whole of humanity

Lessons From the Obedience Studies

- Strong social influences can make people conform to falsehoods or capitulate to cruelty - Ordinary people are corrupted by evil situations - People get to real-life violence in tiny increments (the foot-in-the-door phenomenon): In any society, great evils often grow out of people's compliance with lesser evils - Milgram (1974): "Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process"

Biochemical Influences

- Testosterone influences the neural systems that control aggression - Alcohol effect—unleashes aggressive responses (even just thinking you've consumed it has an effect)

Group polarization

- The enhancement of a group's prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group. - Online communication magnifies this effect, for better (motivating positive social change in protest groups) and for worse (cementing prejudiced opinions in hate groups).

Groupthink (Janis, 1982):

- The mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony within a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives Groupthink is prevented when leaders: - Welcome various opinions, usually in diverse groups - Invite experts' critiques of developing plans - Assign people to identify possible problems

•Odds for deciding to help are increased when

- The person appears to deserve help - The person is in some way similar to us - The person is a woman - We have just observed someone else being helpful - We are unhurried or in a good mood - We are feeling guilty - We are focused on others and not preoccupied

Mere exposure effect

- The phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them

Norm

- Understood rules for accepted and expected behavior - Each cultural group evolves its own norms; when cultures collide, their differing norms can confuse or even anger

Cognitive dissonance theory

- We act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent. uWhen we become aware that our attitudes and our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes. - Brain regions that become active when we experience conflict and negative arousal also become active when people experience cognitive dissonance. - Through cognitive dissonance we often bring attitudes into line with our actions (Festinger, 1957). This can be used positively: Act as though you like someone and you soon may.

Remembering Vivid Cases

- We often judge the frequency of events by instances that come readily to mind. - Vivid—violent, for example—cases are more readily available to our memory and feed our stereotypes.

companionate love

- a deep, affectionate attachment - Passion-facilitating hormones (testosterone, dopamine, adrenaline) give way to another, oxytocin, that supports feelings of trust, calmness, and bonding - Equity - self-disclosure - positive support

role

- a set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave. - At first, your behaviors in a new role may feel phony, as though you are acting, but eventually these new ways of acting become a part of you.

Philip Zimbardo's 1972 Stanford Prison simulation

- controversial, but showed the power of the situation and of role playing. - Other studies have shown that role playing can even train torturers (Staub, 1989).

bystander effect

- effect is the tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present. - diffusion of responsibility.

Solomon Asch's (1955)

- experiments on conformity showed that people fear being "oddballs," and will often conform with other group members, even though they do not agree with the group's decision - Later investigations have not always found as much conformity as Asch found, but it is nevertheless a significant phenomenon. - Which of the three comparison lines on the left is equal to the standard line?

Self-fulfilling prophecy

: A belief that leads to its own fulfilment.

In-group bias

: Favoring of our own group

Conformity

Adjusting our behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard

Sherif (1936):

Alone in a dark room, participants estimated how far a light 15 feet away had moved. Even though the light did not move, the autokinetic effect caused the illusion of motion. The light seem to move, usually about 2-4 inches but as much as 10 inches. Days later, the participants did it again but not alone, this time with other people who reached a common estimate. Participants' estimates tended to conform to these.

Kitty Genovese

Altruism became a major concern of social psychologists after an especially vile act. On March 13, 1964, a stalker repeatedly stabbed Kitty Genovese, then raped her as she lay dying outside her Queens, New York, apartment at 3:30 a.m. Genovese's screams for help attracted attention, but no one called the police until 3:50 a.m., after the attacker had already fled.

Social-responsibility norm

Expectation that people should help those who depend on them

Reciprocity norm

Expectation that people will respond favorably to each other by returning benefits for benefit

study (Napolitan & Goethals,1979):

FAE Students attributed behavior of others to personal traits, even when they were told that behavior was part of an experimental situation.

Attribution theory

Fritz Heider (1958): The theory that we explain someone else's behavior by crediting either the situation (a situational attribution) or the person's disposition (a dispositional attribution).

Frustration-aggression principle

Frustration creates anger, which can spark aggression

Enemy Perceptions

Psychologists have noted that those in conflict have a curious tendency to form diabolical images of one another.

Social Loafing

Tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable

Social influence

The effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior

Culture

The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of people - Transmitted from one generation to the next - Transmits customs and beliefs that enable us to communicate with each other - Transmits agreed-upon rules to avoid confrontation

Social Pressure and Torture

Under strong social pressure, individuals will conform to the group even when this means doing something immoral. - In 2004, American soldiers' degrading abuse of Iraqis held at the Abu Ghraib prison sparked an international scandal and a great deal of soul-searching back home. Why did the soldiers humiliate their captives?

Misattribution of Arousal

When a woman approached men on a scary bridge and asked them to fill out a questionnaire, a high percentage of them were attracted to her and called her for a date. When the same woman approached men after they had crossed the bridge and had rested, relatively few called her for a date.

The reward theory of attraction

that we will like those whose behavior is rewarding to us, including those who are both able and willing to help us achieve our goals.

Social psychology

the scientific study of the way in which people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people.