social psych exam 1

example of the effect of good feeling

Irving Janis and colleagues (1965; Dabbs & Janis, 1965) found that Yale students were more convinced by persuasive messages if they were allowed to enjoy peanuts and Pepsi while reading the messages. Similarly, Mark Galizio and Clyde Hendrick (1972) found that Kent State University students were more persuaded by folk-song lyrics accompanied by pleasant guitar music than they were by unaccompanied lyrics.

Low self-monitors

Lower social skills are more easily persuaded by fact oriented advertisements (e.g., an ad that emphasizes the reliability of a car). exhibit behavior that is fairly consistent with their internal attitudes

_________________ people usually exhibit self-serving bias. They excuse their failures on laboratory tasks or perceive themselves as being more in control than they are

Nondepressed

Actor Observer Errors

Observers tend to view another's behavior as dispositionally caused but they tend to view their own behavior as situationally caused.

example of classical conditioning

The "Things go better with Coke" advertisement is an example of classical conditioning. The idea is to pair the product with "happy" times. Even Polar Bears are happy sliding on the ice and snow when drinking a Coke

University of Florida social psychologist, _________________ explored group members' self-serving perceptions. In nine experiments, he had people work together on some task. He then falsely informed them that their group had done either well or poorly. In every one of those studies, the members of successful groups claimed more responsibility for their group's performance than did members of groups that supposedly failed at the task.

Schlenker

example of false consensus effect

Sharad Goel, Winter Mason, and Duncan Watts (2010) found that Facebook users were 90 percent accurate in guessing when they agreed with their friends on political and other issues, but they were only 41 percent accurate in guessing disagreement. In other words, most of the time they thought their friends agreed with them when they didn't. Business students asked to make decisions about ethical dilemmas overestimated how many other students made the same choice (Flynn & Wiltermuth, 2010). White Australians prejudiced against Aborigines were more likely to believe that other Whites were also prejudiced

___________________Audiences Use Peripheral Cues

Uninvolved

These experiments point to a reason for the attribution error:

We find causes where we look for them

Self-Serving Attributions

We have a tendency to make internal stable attributions about our successes and external attributions about our failures. For example, after a success the individual thinks, "I did well on the test because I am smart." After a failure, this same person may think, "I did poorly on the test because the test was unfair." The leading hypothesis for this bias is that self-serving attributions function as self-esteem enhancers.

A _____________worldview predisposes people to assume that people, not situations, cause events

Western

Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence Bias) is more likely to occur in _______________

Western cultures

example of illusory correlation

William Ward and Herbert Jenkins (1965) showed people the results of a hypothetical 50-day cloud-seeding experiment. They told participants which of the 50 days the clouds had been seeded and which days it rained. The information was nothing more than a random mix of results: Sometimes it rained after seeding; sometimes it didn't. Participants nevertheless became convinced—in conformity with their ideas about the effects of cloud seeding—that they really had observed a relationship between cloud seeding and rain.

example of the Kulechov effect

a Russian film director who would skillfully guide viewers' inferences by manipulating their assumptions. Kulechov demonstrated the phenomenon by creating three short films that presented identical footage of the face of an actor with a neutral expression after viewers had first been shown one of three different scenes: a dead woman, a bowl of soup, or a girl playing. As a result, in the first film the actor seemed sad, in the second thoughtful, and in the third happy.

Presuming that attitudes guide behavior, social psychologists during the 1940s and 1950s studied factors that influence attitudes. Thus they were shocked when dozens of studies during the 1960s revealed that what people say they think and feel often has little to do with how they________________

act

Russell Fazio has identified one major factor that increases the likelihood that we will act on our attitude: ______________.

accessibility

Studies show that our perceptions of others are more __________ than biased

accurate

Products associated with _______________were better liked, as measured by an implicit attitude test, and were more often chosen

humor

Dweck has found that some people think that intelligence is _______________—they believe that people can learn new things but they can't really get any smarter. Others hold a different view: that intelligence is more malleable, that it can grow with hard work.

fixed

example of Attitude accessibility

if I say "snake," most people will immediately think, "bad, dangerous." If I say "Renoir painting," most will quickly respond, "beautiful." We all know people about whom we immediately think, "Oh, no, not that jerk again," or conversely, "Wow! What a wonderful person." These are highly accessible attitudes.

example of attitude heuristic

if John dislikes President Obama, he blames his policies for the recession, the high level of unemployment, and the huge deficit; if he likes Obama, he is apt to blame these problems on Obama's predecessor

gambling is an example of

illusion of control

our tendency to perceive random events as related feeds an ____________ —the idea that chance events are subject to our influence. This keeps gamblers going and makes the rest of us do all sorts of unlikely things

illusion of control

automatic

(impulsive, effortless, and without our awareness)

attitude

A belief and feeling that can predispose our response to something or someone.

self-fulfilling prophecy

A belief that leads to its own fulfillment.

conformity

A change in behavior or belief as the result of real or imagined group pressure

Kelley suggested a similar process when an ordinary person (a naive scientist) attempts to explain someone else's behavior—_____________________

the attribution process.

Most of those who have carried out suicide bombings in the Middle East (and other places such as Bali, Madrid, and London) were, likewise, ______________ men at the transition between adolescence and adult maturity.

young

to be called an individualist or a nonconformist is to be designated, by connotation, as a _____________" person. The label evokes an image of Daniel Boone

"good

There are a number of person variables that affect how a message is received. Two of the most important variables are _________________________

"need for cognition" and "self-monitoring."

The reciprocity norm

"obligates individuals to return the form of behavior that they have received from another." As Cialdini discusses, "the unsolicited gift, accompanied by a request for a donation, is a commonly used technique that employs the norm of reciprocity." One sales technique that uses the reciprocity norm is the "door in the face technique." When using this strategy, the idea is to make a large request that will be refused. After the refusal, a small request is made. Compliance with the small request is the desired goal

friendship/liking

"one should be more willing to comply with the requests of friends or other liked individuals." A number of studies have been conducted that find the variables of physical attractiveness, similarity, compliments (ingratiation), and cooperation all increase likeability.

Attention has been defined as

"the process of consciously focusing on features in the environment and oneself."

Judgment is defined as

"the process of using interpreted information to make impressions and to make decisions."

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines propaganda as

"the systematic propagation of a given doc- trine"

Malcolm Gladwell23 suggests that major social trends often change dramatically and suddenly through the mechanism of conformity when certain kinds of respected people happen to be in the right place at the right time. He calls these sudden changes, when a major change reaches a critical mass,__________________And he calls the people who induce these changes ______________

"the tipping point.", "connectors."

Research by Matthew McGlone28 reveals our susceptibility to such tactics. He found that college students were more persuaded by unfamiliar aphorisms that rhyme _____________than the same ideas presented in nonrhyming form ("woes unite enemies"). The peripheral route to persuasion can be surprisingly subtle—yet surprisingly effective.

("woes unite foes")

There are several ways in which communications can differ from one another. I have selected five ways I consider to be among the most important:

(1) Is a communication more persuasive if it is designed to appeal to the audience's reasoning ability, or is it more persuasive if it is aimed at arousing the audience's emotions? (2) Are people more swayed by a communication if it is tied to a vivid personal experience or if it is bolstered by a great deal of clear and unimpeachable statistical evidence? (3) Should the communication present only one side of the argument, or should it also include an attempt to refute the opposing view? (4) If two sides are presented, as in a debate, does the order in which they are presented affect the relative impact of either side? (5) What is the relationship between the effectiveness of the communication and the discrepancy between the audience's original opinion and the opinion advocated by the communication?

cult (also called new religious movement) A group typically characterized by

(1) distinctive rituals and beliefs related to its devotion to a god or a person, (2) isolation from the surrounding "evil" culture, and (3) a charismatic leader.

Research conducted during this era (1960's-1970's) compared the attitudes and beliefs of heavy viewers (more than 4 hours a day) and light viewers (less than 2 hours a day). They found that heavy viewers

(1) expressed more racially prejudiced attitudes; (2) overestimated the number of people employed as physicians, lawyers, and athletes; (3) perceived women as having more limited abilities and interests than men; (4) held exaggerated views about the prevalence of violence.

Hoping to restrain advertising's influence, researchers have studied how to immunize young children against the effects of television commercials. Their research was prompted partly by studies showing that children, especially those under age 8 years,

(1) have trouble distinguishing commercials from programs and fail to grasp their persuasive intent, (2) trust television advertising rather indiscriminately, and (3) desire and badger their parents for advertised products

A group is more effective at inducing conformity if

(1) it consists of experts, (2) the members are of high social status (for example, the popular kids in a high school), or (3) the members are comparable with the individual in some way.

Dissonance effects are greatest when

(1) people feel personally responsible for their actions, and (2) their actions have serious consequences. That is, the greater the consequence and the greater our responsibility for it, the greater the dissonance; the greater the dissonance, the greater our own attitude change.

What it does mean is that, by knowing some- thing about the way both inhibition and retention work, we can pre- dict the conditions under which either the primacy effect or the recency effect will prevail. The crucial variable is time; that is, the amount of time separating the events in the situation:

(1) the amount of time between the first communication and the second communication, and (2) the amount of time between the end of the second communication and the moment when the members of the audience must finally make up their minds.

Among the ingredients of persuasion explored by social psychologists are these four:

(1) the communicator, (2) the message, (3) how the message is communicated, and (4) the audience

In a series of experiments, Gifford Weary and her colleagues1 found that the likelihood of giving a self-serving explanation increases when

(1) the person is highly involved in the behavior; (2) the person feels responsible for the outcome of his or her action; and (3) the person's behavior is publicly observed by others.

What are the key factors that can increase the effectiveness of a communication or persuasive attempt? Basically, three classes of variables are important:

(1) the source of the communication (who says it), (2) the nature of the communication (how he or she says it), and (3) characteristics of the audience (to whom he or she says it).

However, rational thought requires at least two conditions: _________________________

(1) the thinker has access to accurate, useful information; and (2) the thinker has the mental resources needed to process life's data.

There are at least four ways in which the members of an audience can reduce their discomfort:

(1) they can change their opinion; (2) they can induce the communicator to change his or her opinion; (3) they can seek support for their original opinion by finding other people who share their views, in spite of what the communicator says; or (4) they can derogate the communicator—convince themselves the communicator is stupid or immoral—and thereby invalidate that person's opinion.

Prior exposure, in the form of a watered- down attack on our beliefs, produces resistance to later persuasion because

(1) we become motivated to defend our beliefs, and (2) we gain some practice in defending these beliefs by being forced to examine why we hold them.

two characteristics of the way information is presented ( ordering of information) and their effects on social judgment:

(1) what comes first, and (2) the amount of information given.

I have been describing two kinds of conformity in more or less commonsensical terms. This distinction was based upon

(1) whether the individual was being motivated by rewards and punishments or by a need to know, and (2) the relative permanence of the conforming behavior.

controlled

(reflective, deliberate, and conscious)

emotional control center

(the amygdala)

They found that a message from a high credible source was more likely to be accepted than a message from a low credible source. However, weeks later they found that the high credible source message decreased in acceptance over time and yet the low credible source message increased in acceptance over time _______________.

(the sleeper effect)

brain's sensory switchboard

(the thalamus)

if a modern Machiavelli were ad- vising a contemporary ruler, he might suggest the following strategies based on the theory and data on the consequences of decisions:

1. If you want people to form more positive attitudes toward an object, get them to commit themselves to own that object. 2. If you want people to soften their moral attitudes toward some misdeed, tempt them so that they perform that deed; con- versely, if you want people to harden their moral attitudes to- ward a misdeed, tempt them—but not enough to induce them to commit the deed.

common ways in which people form or sustain false beliefs

1. Our preconceptions control our interpretations. 2. We often are swayed more by anecdotes than by statistical facts. 3. We misperceive correlation and control. 4. Our beliefs can generate their own conclusions

the influence of other confederates who were pretend subjects had a large impact on the real subject. When two other pretend subjects rebelled against the experimenter, the number of subjects giving the 450 Volt shock declined to ____________. However, ominously, when two other pretend subjects obeyed the experimenter, the number of subjects who administered the maximum voltage increased to 93%.

10%

one survey found that only ___ percent of sixth-graders believed television commercials told the truth all or most of the time; by the tenth grade, only 4 percent felt they were truthful even most of the time.

12

Roger Johnson5 recently analyzed the content of television news programs, including the broadcasts of major and local networks for a period of 6 months. In terms of the number of stories and the amount of time devoted to the stories, violence, conflict, and human suffering dominated the news, accounting for more than _____________ percent of the newscast.

53

He found the bias to be especially strong in the local news, which devoted nearly _____________ percent of the typical newscast to violent crime.

80

availability heuristic

A cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory. If instances of something come readily to mind, we presume them to be commonplace

Russell Fazio and Carol Williams80 were able to make extraordinarily accurate predictions of who would vote for either Ronald Reagan or Walter Mondale in the presidential election of 1984.

About 5 months before the election, Fazio and Williams took a microcomputer to a local shopping mall and asked passersby to give their opinions about various issues, including an evaluation of each of the two presidential candidates. The computer recorded the speed with which they evaluated the presidential candidates. This was their measure of attitude accessibility. Later, Fazio and Williams contacted the subjects and asked them about their perceptions of two presidential debates. After the election, they asked for whom they had voted. The results showed that those individuals with highly accessible attitudes (fast responses) 5 months before the election were more likely to vote for their favored candidate and to perceive the presidential debates in a manner consistent with their attitudes.

_________________are among the most potent rewards and punishments for social animals because, in our evolutionary history, social exclusion could have disastrous consequences—namely being cut off from the resources and protection of the group in a dangerous world.

Acceptance and rejection

How does attitude accessibility influence behavior?

According to Fazio, attitudes are used to interpret and perceive an object selectively and to make sense of a complex situation.

example of vivid

As a reasonable and sensible person, you consult Consumer Reports and you learn that the car with the best repair record is the Volvo. Naturally, you decide to buy a Volvo. But suppose that, the night before you are to make the purchase, you attend a dinner party and announce your intention to one of your friends. He is incredulous: "You can't be serious," he says. "My cousin bought a Volvo last year and has had nothing but trouble ever since. First, the fuel injection system broke down; then the transmis- sion fell out; then strange noises started to come from the engine; fi- nally, oil started to drip from some unknown place. My poor cousin is literally afraid to drive the car for fear of what will happen next."

In 1969, Alan Wicker76 un- dertook a scholarly review of more than 40 studies that had explored the attitude-behavior relationship.

As he wrote, "Taken as a whole, these studies suggest that it is considerably more likely that attitudes will be unrelated or only slightly related to overt behaviors than that attitudes will be closely related to actions."

example of normative study ( peer pressure)

Asch conducted the seminal studies in this area. In these studies subjects looked at two cards, one had a single line called the standard line and the other card had three lines of different lengths called comparison lines. The subject's task was to match the standard line with the comparison line of the same length. Subjects would take a turn after hearing six or seven other subjects (actually confederates) give their answer out loud. The confederates picked a comparison line that was obviously incorrect. Would the subjects go along with the six or seven confederates who preceded them and likewise give the conforming incorrect answer? Asch found in studies with multiple trials that the subjects conformed on at least one trial 67% of the time. On the average, subjects conformed on any given trial about 35% of the time. During the debriefing phase of the experiment, subjects were asked why they conformed to an obviously incorrect answer. They made statements like "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

_____________________ Company is one of the best at employing the research findings gathered by social psychologists and marketers. Their one big blunder was trying to market "New Coke" in the 1980's

Coca Cola

According to_____________, children develop implicit theories about the permanence of people's defining traits—like intelligence or goodness. These implicit theories exert a considerable influence upon a child's judgments and behavior.

Dweck

Jonathan Freedman (1965) introduced elementary school children to an enticing battery-controlled robot, instructing them not to play with it while he was out of the room.

Freedman used a severe threat with half the children and a mild threat with the others. Both were sufficient to deter the children. Several weeks later a different researcher, with no apparent relation to the earlier events, left each child to play in the same room with the same toys. Of the children who had been given the severe threat, three-fourths now freely played with the robot; of those given the mild deterrent, two-thirds still resisted playing with it. Apparently, the deterrent was strong enough to elicit the desired behavior yet mild enough to leave them with a sense of choice. Having earlier chosen consciously not to play with the toy, the mildly deterred children internalized their decisions. Moral action, especially when chosen rather than coerced, affects moral thinking

Examples of Self-serving bias

I got the A in history because I studied hard. I got the D in sociology because the exams were unfair. I'm better to my parents than is my sister. Even though 50% of marriages fail, I know mine will be enduring joy. I know most people agree with me that global warming threatens our future.

example of Kelly's (1967) covariation cube theory of attribution

If Cathy is outgoing with her boyfriend, professor, and acquaintances (distinctiveness information), is outgoing at home, parties, and in class (consistency information), and is more outgoing than Charles, Mary, and Susan (consensus information), then we will make an internal attribution that Cathy is an "outgoing" person

Other experiments confirm the principle: People easily misperceive random events as confirming their beliefs

If we believe a correlation exists, we are more likely to notice and recall confirming instances. If we believe that premonitions correlate with events, we notice and remember any joint occurrence of the premonition and the event's later occurrence. If we believe that overweight women are unhappier, we perceive that we have witnessed such a correlation even when we have not (Viken & others, 2005). We ignore or forget all the times unusual events do not coincide. If, after we think about a friend, the friend calls us, we notice and remember that coincidence. We don't notice all the times we think of a friend without any ensuing call, or receive a call from a friend about whom we've not been thinking

example of operant conditioning

If you win a free Big Twenty Coke every now and then after twisting off the top of a plastic Coke bottle, you have been rewarded for buying the product. This should in turn make you more favorably disposed to buying more of the product in the future.

experiment by Edward Jones and Victor Harris

In this experiment, subjects read essays either favorable or unfavorable to Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba allegedly written by students in a political science course. Half the subjects were told that the essay writers freely chose the po- sition presented in their essays, whereas the others were told that the writers had been forced to take that position and were instructed to make the best case they could. Subjects then had to guess the essay writer's true attitude toward Castro. When the essay writers could choose a position freely, subjects assumed that the content of their essays reflected their attitudes: Those writing pro-Castro essays were believed to be pro-Castro, and those writing anti-Castro essays were assumed to be anti-Castro. This was not surprising. What was surprising is that the same results occurred even when it was made clear that the essay writer had been forced to argue an assigned position. In other words, essay writers forced to argue for Castro were assumed to be pro-Castro, and those forced to argue against Castro were assumed to be anti-Castro.

A study by Tory Higgins, William Rholes, and Carl Jones illustrates the role of priming in the formation of impressions about other people

In this experiment, subjects were asked to participate in two "different" research projects—one on perception and one on reading comprehension. The first experiment served to prime different trait categories; some of the subjects were asked to remember positive trait words (adventurous, self-confident, independent, and persistent), whereas the others were asked to remember negative trait words (reckless, con- ceited, aloof, and stubborn). Five minutes later, as part of the "reading comprehension" study, subjects then read an ambiguous paragraph about a fictitious person named Donald. The paragraph described a number of behaviors performed by Donald that could be interpreted as either adventurous or reck- less (e.g., skydiving), self-confident or conceited (e.g., believes in his abilities), independent or aloof (e.g., doesn't rely on anyone), and persistent or stubborn (e.g., doesn't change his mind often). The subjects then described Donald in their own words and rated how desirable they considered him to be. The results showed that how they were primed influenced their impressions of Donald. When negative trait categories had been primed, they characterized Don- ald in negative terms and saw him as less desirable than when pos- itive categories had been primed.

Another example of the fundamental attribution error is provided by an experiment conducted by Gunter Bierbrauer.

In this experiment, subjects witnessed a reenactment of a person's performance in Stanley Milgram's famous experiment on obedience to authority (described in Chapter 2). Recall that in this experiment, Milgram constructed a situation that elicited high rates of obedience; in this case, the behavior involved administering severe electric shocks to a "learner." Like most subjects in the original Milgram experiment, the person in Bierbrauer's reenactment showed a high level of obedience, administering the maximum level of electric shock. After showing the reenactment, Bierbrauer then asked his subjects to estimate how many of Milgram's subjects in general would be obedient in this situation. The results showed that subjects consistently underestimated the actual degree of obedience. Specifically, Bierbrauer's subjects estimated that only 10 to 20 percent of the people in this setting would give the maximum shock of 450 volts. In actuality, as you will recall, Milgram found that 65 percent of the subjects In other words, Bierbrauer's subjects assumed that this person was an aberration—that his behavior re- flected distinguishing personal dispositions (i.e., that he was particularly aggressive or obedient). They failed to attribute his behavior to the power of the situation to produce this behavior in most people.

minimal group paradigm.

In this procedure, originated by the British social psychologist Henri Tajfel, complete strangers are divided into groups using the most trivial, inconsequential criteria imaginable. For example, in one study, subjects watched Tajfel flip a coin that randomly assigned them to either "Group X" or "Group W." What makes Tajfel's research interesting is that significant results are often obtained on the basis of group identification that means very little. That is, the subjects are total strangers prior to the study and never interact with one another, and their actions are completely anonymous. Yet they behave as if those who share their mean- ingless label (X or W, for example) are their good friends or close kin. Subjects indicate that they like those who share their label. They rate them as more likely to have a more pleasant personality and to produce better work than the people who are assigned a different label. Most strikingly, subjects allocate more money and rewards to those who share their label.

"scarcity" on compliance.

It is based on Brehm's (1966) "psychological reactance" theory. Psychological reactance assumes that when a person's perceived freedom of choice is threatened, that person will attempt to enhance freedom of choice by removing the threat. If a sales person says that this is the last one of an item, the one you might want to buy, reactance theory suggests that you are likely to buy the item. You will want to restore your freedom to acquire the item by making the purchase. In sales this strategy is used often- "hurry, only a limited number of the items are available and there are only two days left in the sale."

examples of The Liberating Effects of Group Influence

Perhaps you can recall a time you felt justifi ably angry at an unfair teacher but you hesitated to object. Then one or two other students spoke up about the unfair practices, and you followed their example, which had a liberating effect. Milgram captured this liberating effect of conformity by placing the teacher with two confederates who were to help conduct the procedure. During the experiment, both confederates defi ed the experimenter, who then ordered the real participant to continue alone. Did he? No. Ninety percent liberated themselves by conforming to the defi ant confederates. mye25454

The two main dual process models are

Petty and Cacioppo's (1986) Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) Chaiken's (1987) Heuristic Systemic Model (HSM).

Attractiveness comes in several forms

Physical attractiveness Similarity

cognitive dissonance

Tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions. For example, dissonance may occur when we realize that we have, with little justification, acted contrary to our attitudes or made a decision favoring one alternative despite reasons favoring another

human cognition tends to be conservative.

That is, we try to preserve that which is already established—to maintain our pre-existing knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and stereotypes.

false uniqueness effect

The tendency to underestimate the commonality of one's abilities and one's desirable or successful behaviors

actor-observer bias

The tendency for ac- tors to attribute their own actions to situational factors, whereas ob- servers tend to attribute the same actions to stable personality dispositions of the actors.

A clever experiment by Lee Ross, Teresa Amabile, and Julia Steinmetz illustrates how the impact of social roles can be underestimated in explaining behavior.

They set up a "quiz show" format in which they randomly assigned subjects to one of two roles: (1) a questioner, whose task it was to prepare difficult questions for (2) a contestant, whose task it was to answer them. An observer watched this simulated quiz show and then estimated the questioner's and the contestant's general knowledge. Try to put yourself in the role of the ob- server. What do you see? Well, unless you are very careful, you will see one very smart, knowledgeable person and one rather stupid person.

tricomponent model.

This model suggests that attitudes are a constellation of cognition, affect, and behavior that has either a negative or a positive bias

Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence Bias)

This refers to a tendency to overestimate the influence of dispositional factors when making attributions and to underestimate the influence of situational factors. This error tends to be, in part, a cultural phenomenon, since it is more likely to occur in Western cultures that emphasize free will and individuality than Eastern cultures that emphasize collective values.

example of door in the face technique (reciprocity norm )

This technique is very effective. In one study, Cialdini was able to demonstrate increased compliance with a request to take juvenile delinquents to a zoo for a day from 17% to 50% by first including a large request (to spend two hours per week for two years counseling juvenile delinquents). The person who made the large request has presumably made a concession by switching to the small request. This concession is reciprocated by the target person complying with the small request.

example of insufficient justification

Zimbardo's subjects were asked to eat a fried grasshopper by either a cold and arrogant person or by a friendly person. After eating the grasshoppers, which group do you think changed to favorable attitudes about fried grasshoppers as hors doeuvres? (Hint: which subjects had the least justification for eating the fried grasshoppers, the subjects asked by the cold arrogant person or the subjects asked by the friendly person?). You guessed it. The subjects who ate the grasshoppers when asked by the cold arrogant person had an insufficient reason to do so. Therefore, they were the ones who changed to more favorable grasshopper attitudes.

Over the last 50 to 60 years, it is likely that more research has been conducted and more has been written on the topic of _______________formation and change than on any other single topic in the social sciences."

attitude

The smaller the ex- ternal reward I give to induce you to recite the speech, the more likely it is that you will be forced to seek additional justification for delivering it by convincing yourself that the things you said were actually true. This would result in an actual change in __________________ rather than mere compliance.

attitude

Compared with opinions, ____________________are extremely difficult to change.

attitudes

low self-monitors exhibit behavior that is somewhat consistent with their ________________

attitudes

In identification, the crucial component is attractiveness—the ________________ of the person with whom we identify. Because we identify with the model, we want to hold the same opinions that the model holds. S

attractiveness

We know that stars are seldom knowledgeable about the products they endorse. Besides, we know the intent is to persuade us; we don't just a ccidentally eavesdrop on Jennifer Lopez discussing clothes or fragrances. Such ads are based on another characteristic of an effective communicator:

attractiveness

Fritz Heider (1958) is considered to be the originator of _______________ theory

attribution

We are most likely to make ______________when the answer to the question has some personal relevance to us. For example, after the tragedy of 9/11, most Americans were shocked to discover that we had captured an American Taliban fighter. We asked the question, why would John Walker go to Afghanistan and fight with the Talibans against Americans and their allies.

attributions

it is clear that our naive statistical intuitions, and our resulting fears, are driven not by calculation and reason but by emotions attuned to the ___________________

availability heuristic

The availability heuristic, otherwise known as the _______________, is a "mental shortcut through which one estimates the likelihood of an event by the ease with which instances of that event come to mind." It is in large part based on the saliency of the event.

base rate fallacy

Many streams of evidence confirm that attitudes follow ______________.

behavior

lying produces greater attitude change when the liar is undercompensated for lying, especially when the lie is likely to evoke a change in the audience's belief or_________________.

behavior

Several experiments conducted by Mark Snyder (1984) at the University of Minnesota show how, once formed, erroneous beliefs about the social world can induce others to confirm those beliefs, a phenomenon called ___________________

behavioral confirmation

he idea of creating attitude questions that are specific to the behaviors predicted is a part of Fishbein and Ajzen's (1975) theory of reasoned action and is called the "__________________."

behavioral intention

Dissonance theory

best explains what happens when our actions openly contradict our well-defined attitudes. When, say, we hurt someone we like, we feel tension, which we might reduce by viewing the other as a jerk

Self-perception theory

best explains what happens when we are unsure of our attitudes: We infer them by observing ourselves. If we lend our new neighbors, whom we neither like nor dislike, a cup of sugar, our helpful behavior can lead us to infer that we like them.

we are even biased against seeing our own bias. People claim they avoid self-serving bias themselves but readily acknowledge that others commit this bias (Pronin & others, 2002). This "_________________" can have serious consequences during conflicts

bias blind spot

Emily Pronin and her colleagues have shown that one of the most pervasive biases is that we think we are less biased than the average person; we feel that we see the world as it is, while others see the world as they want to see it. We have this "___________," Pronin argues, because when we introspect about our motivations and thought processes to ask ourselves if we are misjudging, we are unable to detect biases at work because the nature of our cognitive biases is that they are unconscious and unintentional.

bias blindspot

Low self-esteem people, however, are more likely to "__________________" by blaming themselves or giving up

break

Hovland, Harvey, and Sherif: People will consider an extremely discrepant communication to be outside their latitude of acceptance—________________________

but only if the communicator is not highly credible.

Ms. Genovese was murdered in full view of 38 witnesses in New York City, the eyewitnesses claimed that the situation was ambiguous and that it was difficult to know what to do; newspaper reporters called it_________________

bystander apathy.

The experimenters were interested in determining whether the participants would come to the young woman's aid. The important variable in the experiment was whether the people were alone in the room. Of those who were alone, 70 percent offered to help the young woman; of those who were participating in pairs with strangers, only 20 percent offered help. Thus, it is clear that the presence of another bystander tends to inhibit action. This phenomenon has been dubbed the ___________________

bystander effect.

Conformity

can be defined as a change in a person's behavior or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.

Fortunately, most clients entering therapy are motivated to take the _________________—to think deeply about their problems under the therapist's guidance

central route

People with a high need for cognition enjoy thinking and are more likely to use the________________ of processing than those who are low in need for cognition (they prefer peripheral route processing).

central route

When people are motivated and able to think about an issue, they are likely to take the ___________— focusing on the arguments. If those arguments are strong and compelling, persuasion is likel

central route to persuasion

The theory states that when we hold an attitude that is incongruent with our behavior, we will experience __________________

cognitive dissonance.

conformity is more prevalent in _______________societies (like Japan, Norway, and China) than in individualistic societies (like the United States and France).

collectivist

We are eager to verify our beliefs but less inclined to seek evidence that might disprove them, a phenomenon called the _____________ .

confirmation bias

These _______________ can, by word of mouth alone, turn a struggling restaurant into a popular, overflowing place within a matter of weeks or can take a small trend (say, the number of women requesting regular mammograms) and turn it into an epidemic.

connectors

they are far more moved by arguments that induce fear and cast issues in simple black and white terms.

conservatives

a lack of control, will act to create a sense of predictability. In experiments, loss of control has led people to form illusory correlations in stock market information, to perceive nonexistent _________________

conspiracies, and to develop superstitions

Our assumptions about the world can even make __________evidence seem supportive

contradictory

The principal behind the use of such decoys is called the ____________

contrast effect.

Edward Jones and his colleagues call the tendency to attribute the cause of a behavior to a corresponding characteristic of a person a ________________________

correspondent inference:

People who are able to think of ________________ are more likely to resist persuasive communications.

counterarguments

those who are mildly ___________ seem to be the most accurate in their self-perceptions.

depressed

Self-serving bias and its accompanying excuses also help protect people from __________________

depression and stress

If the victim is able and willing to retaliate at some future time, then a harm-doer feels that equity will be restored and thus has no need to justify the action by________________

derogating the victim

National Opinion Research Center archives, James Davis (2004)

discovered, for example, that Americans reaching age 16 during the 1960s have, ever since, been more politically liberal than average. Much as tree rings can, years later, reveal the telltale marks laid down by a drought, so attitudes decades later may reveal the events, such as the Vietnam War and civil rights era of the 1960s, that shaped the adolescent and early twenties mind. For many people, these years are a critical period for the formation of attitudes and values.

Dissonance theory pertains mostly to ______________between behavior and attitudes. We are aware of both. Thus, if we sense some inconsistency, perhaps some hypocrisy, we feel pressure for change. That helps explain why British and U.S. cigarette smokers have been much less likely than nonsmokers to believe that smoking is dangerous (Eiser & others, 1979; Saad, 2002).

discrepancies

Internal stable attributions include "___________" attributions like personality, traits, and abilities.

dispositional

When told of someone's actions, Hindus in India are less likely than Americans to offer____________ explanations ("She is kind") and more likely to offer situational explanations ("Her friends were with her") (Miller, 1984).

dispositional

People also tend not to seek information that might _____________ what they believe

disprove

If there is insufficient justification for engaging in counterattitudinal behavior, it results in_______________

dissonance

In an ingenious experiment by Ellen Berscheid and her associates,57 college students volunteered for an experiment in which each of them delivered a painful electric shock to a fellow student; as expected, each participant derogated the victim as a result of having delivered the shock. But half the students were told there would be a turnabout— that is, the other students would be given the opportunity to shock them. Those who were led to believe their victims would be able to retaliate did not derogate them. In short, because the victims were able to retaliate, __________________was reduced.

dissonance

two general ways that the self influences social cognition— ________________________

egocentric thought and the self-serving bias.

Central route processing more often produces ____________attitude change.

enduring

the thoughtful central route to persuasion provides the most _________________ attitude and behavior change. Therapists should therefore aim not to elicit a client's superficial agreement with their expert judgment but to change the client's own thinking.

enduring

Indeed, it has been said by no less an expert than the director of the British Broadcasting Corporation that television news is a form of __________________

entertainment.

A few years later, four teenagers in New Jersey made a suicide pact and then carried out their plan. Within a week of this multiple suicide, two teenagers in the Midwest were found dead under similar circumstances. Media reports no doubt spotlighted the confusion and grief surrounding teenage suicide. But is it possible that the media's coverage of these tragedies actually inspired copycat suicides? According to sociologist David Phillips, the answer is a qualified "yes. The increases held, even when the researchers took other possible causes into account. Thus, the most likely explanation for the increase in teenage suicides following media publicity is that such publicity ac- tually triggers subsequent copycat suicides.

example of emotional contagion

most people leap to the conclusion that beautiful people are more successful, sensitive, warmer, and of better character than less attractive people. Persons of high social stature, often inferred by dress and mannerisms, are respected and held in high es- teem.

example of representative heuristic

For example, Sally might think that a person who talks fast is more competent than one who talks slow. This heuristic causes her to perceive the fast talking politician as having greater ________________ than his slow talking competitor.

expertise

given sufficient ______________, people may intuitively know the answer to a problem. Many skills, from piano playing to swinging a golf club, begin as a controlled, deliberate process of following rules and gradually become automatic and intuitive (Kruglanski & Gigerenzer, 2011). Master chess players intuitively recognize meaningful patterns that novices miss and often make their next move with only a glance at the board, as the situation cues information stored in their memor

expertise

Ac- cording to Gladwell, connectors do not have to be ______________; they are simply people who seem to be "in the know" and are talking about appropriate topics in appropriate places.

experts

We commit the fundamental attribution error when we __________ other people's behavior.

explain

Central route processing often swiftly changes _____________ attitudes.

explicit

Central route processing often swiftly changes _______________attitudes.

explicit

people with brain damage cannot form new ______________memories

explicit

Some things—facts, names, and past experiences—we remember ____________(consciously).

explicitly

An _____________ stable attribution deals with long-term situational forces that affect the person. For example, some speculated that being raised in an affluent permissive California community led him to experiment with dangerous derivatives of traditional religions. Being "brain washed" to the point where he internalized the belief system of the Taliban also would have suggested an external stable attribution

external

"Very nice, Joyce," Joe answers. Theoretically, Joe's cognition "I am a truthful person" is dissonant with the cognition "I said that painting was nice, although it really is disastrous." Whatever dissonance might be aroused by this inconsistency can easily and quickly be reduced by Joe's cognition that it is important not to hurt other people: "I lied so as not to hurt Joyce; why should I tell her it's an ugly painting? It serves no useful purpose." This is an effective way of reducing dissonance because it completely justifies Joe's action. In effect, the justification is situation-determined. I will call this _____________________

external justification.

If a credible person's message is persuasive, its impact may ___________________ as its source is forgotten or dissociated from the message

fade

The basic finding is that people who see intelligence as fixed are apprehensive about _____________. Accordingly, they try to steer clear of real challenges that might reveal their limitations. In a way, this makes sense; if you can't improve your intelligence, you want to play it safe and foster the image that you are smart. Thus, relative to people who are equally smart but who see intelligence as malleable, people with the fixed view are more likely to choose easier tasks and give up when a task becomes too challenging. They frequently choke on hard tests, and will even lie to a stranger about their performance, reporting a higher score than they got. People who think intelligence is malleable behave differently. They tend to seek challenges and try to improve their abilities. Instead of giving up when they fail, they try harder or try a different strategy—they are more resilient.

failure

Clinically depressed people have a reverse image of the self-serving attribution style. They tend to make internal stable attributions for their _____________. For example, after a failure they might think, "I did poorly on the test because I am not smart." After a success, they may likely think, "I did well on the test because it was easy" (an external attribution).

failures

On matters of opinion, we find support for our positions by overestimating the extent to which others agree—a phenomenon called the ______________

false consensus effect

On matters of ability or when we behave well or successfully, however, a ________________ effect more often occurs. We serve our self-image by seeing our talents and moral behaviors as relatively unusual

false uniqueness

Robert Zajonc has shown that, all other things being equal, the more ______________ an item is, the more attractive it is.

familiar

Benjamin Franklin reports that he routinely performed a ____________ calculation by writing down the pros and cons for major decisions.

felicific

According to Bentham, we engage in a ___________ or happiness calculation, to determine what is good and what is bad.

felicific calculus,

One of the primary tenants of the concept of attention is that it has a _____________, that is, limited capacity. In a split second we shift or allocate attention to what is meaningful in our environment. Other stimuli are not perceived

finite

Jonathan Freedman and David Sears (1965) demonstrated the diffi culty of trying to persuade people under such circumstances. They warned one group of California high schoolers that they were going to hear a talk: "Why Teenagers Should Not Be Allowed to Drive." Those _________________did not budge in their opinions. Others, not forewarned, did budge

forewarned

behavior

function of situation plus disposotion

In estimating their chances for success on a task, such as a major exam, people's confidence runs highest when the moment of truth is off in the_________________

future

The evidence mostly supports the generational explanation. In surveys and resurveys of groups of younger and older people over several years, the attitudes of older people usually show less change than do those of young people. As David Sears (1979, 1986) put it, researchers have "almost invariably found ________________ rather than life cycle effects."

generational

What happens when your self- esteem is threatened—for example, by a failure or an unflattering comparison with someone else? When brothers have markedly different ability levels—for example, one is a great athlete and the other is not—they report not ___________________

getting along well

As Conway and Ross pointed out, one way for people to get what they want is to revise what they _________________.*

had

Another dimension of the attitude heuristic is the_______________, a general bias in which a favorable or unfavorable general impression of a person affects our inferences and future expectations about that person.

halo effect

Social psychology

has been defined as "the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by other people." In other words, it is the study of how we are "influenced" by others

Credibility

has been defined as a combination of trustworthiness and expertise

Martin Seligman

has found across a variety of studies that an optimistic style of thinking—believing that a defeat is due to bad luck and can be overcome by effort and ability—leads to more achievement, better health, and an improved mental outlook.

Irving Janis and his associates

have discovered, people who have been allowed to eat desirable food while reading a persuasive communication are more influenced by what they read than are people in a control (noneating) group.

we often use _____________(mental shortcuts or rules of thumb like "bigger is better") when engaging in low effort thinking which also can lead to erroneous conclusions

heuristics

Brehm found that _________________participants said they were less hungry (or thirsty) than low-dissonance participants who were deprived of food (or water) for the same length of time. A

high- dissonance

research on jaywalking indicates that people will conform more often to the behavior of a seemingly ________________ than to the behavior of someone who looks less respectable or less well-to-do. (information)

high-status person

High self-monitors

higher social skills are more easily persuaded by image oriented advertisements (e.g. an ad that emphasizes the sportiness of a car) xhibit behavior that is less consistent with their internal attitudes

Not all attitudes and beliefs are________________ accessible.

highly

example of false memory

if a young man's older sister said to him, "Remember the time when you were five years old and you got lost for several hours at the University City shopping mall? And you went into a panic—and an oldish man tried to help you? When we discovered you, you were holding the old man's hand and were crying." Within a few days of hearing such a story, most people will have incorporated that planted memory into their own history, will have embroidered it with details ("Oh, yeah, the old man who helped me was wearing a flannel shirt."), and will be absolutely certain that it really happened—when, in fact, it didn't.

example of halo effect

if you really like President Obama, then you will be likely to discount or explain away any behavior on his part that might be considered negative, and exaggerate the goodness of his positive actions. In your mind, it is almost as if he is wearing an angel's halo. Similarly, a disliked individual is assumed to possess negative traits, with his or her performance subsequently devalued.

It is easy to see a correlation where none exists. When we expect to find significant relationships, we easily associate random events, perceiving an ____

illusory correlation

As Dr. Fiske discusses, a number of studies have been conducted finding that a salient member of a group is perceived as more causally influential. If you have one person wearing a loud shirt and the others wearing plain shirts, all other things being equal, the one with the loud shirt will be seen as contributing more to the group. This phenomenon is referred to as an ________________

illusory correlation.

we frequently perceive a relationship between two entities that we think should be related—but, in fact, they are not. Social psychologists have dubbed this the________________

illusory correlation.

Retention is greatest, and recency effects will therefore prevail, when the audience must make up its mind _________________after hearing the second communication.

immediately

example of emotional contagion.

in October 1982, when seven people in the Chicago area died after taking Extra Strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide, the tragedy was widely publicized by the national news media. The effects of this prominent coverage were immediate: Similar poisonings were reported in cities across the country, involving the contamination of mouthwash, eye drops, nasal spray, soda pop, and even hot dogs. Dramatically billed as "copycat poisonings," these poisonings, in turn, received widespread media attention. The public reaction took on all the properties of a spiral: Many people panicked, seeking med- ical aid for burns and poisonings when they suffered from no more than common rashes, sore throats, and stomachaches. False alarms outnumbered actual cases of product tampering by seven to one.8 Be- cause these events occurred just prior to Halloween, worried officials in scores of communities banned trick-or-treating, fearing that many individuals might mimic the murders by contaminating children's candy.

Let us look at priming in the mass media. Several studies have shown that there is a link between the stories the media choose to cover and those the viewers consider to be the most important is- sues of the day.20 In other words, the mass media make certain is- sues and concepts readily accessible and thereby set the public's political and social agendas. To take one example,

in a pioneering study of an election in North Carolina, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw found that the issues voters came to consider most important in the campaign coincided precisely with the amount of coverage of those issues in the local media. In a similar vein, vast numbers of heterosexuals first became deeply concerned about the dangers of AIDS immediately following the extensive media cover- age of basketball superstar Magic Johnson's announcement that he was HIV-positive.

How can we help people to resist attempts to influence them? An elaborate method for inducing such resistance has been developed by William McGuire and his associates. This method has been appropriately dubbed the ____________________

inoculation effect.

McGuire (1964) proposed an "____________________" in which he stated that the influence of a strong persuasive message can be reduced by first giving a person a weakened version of the message

inoculation theory

We have a tendency to make ______________stable attributions about our successes and external attributions about our failures

internal

, when an actor observes himself/herself on videotape and can see the whole body, the person (actor) now becomes more salient than the situation and the actor now makes _______________

internal (dispositional) self-attributions (Storms, 1973)

we can divide our attributions into two categories

internal and external

The central route (Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) )

involves high effort thinking use if the message is personally relevant we think more carefully and analytically about the message. permanent attitude change

the peripheral route

involves low effort thinking (being a "cognitive miser") message will not be personally relevant result in temporary attitude changes

A cultural truism

is a belief accepted as unquestionably true by most members of a society, like "The United States is the most wonderful country in the world" or "If people are willing to work hard, they can succeed."

cognitive dissonance

is a state of tension that occurs whenever an individual simultaneously holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent. Stated differently, two cognitions are dissonant if, when considered alone, the opposite of one follows from the other.

Compliance

is a term used to refer to the behavior changes that indicate a willingness to go along with a direct request from another. It is usually associated with sales.

peripheral route to persuasion

is less judicious; rather than relying on a careful process of weighing and considering the strength of arguments, the person responds to simple, often irrelevant cues that suggest the rightness, wrongness, or attractiveness of an argument without giving it much thought. F

(information) private conversion

is more enduring. This type has sometimes been referred to as informational conformity

One way that we make sense of the buzzing, blooming array of information that comes our way is through the use of ________________

judgmental heuristics

What I am stating is that, if a person goes through a difficult or a painful experience in order to attain some goal or object, that goal or object becomes more attractive—a process called_____________________

justification of effort.

The Heuristic Systemic Model (HSM),

like the ELM, is a dual process model. Systematic processing in the HSM is equivalent to central route processing in the ELM. Heuristic processing in the HSM is similar to peripheral route processing in the ELM. Where it differs is in its emphasis on the use of heuristics and schemas to guide decision-making

Social psychologists have found that those who are high in physical attractiveness are generally perceived as more ______________. Therefore, the spokesperson for the product or service is usually high in physical attractiveness or is attractive in other ways. Similarity between the communicator and the recipient is also an important variable leading to likeability; in general, the greater the similarity, the greater the likeability. Dembroski et al. (1978) asked African American junior high students to watch a videotape asking them to use proper dental care. When the communicator was an African American, the children had more positive attitudes toward dental hygiene and later cleaner teeth than when the communicator was White.

likeable

Those who are _________________ in need for cognition are also more likely to be influenced by the trustworthiness of the communicator.

low

Namely, people with__________________have less need to derogate their victims- less dissonance.

low self-esteem

According to Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor,8 we humans are programmed to be cognitive___________; we are always looking for ways to conserve cognitive energy. Our capacity to process in- formation is limited, so we attempt to adopt strategies that simplify complex problems. We accomplish this by ignoring some information to reduce our cognitive load; or we "overuse" other information to keep from having to search for more; or we may go with our gut and accept a less-than-perfect alternative because it is almost good enough, rather than thinking through all the angles.

misers

it is generally believed that attitudes are learned through _________________________

modeling, classical conditioning, and operant conditioning

for the individuals who valued their membership in the group, those who were led to feel only ________________accepted were more likely to conform to the norms and standards set by the group than were those who were led to feel totally accepted. In other words, it's easier for an individual who is securely ensconced in a group to deviate from that group.

moderately

Actions and attitudes feed each other, sometimes to the point of ________________. The more one harms another and adjusts one's attitudes, the easier it becomes to do harm. Conscience is corroded

moral numbness

( Ethics) Most businesspeople see themselves as____________ ethical than the average businessperson (Baumhart, 1968; Brenner & Molander, 1977). One national survey asked, "How would you rate your own morals and values on a scale from 1 to 100 (100 being perfect)?" Fifty percent of people rated themselves 90 or above; only 11 percent said 74 or less (Lovett, 1997).

more

Fritz Heider (1958)is considered to be the originator of attribution theory. He believed that lay people are basically "_____________" who try to determine the cause of people's behavior

naive psychologists

in the 1960s and 70s, the social psychologist Harold Kelley advanced a more complex but similarly rational portrait of human thought: People, he argued, think like ________________

naive scientists.

Recent studies have found that the mere exposure effect works best on stimuli that we do not already have strong ______________ attitudes about. However, if we already have strong negative attitudes about the stimulus, repeated exposures will cause us to dislike the stimulus more.

negative

cults— which some social scientists prefer to call ______________— have gained much publicity: Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, Jim Jones's People's Temple, David Koresh's Branch Davidians, and Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's Gate.

new religious movements

Social psychology has also been defined as the study of "______________" behavior. This contrasts with abnormal psychology that is the study of "abnormal" behavior

normal

The second type of conformity, the one that involves public conformity only, is sometimes called _______________ conformity.

normative ( public conformity-peer pressure)

Depressed people's self-appraisals and their appraisals of how others really view them are _____________ inflated

not

A communicator can be an unattractive, immoral person and still be effective, as long as it is clear that he or she has _________________ (and perhaps something to lose) by persuading us.

nothing to gain

example of peripheral route to persuasion

one's spontaneous decision, while shopping, to pick up some ice cream of a particular brand—is made unthinkingly (Dijksterhuis & others, 2005). Something as minor as German music may lead customers to buy German wine, whereas others, hearing French music, reach for French wine (North & others, 1997). Billboards and television commercials—media that consumers are able to take in for only brief amounts of time—therefore use the peripheral route, with visual images as peripheral cues. Instead of providing arguments in favor of smoking, cigarette ads associate the product with images of beauty and pleasure. So do soft-drink ads that promote "the real thing" with images of youth, vitality, and happy polar bears. On the other hand, magazine computer ads (which interested, logical consumers may pore over for some time) seldom feature Hollywood stars or great athletes. Instead, they offer customers information on competitive features and prices. T

hindsight bias

or the "I-knew-it-all- along" effect. once we know the outcome of an event, we have a strong tendency to believe that we could have predicted it in advance.

Uninterested audiences more often travel the ____________route; they are more affected by their liking of the communicator

peripheral

Expertise is more important in determining credibility when the message is complex. The greater the complexity of the message, the more likely we are to use __________________

peripheral processing

If a speaker is articulate and appealing, has apparently good motives, and has several arguments (or better, if the different arguments come from different sources), we usually take the easy _________________and accept the message without much thought

peripheral route

sometimes the strength of the arguments doesn't matter. Sometimes we're not motivated or able to think carefully. If we're distracted, uninvolved, or just plain busy, we may not take the time to refl ect on the message's content. Rather than analyzing whether the arguments are compelling, we might follow the _______________________ — focusing on cues that trigger automatic acceptance without much thinking

peripheral route to persuasion

considering arguments about how to remedy an ailing economy has to do with the central route; getting scared and angry by the image of Willie Horton has to do with the __________________

peripheral route.

Internalization is the most ___________________ response to social influence precisely because your motivation to be right is a powerful and self-sustaining force that does not depend upon constant surveillance in the form of agents of reward or punishment, as does compliance, or on your continued esteem for another person or group, as does identification.

permanent

On the positive side, people act most compassionately toward those who are _____________. That is why appeals for the unborn, for the hungry or for animal rights are nearly always personalized with a compelling photograph or description. When queried by researchers John Lydon and Christine Dunkel-Schetter (1994), expectant women expressed more commitment to their pregnancies if they had seen ultrasound pictures of their fetuses that clearly displayed body parts.

personalized

Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (self- fulfilling prophecy.)

planted a false stereotype in the heads of schoolteachers, which had a dramatic impact on the performance of their students. In this study, the experimenters first gave an IQ test to all the children in an elementary school. After scoring the tests, 20 percent of the children from each class were chosen at random. The teachers were informed that the test had indicated that these students were "bloomers," on the verge of making significant intellectual gains over the coming year, thus giving the teachers a positive (but completely false) ex-pectancy about some of their students. Then the researchers simply sat back and watched. At the end of the year, they administered an- other IQ test. What happened? Those students whom the teachers falsely believed to be bloomers had indeed gotten smarter, making significantly larger gains in IQ than the children not labeled bloomers.

Robert Cialdini and colleagues (2003) agree that appropriate counterarguments are a great way to resist persuasion. But they wondered how to bring them to mind in response to an opponent's ads. The answer, they suggest, is a "________________" defense—one that combines a poison (strong counterarguments) with a parasite (retrieval cues that bring those arguments to mind when seeing the opponent's ads)

poison parasite

example of modeling

ports heroes, celebrity politicians and pop icons are often paid enormous sums of money to simply use the product in a 30 second television commercial. When they use the product, others buy the product. Modeling works

_______________behavior fosters liking for the person. Doing a favor for an experimenter or another participant, or tutoring a student, usually increases liking of the person helped

positive

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

postulates that we process information through either the central route or the peripheral route.

In compliance, the important component is ___________—the power of the influencer to dole out the reward for compliance and punishment for noncompliance. P

power

Our___________________ guide how we perceive and interpret information. We interpret the world through belief-tinted glasses. "Sure, preconceptions matter," people will agree; yet they fail to realize how great the effect is on themselves.

preconceptions

Two thinking processes play an important role in social cognition— _________________—and both are subject to considerable error.

predicting our reactions to future events and remembering past events

The resulting "_______________" often leads people to fear the wrong things, such as fearing flying or terrorism more than smoking, driving, or climate change

probability neglect

we worry about remote possibilities while ignoring higher probabilities, a phenomenon that Cass Sunstein (2007b) calls our "_______________."

probability neglect

The area of social cognition is concerned with the "______________." It primarily relies on information processing models

process of thinking about oneself and others

where trivial opinions and behaviors are concerned, if we like a person, we tend to be influenced even if it is clear that he or she is trying to influence us and stands to _____________ by doing so.

profit

Three techniques have successfully reduced the overconfidence bias.

prompt feedback unpack a task might be wrong

Persuasion is neither inherently good nor bad. It is a message's purpose and content that elicit judgments of good or bad. The bad we call "_____________." The good we call "education." Education is more factually based and less coercive than propaganda. Yet generally we call it "education" when we believe it, "propaganda" when we don't

propaganda

Aspirin commercials are obvious attempts to sell something at a high price by intentionally misleading the audience. They can be considered _____________________

propaganda.

Jim Jones used "_________________" to establish his credibility. Newcomers were asked to identify themselves as they entered the church before services. Then one of his aides would quickly call the person's home and say, "Hi. We're doing a survey, and we'd like to ask you some questions." During the service, one ex-member recalled, Jones would call out the person's name and say Have you ever seen me before? Well, you live in such and such a place, your phone number is such and such, and in your living room you've got this, that, and the other, and on your sofa you've got such and such a pillow. . . . Now do you remember me ever being in your house? (Conway & Siegelman, 1979, p. 234)

psychic readings

from our knowledge of the phenomena of retention, on the other hand, it would appear that, all other things being equal, the last argument will be more effective; this is called the__________________

recency effect.

Like imagining the future, recalling the past plays an important role in our social interactions, and is also subject to bias. Remembering, psychologists have repeatedly found, is a __________________. By this I mean that we cannot tap into a literal translation of past events.

reconstructive process

The Fundamental Attribution Error

refers to a general human tendency to overestimate the importance of personality or dispositional factors relative to situational or environmental influences when describing and explaining the causes of social behavior.

self-monitoring

refers to a tendency to seek out social cues concerning the impressions the individual is making on others and then adjusting behavior to create desired impressions

Attitude accessibility

refers to the strength of the association between an object and your evaluation of it.

Ingroup favoritism

refers to the tendency to see one's own group as better on any number of dimensions and to allocate rewards to one's own group.

a challenge to one's views, if ________________ is more likely to solidify one's position than to undermine it, particularly if the threatening material can be examined with like-minded others

refuted,

versky and Kahneman (1974) noted another way by which an illusion of control may arise: We fail to recognize the statistical phenomenon of _________________

regression toward the average

One very common finding is that people have superior memory for information descriptive of the ______________. Moreover, when working in groups, individuals tend to focus on and recall their own performance at the expense of retaining information about the performance of others.

self

a study found that college students preferred a boost to their _________________ to eating their favorite food, engaging in their favorite sexual activity, seeing a best friend, drinking alcohol, or receiving a paycheck

self esteem

The process by which such expectations or stereotypes lead people to treat others in a way that makes them confirm their expectations is called a __________________

self- fulfilling prophecy.

Questing for self-confirmation, we're motivated to verify our ________________

self-conceptions

Another explanation proposed for the self-serving bias is that we are motivated to engage in such attributions to protect and maintain our ____________________

self-concepts and self-esteem.

Studies confirm that social rejection lowers our ____________and makes us more eager for approval.

self-esteem

The one personality variable most consistently related to persuasibility is _____________________

self-esteem

Questing for self-affirmation, we're especially motivated to enhance our _________________

self-image

A communicator's trustworthiness (and effectiveness) can be increased if he or she argues a position apparently opposed to his or her________________.

self-interest

People in sales or politics are often high _____________. In general, these people tend to have higher social skills than low self-monitors

self-monitors

Cognitive dissonance theory assumes that our need to maintain a consistent and positive self-image motivates us to adopt attitudes that justify our actions. Assuming no such motive, ______________ says simply that when our attitudes are unclear to us, we observe our behaviors and then infer our attitudes from them.

self-perception theory

Rather, we have a strong tendency to organize our personal history in terms of what Hazel Markus calls _______________—coherent memories, feelings, and beliefs about ourselves that hang together and form an integrated whole. T

self-schemas

self-serving bias appears as _______________for one's failings

self-serving attributions, self congratulatory comparisons, illusory optimism, and false consensus

The _______________ refers to a tendency for individuals to make dispositional attributions for their successes and situational attributions for their failures.

self-serving bias

researchers have found that inner-city ______________who are able to think critically about ads—who have "media resistance skills"—also better resist peer pressure as eighth-graders and are less likely to drink alcohol as ninth-graders

seventh-graders

Our own behavior we often explain in terms of the ____________. So Ian might attribute his behavior to the situation ("I was angry because everything was going wrong"), whereas Rosa might think, "Ian was hostile because he is an angry person." When referring to ourselves, we typically use verbs that describe our actions and reactions ("I get annoyed when . . .").

situation

T he most important lesson of Module 13 (that culture is a powerful shaper of lives) and this module's most important lesson (that immediate __________________ forces are just as powerful) reveal the strength of the social context.

situational

external attributions, sometimes referred to as _______________attributions.

situational

As we saw previously in the groundbreaking attribution error experiment by Edward Jones and Victor Harris (1967), immediately after hearing someone argue an assigned position, people assume that's how the person really felt. Jerry Burger and M. L. Palmer (1991) found that a week later they are much more ready to credit the ___________________

situational constraints

In a sense, dissonance theory describes the ways people have of making their _________________—of trying to live with unpleasant outcomes.

skeletons dance

This delayed persuasion, after people forget the source or its connection with the message, is called the __________________

sleeper effect

the__________________, whose initial position was similar to the devi- ate's but who, in the course of the discussion, gradually "slid" into a modal, conforming position.

slider

The person who is easiest to brainwash is the person whose beliefs are based on ___________________ that have never been seriously challenged.

slogans

Times of _________________ upheaval are especially conducive to someone who can make apparent simple sense out of the confusion

social and economic

Zealous self-help groups form a cohesive "______________," have intense beliefs, and exert a profound influence on members' behavior

social cocoon

Social psychologists spend a great deal of time examining the under- lying reasons why people of every generation think the way they do about the world, and why everyday thinking—explaining, predicting, and deciding—frequently is irrational. We call this subfield of social psychology ____________

social cognition

Cults also illustrate the next module's theme: the power of a group to shape members' views and behavior. The cult typically separates members from their previous social support systems and isolates them with other cult members. There may then occur what Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge (1980) call a "__________________": External ties weaken until the group collapses inward socially, each person engaging only with other group members. Cut off from families and former friends, they lose access to counterarguments.

social implosion

As observers, we frequently lose sight of the fact that each individual plays many _____________ and that we might be observing only one of them.

social roles

As Cialdini states, the _______________ rule states that "One should be more willing to comply with a request for behavior if it is consistent with what similar others are thinking or doing." This technique is also called the "bandwagon" effect. Its powerful effect is often used in advertising.

social validation

Playing on fear works best if a message leads people not only to fear the severity and likelihood of a threatened event but also to perceive a _________________ and feel capable of implementing it

solution

The fear level induced must be sufficiently high and credible _______________ must be offered to reduce the fear.

solutions

Heuristics are often wrong. For example,

sometimes a package of 8 batteries is actually more expensive per battery than a package of 2 batteries. We tend to use heuristics when we are rushed for time, overloaded with information or have too little information, or when the decision is not very important

the more _____________ the attitude is to the behavior, the greater the predictability.

specific

Michael Pfau and his colleagues20 have shown that _______________ television commercials are by far the most effective determinants of how people vote.

spot

example of felicific calculus,

suppose I wanted to purchase a new car. In determining the make and model to buy, I would add up the pleasures each brand would bring (sporty design, comfortable interior, powerful engine) and subtract the pain (the monthly payments that will strain my budget, the high cost of frequent fill-ups at the pump, and so on). I then select the car that brings me the most pleasure with the least amount of pain.

All judgment is relative; how we think about a person or thing is dependent on its _____________

surrounding context.

For Bentham, it was the role of governments and economic systems to ensure _________________

the greatest happiness for the greatest number

When we divide the world into two such realities, two important con- sequences occur:

the homogeneity effect and ingroup favoritism.

Internal unstable attributions include effort,___________________

the influence of fatigue and sleeplessness, drug use, treatable medical conditions, etc

three of the most common judgmental heuristics—

the representative heuristic, the availability heuristic, and the attitude heuristic.

to reduce "planning fallacy" overconfidence, people can be asked to ____________— to break it down into its subcomponents—and estimate the time required for each.

unpack a task

What conditions are most likely to lead to heuristic employment rather than rational decision making? Research has identified at least five such conditions.

we don't have time to think carefully about an issue when we are so overloaded with information that it becomes impossible to process the information fully when the issues at stake are not very important, so that we do not care to think about it. When we have little solid knowledge or information to use in making a decision.

overconfidence phenomenon

we interpret our experiences and construct memories, our automatic intuitions sometimes err. Usually, we are unaware of our flaws

example of representative heuristic

we know that high- quality products are expensive; therefore, if something is expensive, we might infer that it is really good. Thus, if I see two bottles of wine on the shelf and one has a higher price, I leap to the conclusion that the more expensive one is the better wine.

example of prompt feedback

weather forecasters and those who set the odds in horse racing both receive clear, daily feedback. And experts in both groups do quite well at estimating their probable accuracy

example of correspondent inference.

when explaining why a colleague took a specific political position or performed a specific behavior, we tend to favor personality explanations over situational ones. This may lead us to believe that there is more consistency of motive and behavior in the world than actually exists.

exmple of availability heuristic

when making a judgment as to whether to buy a lotto ticket, many people will think about images of lotto winners (salient events) rather than dry statistics. The images lead them to believe that they too can win whereas a look at the odds (statistics) would tell them that they have a better chance of being struck by lightning than winning the lotto

framing

whether a problem or decision is presented in such a way that it appears to represent the potential for a loss or for a gain.

availability heuristic

which refers to judgments based on how easy it is for us to bring specific examples to mind. T

positive psychology

which studies what people are doing right rather than what they are doing wrong

There also seems to be a small but consistent gender difference, with ___________ conforming more than men. It should be noted, however, that this gender difference is greatest when the researcher was male or when the group task was male-oriented.

women

Heuristics are often _____________________

wrong

If you were to help organize an appeal to get people to vote for school taxes or to stop smoking or to give money to world hunger relief, you might wonder how best to promote central route persuasion. Common sense could lead you to either side of these questions:

• Is a logical message more persuasive—or one that arouses emotion? • Will you get more opinion change by advocating a position only slightly discrepant from the listeners' existing opinions or by advocating an extreme point of view? Should the message express your side only, or should it acknowledge and refute the opposing views? • If people are to present both sides—say, in successive talks at a community meeting or in a political debate—is there an advantage to going fi rst or last?

Many experiments have explored ways to stimulate people's thinking

• by using rhetorical questions. • by presenting multiple speakers (for example, having each of three speakers give one argument instead of one speaker giving three). •by making people feel responsible for evaluating or passing along the message • by repeating the message. • by getting people's undistracted attention

The Attitude Heuristic

An attitude is a special type of belief that includes emotional and evaluative components; in a sense, an attitude is a stored evaluation—good or bad—of an object.

example of foot in the door

Angela Lipsitz and others (1989) report that ending blood-drive reminder calls with, "We'll count on seeing you then, OK? [pause for response]" increased the show-up rate from 62 to 81 percent. • In Internet chat rooms, Paul Markey and his colleagues (2002) requested help ("I can't get my e-mail to work. Is there any way I can get you to send me an e-mail?"). Help increased—from 2 to 16 percent—by including a smaller prior request ("I am new to this whole computer thing. Is there any way you can tell me how to look at someone's profile?"). Nicolas Guéguen and Céline Jacob (2001) tripled the rate of French Internet users contributing to child land-mine victims organizations (from 1.6 to 4.9 percent) by fi rst inviting them to sign a petition against land mines.

Physical attractiveness

Arguments, especially emotional ones, are often more influential when they come from people we consider beautiful

Cognitive dissonance theory was proposed by________________ (1957)

Festinger

example of representative heuristic

In the overwhelming majority of American presidential elections, the taller of the two major candidates has emerged victorious—suggesting the possibility that some Americans may implicitly believe that height may have something to do with the ability to lead.

example of externa justification ("saying is believing" paradigm.)

"Hey, I would like you to come out strongly in favor of Castro and Cuban communism." What's more, suppose I hand you $5,000 for doing it. After counting the money, you gasp, put the $5,000 in your pocket, return to the discussion, and defend Castro to the hilt. The next morning when you wake up, would you ex- perience any dissonance? I don't think so. Your cognition "I said some things about Castro and Cuban communism that I don't believe" is dissonant with the cognition "I am a truthful and decent person." But, at the same time, you have adequate external justification for having made that statement: "I said those favorable things about Cuban com- munism to earn $5,000—and it was worth it." You don't have to soften your attitude toward Castro to justify that statement because you know why you made those statements: You made them not be- cause you think they are true but to get the $5,000. You're left with the knowledge you sold your soul for $5,000—and it was worth it.

The consistency ruleis

"after committing oneself to a position, one should be more willing to comply with requests for behaviors that are consistent with that position." The key principle here is "commitment." A strategy that uses the consistency rule and commitment is the "foot in the door effect." This strategy is the opposite of the door in the face technique in that in this case the small request comes first and it is followed by a large request. Compliance with the large request is the desired goal.

This strategy is the opposite of the door in the face technique in that in this case the small request comes first and it is followed by a large request. Compliance with the large request is the desired goal.

"foot in the door effect."

Memory refers to the

"storage and retrieval" of information

Researchers have gathered a great deal of evidence in support of the informal observation that we take credit for the good and deny the bad. For example:

(1) Students who do well on an exam tend to attribute their performance to ability and effort, whereas those who do poorly attribute it to an unfair exam or bad luck; (2) gamblers perceive their successes as based on skill and their failures as a fluke; (3) when married persons estimate how much of the housework each routinely did, their combined total of housework performed amounts to far more than 100 percent—in other words, each person thinks he or she did a greater proportion of the work than their partner thinks he or she did; (4) in general, people rate themselves more positively than others do, believing that they are better than average; (5) two- person teams performing a skilled task accept credit for good scores but tend to blame poor scores on their partner; and (6) when asked to explain why someone else dislikes them, college students take little responsibility for themselves

The typical household's television set is on for more than 7 hours a day, and the average American watches 30 hours of television a week—that's a little more than __________________ hours a year. The aver- age high-school graduate has spent much more time watching television than interacting with his or her parents or with teachers.71

1,500

Norman Triplett who wanted to find out if children would wind a fishing line faster in the presence of other children conducted one of the first social psychology studies in _____________. His hypothesis was confirmed and showed how even indirect social influence can affect performance

1898

he first social psychology textbooks were published in __________. In spite of its early beginnings, social psychology did not gain ascendancy in the field of psychology until the 1950's and 1960's

1908

One of the classic studies of the attitude- behavior relationship was conducted in the early ________ by Richard LaPiere.

1930s

Generall proximity of the subject to the experimenter was another variable studied. When the experimenter made the obedience statements to the subject by phone, the number of subjects who gave the maximum shock reduced to ___________

21%

Recruits ( audience) are often young people under ____ years old, still at that comparatively open age before attitudes and values stabilize. Most are educated, middle-class people who, taken by the ideals, overlook the contradictions in those who profess selflessness and practice greed, who pretend concern and behave callously

25

Proximity of the subject to the learner was one variable. When the subject was asked to touch the learner before administering the shocks, the number of subjects who administered the 450 Volts declined to _____________

30%.

By Rosenthal's own count, in only approximately ____ in 10 of the nearly 500 published experiments did expectations signifi cantly affect performance (Rosenthal, 1991, 2002). Low expectations do not doom a capable child, nor do high expectations magically transform a slow learner into a valedictorian. Human nature is not so pliable.

4

In one College Entrance Examination Board survey of _______________ high school seniors, none rated themselves below average in "ability to get along with others" (a subjective, desirable trait), 60 percent rated themselves in the top 10 percent, and 25 percent saw themselves among the top 1 percent! In 2012, 77 percent of incoming college students described themselves as above average in their "drive to achieve," another subjective and desirable trait

829,000

( Professional competence) In one survey, _______________ percent of business managers rated their performance as superior to their average peer. In Australia, 86 percent of people rated their job performance as above average, and only 1 percent as below average (Headey & Wearing, 1987). Most surgeons believe their patients' mortality rate to be lower than average

90

More than_________ percent of preschool children asked for toys or food they saw advertised on television, according to a survey of their mothers.12 In fact, almost two-thirds of the mothers reported hear- ing their children sing commercial jingles they learned from televi- sion, most by the age of three.

90

sleeper effect

A delayed impact of a message that occurs when an initially discounted message becomes effective, such as we remember the message but forget the reason for discounting it.

Social psychologists offer two possible explanations for age differences:

A life cycle explanation generational explanation

role

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

lowball technique

A tactic for getting people to agree to something. People who agree to an initial request will often still comply when the requester ups the ante. People who receive only the costly request are less likely to comply with it.

confirmation bias

A tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions.

Behavioral confirmation

A type of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people's social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectations.

Contrast effects can be strategically used to great effect.

A used- car dealer may place an old clunker on the lot to "improve the appearance" of the autos in its immediate vicinity. A presidential candidate may select a vice-presidential running mate of lesser stature to enhance the positive perception of his or her own presidential qualities

Why does the primacy effect in impression formation occur?

According to the attention decrement explanation, the later items in a list receive less attention as the observers tire and their minds start to wander; According to the interpretive set explanation, the first items serve to create an initial impression that then is used to interpret subsequent information, either through the discounting of incongruent facts (that is, if Steve is intelligent, why should he be envious?) or by subtle changes in the meaning of the words further down the list (that is, being critical is a positive attribute if Steve is intelligent but a negative one if he is stubborn).

obedience

Acting in accord with a direct order.

______________ , a defender of human economic rationality, foresaw that people would overestimate their chances of gain. This "absurd presumption in their own good fortune," he said, arises from "the overweening conceit which the greater

Adam Smith

Cialdini and his collaborators (1978) explored a variation of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon by experimenting with the lowball technique. For example,

After the customer agrees to buy a new car because of its bargain price and begins completing the sales forms, the salesperson removes the price advantage by charging for options or by checking with a boss who disallows the deal because "we'd be losing money." Folklore has it that more lowballed customers now stick with the higher-priced purchase than would have agreed to it at the outset

example of low ball

Airlines and hotels use the tactic by attracting inquiries with great deals available on only a few seats or rooms; then, when those aren't available, they hope the customer will agree to a higher-priced option. M arketing researchers and salespeople have found that the principle works even when we are aware of a profi t motive (Cialdini, 1988). A harmless initial commitment—returning a postcard for more information and a "free gift," agreeing to listen to an investment p ossibility— often moves us toward a larger commitment

false- consensus effect.

Almost all of us have a tendency to overestimate the percentage of people who agree with us on any issue. If I believe something, then I will tend to assume that most other people feel the same way.

Example of Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence Bias)

Americans are more likely to say that John Walker is a "bad seed" that should be punished accordingly, than to say that he is a naive person who was "swept away" by the situation

example of insufficient deterrence effect

Aronson (the author of one of your texts) and Carlsmith (1963) demonstrated this effect when using five-year olds as subjects. The subjects were allowed to play with some interesting toys which they obviously had positive feelings toward. The supervising adult told the child in one condition that the adult would be leaving the room for a while and would be "annoyed" if the child played with the toys (the threat of "mild" punishment condition). In another group, the supervising adult told the child that the adult would be leaving the room for a while and would be "angry" if the child played with the toys and would "take the toys home" (the threat of "severe" punishment condition). None of the children played with the toys while the adult was out of the room. In which condition did the child's attitude toward the toys change from favorable to unfavorable? According to the insufficient deterrence principle, only in the "mild" punishment condition did the child have an insufficient deterrence to not play with the toys. Therefore, as predicted, in the mild punishment condition the child's attitude toward the toys changed from favorable to unfavorable. Presumably the child thought "I did not play with the fun toys and yet there was no good reason not to play with them." This created dissonance which was then resolved by the child thinking, "I did not play with the toys because the toys were not fun to play with."

example of conformity

As a controversial speaker or a music concert finishes, the adoring fans near the front leap to their feet, applauding. The approving folks just behind them follow their example and join the standing ovation. Now the wave of people standing reaches people who, unprompted, would merely be giving polite applause from their comfortable seats. Seated among them, part of you wants to stay seated ("this speaker was nothing exciting"). But as the wave of standing people sweeps by, will you alone stay seated? It's not easy being a minority of one. Unless you heartily dislike what you've just heard, you will probably rise to your feet, at least briefl y.

"authority" as a variable of social influence.

As he states, the authority rule is that "one should be more willing to follow the suggestions of someone who is a legitimate authority." Wearing a uniform, having the trappings of authority (a white lab coat), or having a title like "Dr." all increases the social influence of the communicator.

A life cycle explanation

Attitudes change (for example, become more conservative) as people grow older.

generational explanation:

Attitudes do not change; older people largely hold onto the attitudes they adopted when they were young. Because these attitudes are different from those being adopted by young people today, a generation gap develops

________________, intuitive thinking occurs not "on-screen" but off-screen, out of sight, where reason does not go

Automatic

A____________________statement is a personality description vague enough to be true of almost anyone. Example astrology

Barnum

example of regression toward the average

Because exam scores fl uctuate partly by chance, most students who get extremely high scores on an exam will get lower scores on the next exam. If their first score is at the ceiling, their second score is more likely to fall back ("regress") toward their own average than to push the ceiling even higher. That is why a student who does consistently good work, even if never the best, will sometimes end a course at the top of the class. Conversely, the lowest scoring students on the first exam are likely to improve. If those who scored lowest go for tutoring after the first exam, the tutors are likely to feel effective when the student improves, even if the tutoring had no effect.

It is not uncommon for us to imagine that members of the outgroup all look alike, think alike, and act alike. For example,

Bernadette Park and Myron Rothbart conducted a study of sororities. They found that the women perceived more similarity between members in other sororities than within their own. One explanation for this effect is that when the women thought of members in their own group, they had knowledge of them as individuals, each with a unique personality and lifestyle. When they thought of outgroup members, they lacked such individualizing information so they considered them in terms of a group label and saw them all as similar to this identity.

From his analysis of 173 studies, _________________ (2006) concluded that the actor-observer difference is actually minimal. When our action feels intentional and admirable, we attribute it to our own good reasons, not to the situation. It's only when we behave badly that we're more likely to attribute our behavior to the situation, while someone observing us may spontaneously infer a trait.

Bertram Malle

In one famous study, college men volunteered to spend time in a simulated prison constructed in Stanford's psychology department by Philip Zimbardo

By a fl ip of a coin, Zimbardo designated some students as guards. He gave them uniforms, billy clubs, and whistles and instructed them to enforce the rules. The other half, the prisoners, were locked in cells and made to wear humiliating hospital-gown-like outfi ts. After a jovial fi rst day of "playing" their roles, the guards and the prisoners, and even the experimenters, got caught up in the situation. The guards began to disparage the prisoners, and some devised cruel and degrading routines. The prisoners broke down, rebelled, or became apathetic. There developed, reported Zimbardo (1972), a "growing confusion between reality and illusion, between role-playing and self-identity. . . . This prison which we had created . . . was absorbing us as creatures of its own reality." Observing the emerging social pathology, Zimbardo was forced to call off the planned two-week simulation after only six days

example of rosy retrospection

Cathy McFarland and Michael Ross (1985) found that as our relationships change, we also revise our recollections of other people. They had university students rate their steady dating partners. Two months later, they rated them again. Students who were more in love than ever had a tendency to overestimate their first impressions—it was "love at first sight." Those who had broken up were more likely to underestimate their earlier liking—recalling the partner as somewhat selfish and bad-tempered

The Storms experiment points to one method for nipping this potential conflict in the bud before it happens: _________________________. One tactic for doing this is to promote empathy by role-playing the other's point of view. Another tactic, used on the international front, is cultural exchange programs in which citizens of one country live in another. Both tactics change both the perspective and the information available for making attributions.

Change the actor's and the observer's perspectives

Ellen Langer (1977) demonstrated the illusion of control in betting experiments.

Compared with those given an assigned lottery number, people who chose their own number demanded four times as much money when asked if they would sell their ticket. When playing a game of chance against an awkward and nervous person, they bet significantly more than when playing against a dapper, confident opponent. Being the person who throws the dice or spins the wheel increases people's confidence

example of impact of social roles

Consider a common reaction of most Americans to a person using food stamps at a supermarket: "She is lazy; if she just tried harder, she could get a job." Or consider this characterization of a convicted burglar: "He is a terrible human being; what type of villain could commit such acts?"

example of inoculation

During the presidential debates of the 2000 election, George W. Bush was given an inoculation strategy by his handlers to use on Al Gore. Bush employed a framing strategy of predicting early in the first debate that Gore would be using facts and figures that Bush framed as "fuzzy math." When Gore would cite a statistic, Bush would tell the audience that Gore was using the "fuzzy math" that Bush had predicted Gore would use. Even though Bush offered no facts to support his claims of fuzzy math, according to some pundits and audience members who fell for this gambit, Bush effectively neutralized Gore's advantage in experience and grasp of details by suggesting that Gore's figures were suspect and therefore invalid. He, in effect, inoculated audience members against Gore's arguments.

specific instructions alone are not enough to produce action. _________________ is a necessary component for action in such situations.

Fear

how much fear should you arouse? Should you evoke just a little fear, lest people become so frightened that they tune out your painful message?

Experiments show that, often, the more frightened and vulnerable people feel, the more they respond

attitude inoculation

Exposing people to weak attacks upon their attitudes so that when stronger attacks come, they will have refutations available

What can we do to avoid the negative consequences of cognitive conservatism?

First, be wary of those who attempt to create your categories and definitions of the situations. Second, try to use more than one way to categorize and describe a per- son or event. Third, try to think of persons and important events as unique; although they are members of a particular salient category (say, a given race or gender), they are also members of many other categories and have their own unique attributes. Finally, when forming an impression, consider the possibility that you might be mistaken—that you have fallen victim to one or more of the cognitive biases described in this chapter.

Daniel Gilbert's theory suggests that attributions involve a three-step process.

First, we identify the behavior by for example, interpreting it as helping behavior. Second, we automatically make a dispositional attribution (low effort thinking-stage two). Third, if we subsequently engage in high effort thinking, we adjust our attribution to account for situational factors (stage three

W hat produces overconfidence? Why doesn't experience lead us to a more realistic self-appraisal?

For one thing, people tend to recall their mistaken judgments as times when they were almost right

When we are conscious of our attitudes

For our attitudes to guide our actions, we must pause to consider them. Thus, when we are self-conscious, perhaps after looking in a mirror, or reminded of how we feel, we act truer to our convictions (Fazio, 1990). Likewise, attitudes formed through a signifi cant experience are more often remembered and acted upon

example of foot in the door

Freedman and Fraser in the 1960's used this principle by, for example, asking people if they would be willing to place a three-inch square sign in their window that said "Drive Carefully." After the subject said "yes," the subject was later asked if he/she would put a billboard in their front yard that had a similar theme. They obtained three times the level of compliance with the billboard request when it was first followed by a small request than when it was not. Presumably, the subjects felt committed to the "drive carefully" cause and wanted to remain consistent in their commitment. This, like the other strategies discussed, is a powerful influence strategy.

________________messages focus on the advantages of healthy behavior (for example, "If you wear sunscreen, you'll have attractive skin" rather than "If you don't wear sunscreen, you'll have unattractive skin"). Thus, a global climate change article that ends by describing future catastrophic consequences is less persuasive to many skeptics than one that concludes by discussing possible solutions (Feinberg & Willer, 2010).

Gain-framed

_______________ found that winning teams attributed their success to stable causes, while teams that lost attributed their failure to unstable causes like flukes, bad breaks, and the like. This bias can be beneficial (at least in the short run) because it allows losing teams to avoid being psychologically devastated by setbacks, to hang in there and continue playing in the face of a string of defeats.

Grove

In another experiment designed to test the believability of Barnum statements, Richard Petty and Timothy Brock gave subjects a phony personality test and then administered bogus personality feedback and results.

Half the subjects received a positively written Barnum statement describing them as "open-minded" (i.e., you can see many sides of an issue), whereas the other half received a positively written statement describing them as "closed-minded" (i.e., once you make up your mind, you take a firm stand). Although the personality feedback was bogus, almost all of the subjects believed it to be a very good description of their personality. What is more, Petty and Brock found that subjects' "new-found personality" influenced their subsequent behavior. Specifically, "open-minded" and "closed- minded" subjects were asked to list their thoughts on two controversial issues. Those subjects who had randomly received a Barnum statement describing them as open-minded listed thoughts on both sides of the issue, whereas those who had received a closed-minded personality statement tended to list arguments on only one side of the issue. This is yet another example of how our beliefs and expectations can create social reality.

blindsight

Having lost a portion of the visual cortex to surgery or stroke, people may be functionally blind in part of their field of vision

___________________ require very little thought—just the selection of the rule (which may not be the correct one to use) and a straightforward application to the issue at hand.

Heuristics

The double entendre of the sitcom illustrates an important principle of social cognition:

How we interpret social events usually depends on what we are currently thinking about, as well as what beliefs and categories we typically use to make sense of things.

example of secondary gain.

How about those who stay off cigarettes after behavior modification? Here is the point: Once we have been induced to comply, and therefore do not smoke for several days, it is possible for us to make a discovery. Over the years, we may have come to believe it was inevitable that we awaken every morning with a hacking cough and a hot, dry mouth, but after refraining from smoking for a few days, we may discover how delightful it feels to have a clear throat, fresh breath, and an unparched mouth.

In 1793 Benjamin Franklin tested the idea that doing a favor engenders liking. As clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, he was disturbed by opposition from another important legislator. So Franklin set out to win him over

I did not . . . aim at gaining his favour by paying any servile respect to him but, after some time, took this other method. Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book I wrote a note to him expressing my desire of perusing that book and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately and I return'd it in about a week, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends and our friendship continued to his death. (quoted by Rosenzweig, 1972, p. 769

I refer to this as the good-old-Uncle- Charlie phenomenon.

Identification

Stockbroker overconfidence

Investment experts market their services with the confident presumption that they can beat the stock market average, forgetting that for every stockbroker or buyer saying "Sell!" at a given price, there is another saying "Buy!"

Richard LaPiere. study 1930s

In 1933, LaPiere contacted 128 hotel and restaurant proprietors and assessed their attitude toward Chinese people by asking them, "Will you accept members of the Chinese race as guests in your establishment?" More than 90 percent of those contacted said, "No!" However, when a young Chinese couple actually made an appearance, LaPiere found that of these 128 establishments, only one refused them accommodations or service. The proprietors' attitudes concerning Chinese people did not predict their actual behavior.

example of The "planning fallacy"

In 1969, Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau proudly announced that a $120 million stadium with a retractable roof would be built for the 1976 Olympics. The roof was completed in 1989 and cost $120 million by itself. In 1985, offi cials estimated that Boston's "Big Dig" highway project would cost $2.6 billion and take until 1998. The cost ballooned to $14.6 billion and the project took until 2006.

Solomon Asch demonstrated the power of the primacy effect in impression formation.

In Asch's study, subjects received descriptive sentences such as the following and then were asked to rate the person described in each sentence. a. Steve is intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and envious. b. Steve is envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, and intelligent. Note that the two sentences contain exactly the same information about Steve; however, sentence (a) puts the positive traits first, whereas sentence (b) puts them last. Asch found that Steve was rated more positively when he was described by sentence (a) than by sentence (b)—a primacy effect.

example of self-serving bias in marriage

In a 2008 survey, 49 percent of married men said they did half to most of the child care. But only 31 percent of wives said their husbands did this much. In the same survey, 70 percent of women said they do most of the cooking, but 56 percent of the men said they do most of the cooking (Galinsky & others, 2009). The general rule: Group members' estimates of how much they contribute to a joint task typically sum to more than 100 percent

example of behavioral confirmation

In a classic study, Snyder, Elizabeth Tanke, and Ellen Berscheid (1977) had male students talk on the telephone with women they thought (from having been shown a picture) were either attractive or unattractive. Analysis of just the women's comments during the conversations revealed that the supposedly attractive women spoke more warmly than the supposedly unattractive women. The men's erroneous beliefs had become a self-fulfilling prophecy by leading them to act in a way that influenced the women to fulfill the men's stereotype that beautiful people are desirable people.

self serving bias studies

In a study of self-esteem across 53 nations, the average self-esteem score was above the midpoint in every country (Schmitt & Allik, 2005). In recent samples of U.S. college students, the most common score on a self-esteem measure was the maximum—in effect, "perfect" self-esteem

The authority, however, must be perceived as legitimate for example

In another twist on the basic experiment, the experimenter received a rigged telephone call that required him to leave the laboratory. He said that since the equipment recorded data automatically, the "teacher" should just go ahead. After the experimenter left, another person, who had been assigned a clerical role (actually a second confederate), assumed command. The clerk "decided" that the shock should be increased one level for each wrong answer and instructed the teacher accordingly. Now 80 percent of the teachers refused to comply fully. The confederate, feigning disgust at this defiance, sat down in front of the shock generator and tried to take over the teacher's role. At that point most of the defiant participants protested. Some tried to unplug the generator. One large man lifted the zealous confederate from his chair and threw him across the room. This rebellion against an illegitimate authority contrasted sharply with the deferential politeness usually shown the experimenter.

example of contrast effect

In contrast to the overpriced shack, the average-looking house with the average price is a great find; in contrast to a $170 bot- tle of wine, the ordinarily pricey $70 dollar bottle seems just right. When any object is contrasted with something similar but not as good (or pretty, or tall, or inexpensive, and so forth), that particular object is judged to be better, prettier, taller, or a better bargain than would normally be the case. If a man of normal height (say, 5 feet 11 inches) is in the company of midgets, he seems very tall. If he is a member of a professional basketball team, he seems very short. In the 1970s a young basketball player named Nate "Tiny" Archibald was a staple for the Boston Celtics. Would it surprise you to learn that Tiny stood 6 feet 1 inch tall? In Jonathan Swift's classic novel Gul- liver's Travels, the hero, a man of normal height, was considered a giant when traveling among the residents of Lilliput, a dwarf when traveling among the residents of Brobdingnag. This is the contrast effect.

The illusory correlation shows up quite often in social judgments. Consider these two examples:

In informal surveys, people consistently overestimate the extent to which lesbians are likely to contract the AIDS virus. In fact, lesbians have a lower rate of HIV infection than male homosexuals and male and female heterosexuals. However, the knowledge that male homosexuals have high rates of HIV infection coupled with the categorization of a woman as homo- sexual leads to the mistaken judgment that lesbians are likely to have AIDS.

In an experiment I did in collaboration with two of my students, Marti Gonzales and Mark Costanzo, we showed that framing can play a major role in determining whether people are willing to commit several hundred dollars to insulate their homes to conserve energy.

In one condition, after examining each home, energy experts gave each homeowner a detailed, individualized description of how much money they could save each year on heating bills. In the other condition, auditors were trained to frame the description in terms of loss; that is, they provided the same information but informed the homeowners that they were losing money every day—that it was akin to throwing money out the window. Homeowners in the "loss" condition were twice as likely to invest the money to insulate their homes as those in the "save" condition.

Shanto Iyengar, Mark Peters, and Donald Kinder demonstrated the importance of priming on the relationship between repeated media exposure and issue importance.

In one experiment, the researchers edited the evening news so that participants received a steady dose of news reports about a specific problem facing the United States. For example, some participants watched reports of the weaknesses of U.S. defense capabilities; others watched reports emphasizing pollution concerns; a third group watched accounts of inflation and economic matters. The results were clear. After a week of viewing the edited pro- grams, participants emerged from the experiment convinced that the target problem—the one primed by extensive coverage in the pro- grams they watched—was more important for the country to solve than they did before viewing the programs.

I n his well-known studies of experimenter bias, Robert Rosenthal (1985, 2006) found that research participants sometimes live up to what they believe experimenters expect of them.

In one study, experimenters asked individuals to judge the success of people in various photographs. The experimenters read the same instructions to all their participants and showed them the same photos. Nevertheless, experimenters who expected their participants to see the photographed people as successful obtained higher ratings than did those who expected their participants to see the people as failures

hindsight bias experiment

In the Fischhoff experiments, subjects were given a test assessing their knowledge of historical events. The subject's task was to indicate the likelihood that four possible outcomes of the event could have actually occurred. Some of the subjects were told that one of the four possibilities had actually happened but were asked to make the estimates that they would have made had they not first been told the "right" answers. The results showed that subjects could not ignore this information; they substantially overestimated their prior knowledge of correct answers. In other words, even though subjects really didn't know the answers to the test, once they were told an answer, they believed that they knew it all along and that their memories had not changed.

Ellen Langer demonstrated the power of the "illusion of control" in a simple experiment.

In this study, subjects bought lottery tickets. Half were allowed to choose their numbers, and half had their numbers randomly assigned. Later, the subjects were given the opportunity to sell the ticket back to the experimenter. Langer found that those who had chosen their own lottery numbers demanded up to four times as much money for it as those who were assigned numbers. The subjects in this experiment were under the illusion that choosing their own number increased their chances of winning.

They pointed out that the more behavior deviates from the expected in the situation, the more likely it indicates information about the person's disposition (if the behavior was freely chosen and not coerced). For example, a person talking loudly in the library deviates from what would be expected, so we are more likely to make a dispositional attribution (e.g., that the person is rude, inconsiderate, or aggressive). A person talking softly in the library is non-diagnostic, telling us nothing about the individual's personality.

Jones and Davis

filmmakers control people's perceptions of emotion by manipulating the setting in which they see a face. They call this the _____________________

Kulechov effect

______________, on the other hand, tend to respond to more nuanced, fact-based arguments that appeal to reason rather than strong emotions.

Liberals

Elizabeth Loftus, a prominent cognitive psychologist, has conducted a fascinating program of research on reconstructive memory

Loftus showed subjects a film depicting a multiple-car accident. After the film, some of the subjects were asked, "About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" Other subjects were asked the same question, but the word smashed was replaced by the word hit. Subjects who were asked about smashing cars, as opposed to hitting cars, estimated that the cars were going significantly faster; moreover, a week after seeing the film, they were more likely to state (erroneously) that there was broken glass at the accident scene.

_________________ enables us to revise our own histories

Memory construction

example of memory reconstruction

Michael Ross, Cathy McFarland, and Garth Fletcher (1981) exposed some University of Waterloo students to a message convincing them of the desirability of toothbrushing. Later, in a supposedly different experiment, these students recalled brushing their teeth more often during the preceding 2 weeks than did students who had not heard the message. Likewise, judging from surveys, people report smoking many fewer cigarettes than are actually sold (Hall, 1985). And they recall casting more votes than were actually recorded Those who participate in psychotherapy and self-improvement programs for weight control, smoking cessation, and exercise show only modest improvement on average. Yet they often claim considerable benefit. Michael Conway and Michael Ross (1986) explain why: Having expended so much time, effort, and money on self-improvement, people may think, "I may not be perfect now, but I was worse before; this did me a lot of good."

Impact of Emotional Distance of the Victim

Milgram's participants acted with greatest obedience and least compassion when the "learners" could not be seen (and could not see them). When the victim was remote and the "teachers" heard no complaints, nearly all obeyed calmly to the end. That situation minimized the learner's influence relative to the experimenter's. But what if we made the learner's pleas and the experimenter's instructions more equally visible? When the learner was in the same room, "only" 40 percent obeyed to 450 volts. Full compliance dropped to a still-astonishing 30 percent when teachers were required to force the learner's hand into contact with a shock plate

The "planning fallacy"

Most of us overestimate how much we'll be getting done, and therefore how much free time we will have

Egocentric Thought

Most people have a tendency to perceive themselves as more central to events than is actually the case. We call this egocentric thought.

Herr's experiment didn't stop there.

Next, the subjects played a bargaining game with a person whom they thought was Donald. In this game, participants were required to choose between one of two strategies—competing or cooperating. Herr found that when subjects expected to play against a hostile Donald, they played in a highly competitive manner; when they expected a gentle Donald, they played with far more cooperation.

Why should information on dating habits make someone appear less intelligent, or a story about the birthplace of a politician lessen the impact of his or her negative image?

One answer is that irrelevant information about a person makes that person seem more similar to others, and thus more aver- age and like everyone else. An average person is less likely to have an extremely high grade point average or to be terribly negative.

Why do people perceive themselves in self-enhancing ways?

One explanation sees the self-serving bias as a by-product of how we process and remember information about ourselves.

There are two types of conformity.

One type involves public conformity only both public conformity and private conversion

How can an honest person become corrupt? Conversely, how can we get a person to be more honest?

One way is through the dissonance that results from making a difficult decision.

Political overconfidence.

Overconfident decision makers can wreak havoc. It was a confident Adolf Hitler who from 1939 to 1945 waged war against the rest of Europe. It was a confident Lyndon Johnson who in the 1960s invested U.S. weapons and soldiers in the effort to salvage democracy in South Vietnam.

"experimental realism."

People became emotionally involved in the experience

illusory correlation

Perception of a relationship where none exists, or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists

illusion of control

Perception of uncontrollable events as subject to one's control or as more controllable than they are.

Jerome Frank wrote a classic book called __________________ in the 1960's in which he contends that all schools of psychotherapy and counseling basically employ similar change agents that are designed to persuade patients to change attitudes

Persuasion and Healing

____________________allocates our attention to stimuli which then serves as a filter for perceiving subsequent stimuli.

Priming

examples of self fulfilling prophecy

Robert Feldman and Thomas Prohaska (1979; Feldman & Theiss, 1982) found that such expectations can affect both student and teacher. Students in a learning experiment who expected to be taught by an excellent teacher perceived their teacher (who was unaware of their expectations) as more competent and interesting than did students with low expectations. Furthermore, the students actually learned more. In a later experiment, women who were led to expect their male instructor to be sexist had a less positive experience with him, performed worse, and rated him as less competent than did women not given the sexist expectation

availability heuristic

Said simply, the more easily we recall something, the more likely it seems.

__________________ explanations contribute to marital discord, worker dissatisfaction, and bargaining impasses (Kruger & Gilovich, 1999). Small wonder that divorced people usually blame their partner for the breakup or that managers often blame poor performance on workers' lack of ability or effort

Self-serving

Another way in which evil acts influence attitudes is the paradoxical fact that we tend not only to hurt those we dislike but also to dislike those we hurt. for example

Several studies (Berscheid & others, 1968; Davis & Jones, 1960; Glass, 1964) found that harming an innocent victim— by uttering hurtful comments or delivering electric shocks—typically leads aggressors to disparage their victims, thus helping them justify their cruel behavior. This is especially so when we are coaxed into it, not coerced. When we agree to a deed voluntarily, we take more responsibility for it. The phenomenon appears in wartime. Prisoner-of-war camp guards would sometimes display good manners to captives in their first days on the job, but not for long. Soldiers ordered to kill may initially react with revulsion to the point of sickness over their act. But not for long (Waller, 2002). Before long, they will denigrate their enemies with nicknames. People tend to dehumanize their enemies and humanize their pets.

informational conformity was conducted by Sherif (1935).

Sherif used the autokinetic effect, an optical illusion in which a static pinpoint of light appears to be moving, to study informational conformity. He used three person groups. Each person was asked to estimate out loud the distance that the light moved. The study included many trials over a three-day time period. Sherif found that with each successive trial, the subjects' estimates became closer in conformity to the others. He suggested that each subject used the others for informational purposes, gathering information about an ambiguous stimulus in hope of making a more accurate estimate.

When external influences on our actions are minimal

Sometimes we adjust our attitude reports to please our listeners. This was vividly demonstrated when the U.S. House of Representatives once overwhelmingly passed a salary increase for itself in an off-the-record vote, and then moments later overwhelmingly defeated the same bill on a roll-call vote. At other times social pressure diverts our behavior from the dictates of our attitudes (leading good people sometimes to harm people they do not dislike). When external pressures do not blur the link between our attitudes and actions, we can see that link more clearly.

example of how Our preconceptions control our interpretations

Sports fans perceive referees as partial to the other side. Political candidates and their supporters nearly always view the news media as unsympathetic to their cause (Richardson & others, 2008). I t's not just fans and politicians. People everywhere perceive mediators and media as biased against their position

RESISTING PERSUASION: ATTITUDE INOCULATION

Stimulate Commitment Challenging Beliefs Developing Counterargument

a study by Anthony Pratkanis found that a person's attitudes play a major role in determining what he or she "knows" to be true. In this study, college students were asked to identify which of two possible statements about another former president—such as the following—was true: a. Ronald Reagan maintained an A average at Eureka College. b. Ronald Reagan never achieved above a C average at Eureka College. What did Pratkanis find? Very few people actually knew what Reagan's college grades were; their answer depended on their attitude toward him.

Students who liked Reagan were more likely to believe statement (a); students who disliked him were more likely to believe statement (b).

What then can we conclude from the considerable research on attitudes and behavior?

Subtle situational variables are often strong determinants of our behavior. Second, most people tend to overlook the importance of the situation in explaining behavior, preferring instead to explain other people's actions in terms of assumptions about their personalities and attitudes.

example of Reactance

Suppose that, as I walk down the street, I am gently asked to sign a petition. I don't know much about the issue, and as it is being explained to me, another person accosts us and begins to pressure me not to sign. Reactance theory predicts that, to counteract this pressure and reassert my freedom of choice, I would be more likely to sign. This scenario was actually staged by Madeline Heilman, and the results con- firmed her prediction that, under most circumstances, the more in- tense the attempts to prevent participants from signing the petition, the more likely they were to sign.

Self-esteem motivation, then, helps power our self-serving bias. As social psychologist Daniel Batson (2006) surmises, "_______________________."

The head is an extension of the heart

self-biases can serve important purposes.

The individual who believes that he or she is the cause of good things will try harder and persist longer to achieve difficult goals. Such efforts can result in new scientific discoveries, great works of art, or political agreements that can be of great benefit to millions of people.

there is no simple relation between one-sided arguments and the effectiveness of the communication. It depends to some extent upon how well informed the audience is:

The more well informed the members of the audience are, the less likely they are to be persuaded by a one-sided argument and the more likely they are to be persuaded by an argument that brings out the important opposing arguments and then proceeds to refute them.

Closeness and Legitimacy of the Authority

The physical presence of the experimenter also affected obedience. When Milgram's experimenter gave the commands by telephone, full obedience dropped to 21 percent (although many lied and said they were obeying). Other studies confi rm that when the one making the command is physically close, compliance increases. Given a light touch on the arm, people are more likely to lend a dime, sign a petition, or sample a new pizza

William James

The social self . . . ranks higher than the material self. . . . We must care more for our honor, our friends, our human ties, than for a sound skin or wealth. And the spiritual self is so supremely precious that, rather than lose it, a man ought to be willing to give up friends and good fame, and property, and life itself.

regression toward the average

The statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behavior to return toward one's average.

foot-in-the-door phenomenon

The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.

overconfidence phenomenon

The tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs.

false consensus effect

The tendency to overestimate the commonality of one's opinions and one's

selective exposure

The tendency to seek information and media that agree with one's views and to avoid dissonant information.

Self-perception theory

The theory that when we are unsure of our attitudes, we infer them much as would someone observing us—by looking at our behavior and the circumstances under which it occurs.

Indeed, in 1981, Consumer Reports, a highly respected source of consumer information, conducted a test of breakfast cereals.

Their researchers fed young rats, which have nutritional requirements remarkably similar to those of humans, a diet composed exclusively of water and one of 32 brands of breakfast cereal for a period of 14 to 18 weeks. They found that the rats grew and remained healthy on a diet of Lucky Charms. On the other hand, a diet of Quaker's 100 Percent Natural Granola actually stunted their growth!

Stimulate Commitment

There is another way to resist: Before encountering others' judgments, make a public commitment to your position. Having stood up for your convictions, you will become less susceptible (or, should we say, less "open") to what others have to say.

why does the sleeper effect happen

They explained the results as being due the subject forgetting the credibility of the source over time and only remembering the strength of the message. The effect seems to work best if the message is strong and is received before the source's credibility is revealed.

Tory Higgins and his colleagues (Higgins & McCann, 1984; Higgins & Rholes, 1978) illustrated how saying becomes believing.

They had university students read a personality description of someone and then summarize it for someone else, who was believed either to like or to dislike that person. The students wrote a more positive description when the recipient liked the person. Having said positive things, they also then liked the person more themselves. Asked to recall what they had read, they remembered the description as more positive than it was. In short, people tend to adjust their messages to their listeners, and, having done so, to believe the altered message

representativeness heuristic.

This heuristic relates to stereotyping and involves classifying someone as belonging to a category if that person has features that are similar to "a typical case from that category.

people do frequently grow and learn from their mistakes. How?

Through a greater understanding of my own defensiveness and dissonance-reducing tendencies. Through the realization that performing stupid or immoral actions does not necessarily mean I am an irrevocably stupid or immoral person. Through the development of enough ego strength to tolerate errors in myself. Through increasing my ability to recognize the benefits of admitting my errors in terms of my own growth and learning, as well as my ability to form close, meaningful relationships with other people.

example of dilution effect, taken from an experiment by Henry Zukier. Which student has the higher grade point average?

Tim spends about 31 hours studying outside of class in an average week. Tom spends about 31 hours studying outside of class in an average week. Tom has one brother and two sisters. He visits his grandparents about once every 3 months. He once went on a blind date and shoots pool about once every 2 months. If you are similar to the students in Zukier's study, you would be-ieve that Tim is smarter than Tom. Zukier found that including irrelevant and nondiagnostic information (such as information on siblings, family visits, and dating habits) that has nothing to do with the issue at hand can dilute—that is, make less potent—the impact of relevant information

example of framing

To illustrate the power of decision framing, let's imagine that you are the president of the United States and the country is bracing itself for the outbreak of an unusual epidemic expected to kill 600 people. Your top advisors have prepared two alternative programs to combat the disease and have estimated, to the best of their ability, the likely consequences of adopting each program. If Program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. If Program B is adopted, there is a one third probability that 600 people will be saved and a two thirds probability that no people will be saved. If you are like most of the subjects in an experiment performed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky,25 you would select Program A (72 percent of their subjects selected this option). You might think

An experiment by Paul Herr

Using a word puzzle, Herr intentionally in- creased the accessibility of the concept hostility in some of his subjects, using the technique of priming discussed earlier in the chapter. Specifically, Herr's subjects were required to find hidden names of persons in a matrix of letters. For half the subjects, the hidden names were of persons associated with hostility—Charles Manson, Adolf Hitler, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Dracula. The other subjects sought and found the names of relatively gentle people—Peter Pan, Pope John Paul, Shirley Temple, and Santa Claus. The subjects then read an ambiguous description of a person named Donald, whose behavior could be seen as either hostile or gentle, and rated Donald's level of hostility. Consistent with our earlier discussion of contrast effects, we would expect the different puzzles to influence judgments about Donald. Compared with Hitler and Manson, almost everyone looks gentle—including Donald; compared with the Pope and Santa Claus, almost everyone appears hostile—including Donald. This is exactly what Herr found. Those subjects primed with the extremely hostile persons rated Donald as less hostile than those who received the gentle primes.

our attitudes do influence our actions, especially when three conditions are met:

When external influences on our actions are minimal When the attitude is specific to the behavior When we are conscious of our attitudes

door in the face technique (reciprocity norm )

When using this strategy, the idea is to make a large request that will be refused. After the refusal, a small request is made. Compliance with the small request is the desired goal

W e can also analyze cult persuasion using the factors discussed in Module 15:

Who (the communicator) said what (the message) to whom (the audience)?

priming

a procedure based on the notion that ideas that have been recently encountered or frequently activated are more likely to come to mind and thus will be used in interpreting social events.

self-serving bias

a tendency to perceive oneself favorably

example of representativeness heuristic.

after 9/11, some members of non-Islamic religions who wore turbans (e.g. Indian Sikh's) were harassed; one was even murdered. The harassers animated with hostility toward all Muslims erroneously believed that anyone who wears a turban must be Islamic

It also matters who receives a message. Let's consider two audience characteristics: ______________________

age and thoughtfulness.

Those who resisted conformity showed a great deal of activity in the _________________, a region of the brain associated with pain and emotional discomfort. Going against the group is painful.

amygdala

The _________________effect is another one that leads us to make erroneous conclusions. You can have two groups and both groups are asked to indicate whether the Mississippi river is greater than or less than a given figure. For one group the figure (the anchor) is 1000 miles and for the other group the figure is 5000 miles. Neither group knows the figure (anchor) given to the other. After answering the question, you then ask both groups to estimate the length of the river. Which group do you think will give the biggest estimate? Yes, you guessed it. Reliably, the group that started with 5000 as its anchor will estimate the length of the Mississippi as the longest. Thus, because those with the 5000-mile anchor allocated attention to this number, it became the starting point in their estimate. They adjusted their estimate from 5000 which caused them to inflate their estimate compared to the 1000 anchor group

anchoring and adjustment

defensive pessimism

anticipates problems and motivates effective coping

Schemas

are "mental structures people use to organize their knowledge." They act as filters and screen out some information, especially information that is inconsistent with the schema

Attitudes

are beliefs and feelings that can influence our reactions

Schemas

are mental concepts that intuitively guide our perceptions and interpretations. Whether we hear someone speaking of religious sects or sex depends not only on the word spoken but also on how we automatically interpret the sound.

Emotional reactions

are often nearly instantaneous, happening before there is time for deliberate thinking. One neural shortcut takes information from the eye or the ear to the brain's sensory switchboard (the thalamus) and out to its emotional control center (the amygdala) before the thinking cortex has had any chance to intervene

One of the most striking examples of the contrast effect was pro- duced in an experiment by Douglas Kenrick and Sara Gutierres

asked male college students to rate the attractiveness of a po- tential blind date before or after watching an episode of the tele- vision show Charlie's Angels. The males rated their blind date as far less attractive after they saw the show than before. The "angels" provided a stringent context for rating attractiveness; almost any- one would suffer by contrast.

Attribution theory

attempts to explain the cognitive processes that people use to explain their own behavior and the behavior of others. It is based on the assumption that we often ask and answer the "why" question when observing interpersonal behavior

information processing models. These models utilize constructs such as_______________________

attention, schemas, judgment, and memory

An opinion that includes an evaluative and an emotional component is called an ___________________

attitude.

Kelly's (1967) covariation cube theory of attribution

based on attributions that are made when we are able to observe multiple instances of the actor's behavior (the person making the attribution is usually referred to as the observer and the target person of the attribution is usually referred to as the actor).

How can people who are not medical experts induce large numbers of women to get regular mammograms? The place is important. In this instance, the tipping point happened in places where women (and only women) gather informally and have the leisure to talk and listen to one another. The places were ______________, and the connectors were _____________.

beauty salons, beauticians

example of s attitude inoculation

before having their belief attacked, they were "immunized" by fi rst receiving a small challenge to their belief, and if they read or wrote an essay in refutation of this mild attack, then they were better able to resist the powerful attack.

High self-esteem people usually react to a self-esteem threat by compensating for it (__________________). These reactions help them preserve their positive feelings about themselves

blaming someone else or trying harder next time

At a sinister level, cults and political parties (e.g., the Chinese Communists during much of the latter half of the 20th Century) who employ "_____________" are not simply interested in outward conformity, but rather desire inward attitude changes.

brain washing

Many people assume that the most potent social indoctrination comes through ______________, a term coined to describe what happened to American prisoners of war (POWs) during the 1950s Korean War.

brainwashing

these strategies can also lead to serious errors and biases, especially when we select an inappropriate shortcut or, in our rush to move on, we ignore a vital piece of information.

cognitive misers

The Two Routes to Persuasion

central arguments peripheral cues

Persuasion researchers Richard Petty and John Cacioppo and Alice Eagly and Shelly Chaiken (1993) report that persuasion is likely to occur via either a_________________

central or peripheral route.

As Petty notes, "When the message advocates or is expected to advocate something pleasant, positive mood has produced increased message processing over negative mood." This suggests that under specific situations, anticipation of pleasant moods may activate central process thinking. Negative moods, especially those associated with personally relevant messages, presumably activate problem-solving processes that motivates us to use ______________________.

central process thinking

heuristics" refers to______________________ like "bigger is better" or "buy in bulk and it's cheaper."

cognitive shortcuts

One way conformity to group pressure can be decreased is by inducing the individual to make some sort of ______________ to his or her initial judgment. P

commitment

So-called low effort thinking is more_______________than the ideal (high effort thinking) since it conserves time and energy.

common

Questing for self-knowledge, we're motivated to assess our ______________

competence

The term _____________ best describes the behavior of a person who is motivated by a desire to gain reward or avoid punishment. Typically, the person's behavior is only as long-lived as the promise of reward or the threat of punishment.

compliance

three kinds of responses to social influence:

compliance, identification, and internalization.

_________________ have a greater psychological need to manage uncertainty and threat.

conservatives

In internalization, the important component is ______________—the credibility of the person who supplies the information. F

credibility

Kelly believed that distinctiveness, consistency, and consensus were all important dimensions of the ____________.

cube

Research has found that, in producing resistance, inoculation is most effective when the belief under attack is a ______________________

cultural truism.

Arie Kruglanski and Donna Webster found that when nonconformists voiced a dissenting opinion close to the ______________ (when groups were feeling the pinch to come to closure), they were rejected even more than when they voiced their dissenting opinion earlier in the discussion.

deadline

the___________________ procedure refers to the process whereby, in selecting a jury for a murder trial, prospective jurors who are opposed to the death penalty are systematically excluded from the jury

death qualification

The experimenter must take steps to ensure that participants leave the experimental situation in a frame of mind that is at least as sound as it was when they entered the experimental situation. This frequently requires postexperimental ____________ procedures that require more time and effort than the main body of the experiment.

debriefing

a dash of realism—or what Julie Norem (2000) calls _________________ —can sometimes save us from the perils of unrealistic optimism. Defensive pessimism

defensive pessimism

What Leventhal and his colleagues discovered is that people who had a reasonably good opinion of themselves (high self-esteem) were those who were most likely to be moved by high degrees of fear arousal. People with a low opinion of themselves were least likely to take immediate action when confronted with a communication arousing a great deal of fear—but (and here is the interesting part) after a ________________, they behaved very much like the participants with high self-esteem. That is, if immediate action was not required but action could be taken later, people with low self-esteem were more likely to take that action if they were exposed to a communication arousing a great deal of fear.

delay

Cognitive dissonance theory,

developed by the late Leon Festinger (1957), proposes that we feel tension or a lack of harmony ("dissonance"), when two simultaneously accessible thoughts or beliefs ("cognitions") are psychologically inconsistent. Festinger argued that to reduce this unpleasant arousal, we often adjust our thinking. This simple idea, and some surprising predictions derived from it, have spawned more than 2,000 studies

the _________________, who took a position diametrically opposed to the general orientation of the group;

deviate

Although having more information may sometimes be helpful, it can also change how an object is perceived and evaluated through what is called the ___________—the tendency for neutral and irrelevant information to weaken a judgment or impression.

dilution effect

Conformity pressure may be ______________ . person changes behavior to adapt to the implicit or explicit standards or norms set by a person or group

direct or indirect.

Persuasion is also enhanced by a _______________ that inhibits counterarguing (Festinger & Maccoby, 1964; Keating & Brock, 1974; Osterhouse & Brock, 1970). Political ads often use this technique. The words promote the candidate, and the visual images keep us occupied so we don't analyze the words. Distraction is especially effective when the message is simple

distraction

Identification differs from compliance in that we ____________ come to believe in the opinions and values we adopt, although we do not believe in them very strongly.

do

One of the standard comedic devices on television sitcoms is the ___________________

double entendre.

Individuals who feel inadequate are more _______________ influenced by a persuasive communication than individuals who think highly of themselves.

easily

Follow-up studies indicate that this "ignorance of one's incompetence" occurs mostly on relatively__________________. On very difficult tasks, poor performers more often appreciate their lack of skill

easy-seeming tasks

if I have a positive self-view, it is easy for me to see and accept myself as accomplishing positive things; on the other hand, a threat to this positive self-view must be defended against—perhaps through denial or a good excuse. This is called _________________

ego- defensive behavior.

Dissonance- reducing behavior is _______________; by reducing dissonance, we maintain a positive image of ourselves—an image that depicts us as good, or smart, or worthwhile. Again, although this ego-defensive behavior can be considered useful, it can have disastrous conse- quences.

ego-defensive behavior

Another interesting manifestation of _____________ thought is the assumption in social situations that others are paying more attention to us than they are. For example, a teenager may dread going to school with a pimple on his forehead or on a bad hair day because "everyone will notice.

egocentric

People engaging in ______________thought remember past events as if they were a leading player, influencing the course of events and the behavior of others.

egocentric

Defining the situation as an _________________ is the first step; assuming personal responsibility for intervening is the next.

emergency

According to William James, an _______________has both a "feeling" component and cognitive content.

emotion

The power of the media is perhaps best illustrated by a phenomenon known as ________________

emotional contagion.

Four factors that determined obedience were the victim's

emotional distance, the authority's closeness and legitimacy, whether or not the authority was part of a respected institution, and the liberating effects of a disobedient fellow participant

Americans' voting preferences have been more predictable from _____________________ to the candidates than from their beliefs about the candidates' traits and likely behaviors (Abelson & others, 1982). What matters is not just candidates' positions (which candidate embodies your views) but their likeability (who you want to spend time with).

emotional reactions

Although the correct answer seems just as clear-cut, the first person gives a wrong answer. When the second person gives the same wrong answer, you sit up in your chair and stare at the cards. The third person agrees with the first two. Your jaw drops; you start to perspire. "What is this?" you ask yourself. "Are they blind? Or am I?" The fourth and fifth people agree with the others. Then the experimenter looks at you. Now you are experiencing an _____________________: "What is true? Is it what my peers tell me or what my eyes tell me?

epistemological dilemma

the data indicate that the "__________________" or modal group tends to like conformists better than nonconformists.

establishment

Order these four cities according to their crime rates: Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis. If, with available images from TV crime dramas in mind, you thought New York and Los Angeles are the most crime-ridden, guess again; they're the least crime-ridden of the four

example of availability heuristic

Our opinions are influenced by individuals who are both _______________

expert and trustworthy.

What causes the actor-observer bias? An experiment by Michael Storms indicates that it is a function of where a person's attention is _______________________

focused.

Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles at first formed their own group of two, reinforcing each other's aberrant thinking—a phenomenon that psychiatrists call ______________(French for "insanity of two").

folie à deux

experiments suggest that if you want people to do a big favor for you, an effective strategy is to get them to do a small favor first. In the best-known demonstration of this _________________

foot-in-the-door phenomenon

This process of using small favors to encourage people to accede to larger requests has been dubbed the ________________

foot-in-the-door technique.

Meyerowitz and Chaiken

found that, 4 months after reading the pamphlet, only those women who received the pamphlet stressing the negative consequences were significantly more likely to perform breast self-examination.

opinions are primarily cognitive; that is, they take place in the head rather than in the gut. They are also transient—they can be changed by________________

good, clear evidence to the contrary.

Evil sometimes results from __________________escalating commitments. A trifling evil act can whittle down one's moral sensitivity, making it easier to perform a worse act. To paraphrase La Rochefoucauld's 1665 book of Maxims, it is not as difficult to fi nd a person who has never succumbed to a given temptation as to find a person who has succumbed only once. After telling a "white lie" and thinking, "Well, that wasn't so bad," the person may go on to tell a bigger lie.

gradually

Thomas Gilovich and his associates

have found, however, that such worries are often greatly exaggerated. In a clever experiment, he had college students don an attention-arousing T-shirt—one with a large picture of Barry Manilow on it—and then enter a room full of other students. After interacting with the students for a while, the participant was asked to estimate the number of students who had noticed the decidedly uncool T-shirt. Gilovich also asked everyone in the room if they had noticed the shirt. The participants thought that about 50 percent of the people in the room noticed their shirt. In reality, however, only about 20 percent had noticed.

We have seen previously how attitudes can influence cognitive processing; an attitude serves as a _____________ to influence our interpretations, explanations, reasoning, and judgment of a situation.

heuristic

McGuire suggested that, if people receive prior exposure to a brief communication that they are then able to refute, they tend to be "______________________" against a subsequent full-blown presentation of the same argument, in much the same way that a small amount of an attenuated virus immunizes people against a full-blown attack by that virus.

immunized

Peripheral route processing more slowly builds _____________ attitudes, through repeated associations between an attitude object and an emotion

implicit

Peripheral route processing more slowly builds ______________ attitudes, through repeated associations between an attitude object and an emotion

implicit

other things—skills and conditioned dispositions—we remember ______________, without consciously knowing or declaring that we know.

implicitly

Adolescent and early adult experiences are formative partly because they make deep and lasting________________

impressions

people who are in a good mood view the world through rose-colored glasses. But they also make faster, more _________________decisions; they rely more on peripheral cues

impulsive

Example of self-serving bias

in a basketball game, if Linda sinks a difficult shot, chances are she will attribute it to her great eye and leaping ability. On the other hand, if she misses, she might claim that she was fouled or that there was a soft spot in the floor that led to a mistiming of her jump.

individuals who have generally _______________ self-esteem are far more likely to yield to group pressure than those with high self- esteem.

low

example of false consensus effect

in one experiment, Lee Ross and his col- leagues asked college students if they were willing to wear a sign around the campus that said "Eat at Joe's." Those who agreed to wear the sign thought that most other people would, too; those who decided against wearing the sign estimated that few other students would wear it. In other words, we often make the (not necessarily true) assumption that others like what we like and do what we prefer to do.

The inverse of the insufficient justification effect is another cognitive dissonance effect called the ___________________

insufficient deterrence effect.

To be called a conformist, in our culture, is somehow to be designated as an "_______________" person.

inadequate

Ironically, ______________ feeds overconfidence. It takes competence to recognize what competence is, note Justin Kruger and David Dunning (1999).

incompetence

the impact of a noncredible person may correspondingly _________________ over time if people remember the message better than the reason for discounting it

increase

Behavior is a product of both the______________________

individual person and the situation

Heider used a Lewinian view that behavior is a function of the situation (S) and the person's predispositions (D). Jones and Davis (1965) emphasized the importance of dispositions in the attribution process with their correspondent _____________

inference theory

The term identification describes a response to social influence brought about by an individual's desire to be like the__________________

influencer.

an attitude will influence our behavior if other _______________, perhaps because something brings it to mind. Under these conditions, we will stand up for what we believe.

influences are minimal, if the attitude specifically relates to the behavior, and if the attitude is potent

According to Leon Festinger,25 when physical reality be- comes increasingly uncertain, people rely more and more on "social reality"; that is, they are more likely to conform to what other people are doing, not because they fear punishment from the group but because the group's behavior supplies them with valuable _____________ about what is expected of them.

information

I would suggest that conformity resulting from the observation of others for the purpose of gaining _______________about proper behavior tends to have more powerful ramifications than conformity in the interest of being accepted or of avoiding punishment.

information

social cognition primarily relies on ________________

information processing models

"I misled a bunch of people; I told them a lot of things about Cuba that I don't really believe" is dissonant with his cognition "I am a reason- able, decent, and truthful person." What does he do to reduce dissonance? He searches around for external justifications. First, it occurs to Joe that he might have been drunk and therefore not responsible for what he said. But he remembers he had only one or two beers— no external justification there. Because Joe cannot find sufficient external justification for his behavior, it is necessary for him to attempt to explain his behavior by using ____________________, changing his attitude in the direction of his statements. That is, if Joe can succeed in convincing himself that his statements were not so very far from the truth, then he will have reduced dissonance; that is, his behavior of the preceding night will no longer be absurd in his own view.

internal justification

The _________________ of a value or belief is the most permanent, most deeply rooted response to social influence. The motivation to internalize a particular belief is the desire to be right. Thus, the reward for the belief is intrinsic.

internalization

Dissonance

is characterized as an unpleasant drive state that the person is motivated to reduce

Compliance is the _______________enduring and has the least effect on the individual because people comply merely to gain reward or to avoid punishment.

least

Further, people are _______________ likely to offer a self-serving attribution when they feel that they can't get away with it; that is, when the audience makes it clear that an excuse is not appropriate or that an excuse will set up unreasonable expectations about future performance.

least

Unhappy people ruminate more before reacting, so they are _______________ easily swayed by weak arguments

less

When it comes to producing a lasting change in attitude, the greater the reward, the ______________ likely any attitude change will occur. I

less

people in Eastern Asian cultures are somewhat more sensitive than Westerners are to the importance of situations. Thus, when aware of the social context, they are ________________ inclined to assume that others' behavior corresponds to their traits

less

On the other hand, an uninformed person is less apt to know of the existence of opposing arguments. If the counterargument is ignored, the _____ members of the audience are persuaded

less-informed

example of Priming

let's assume that you are single and you go out on a first date to a restaurant. As you both leave the car and walk through the downtown parking lot to walk to the restaurant, you see a homeless alcoholic drinking a bottle of cheap wine. You enter the restaurant, ready to have a romantic dinner. The server arrives and your date decides to order a bottle of wine. What is your first thought? Many might think, "I wonder if my date is an alcoholic?" Why? Because the alcoholic schema has been activated, therefore, you are more likely to perceive your date through the framework of alcoholism

I have referred to dissonance-reducing behavior as "irrational." By this I mean it is often _______________ in that it can prevent people from learning important facts or from finding real solutions to their problems.

maladaptive

Important judgments we make about ourselves can also be powerfully influenced by contrast effects. For example,

many high school valedictorians experience a dip in self-esteem when they arrive at an elite college to find themselves surrounded by other former high school valedictorians.

example of availability heuristic

media attention to gay-lesbian issues makes gays and lesbians cognitively available. Thus, the average U.S. adult in a 2011 Gallup poll estimated that 25 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian (Morales, 2011b)—some seven times the number who, in surveys, actually self-identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual

recovered memory phenomenon.

memories of abuse could have been unintentionally planted by the therapists themselves

Trust is another aspect of credibility. Cult researcher Margaret Singer (1979) noted that_________________ youths are more vulnerable to recruitment because they are more trusting. They lack the "street smarts" of lower-class youths (who know how to resist a hustle) and the wariness of upper-class youths (who have been warned of kidnappers since childhood). Many cult members have been recruited by friends or relatives, people they trust (Stark & Bainbridge, 1980).

middle-class Caucasian

When people think about why an idea might be true, it begins to seem true (Koehler, 1991). Thus, a third way to reduce overconfidence is to get people to think of one good reason why their judgments ____________; that is, force them to consider disconfirming information

might be wrong

Ingroup favoritism has been extensively studied using what has come to be known as the _______________

minimal group paradigm.

Interestingly enough, increasing self-awareness by placing ____________ in front of people tends to make these individuals behave in ways that are more consistent with their internal attitudes. If a child is able to take prohibited candy out of a bowl because the supervising adult has left the room, the child in a mirror condition is less likely to take the candy than a child in a no mirror condition. Presumably, most of these children have internalized images of themselves as honest (not willing to steal candy), and the mirror reminds them of these internalized images and attitudes ("it is bad to steal").

mirrors

the _________________ person, who took a position that conformed to the average position of the real participants;

modal

The results clearly showed that the person who was liked most was the _____________who conformed to the group norm; the deviate was liked least.

modal person

John Stuart Mill, one of the foundational ideas of ____________________

modern capitalism.

When the attitude is specific to the behavior

more specific attitudes toward jogging better predict whether they jog (Olson & Zanna, 1981), their attitudes toward recycling do predict whether they recycle (Oskamp, 1991), and their attitudes toward contraception predict their contraceptive use (Morrison, 1989).

John Bargh and his associates have conducted studies showing surprisingly strong effects of exposure to words on behavior. I

n one study, participants unscrambled jumbled- up words (anagrams) and were told to go get the experimenter in the next room when they were finished. Unbeknownst to the participants, the anagram task exposed them to different kinds of words; some participants saw words related to rudeness (intrude, disturb), whereas others saw more neutral words. Later when it was time to fetch the experimenter, the participants found him in the hallway deeply engaged in a conversation with another person. Compared with the participants primed with neutral words, those who had seen words associated with rudeness were far more likely to interrupt the conversation.

Ignorance of one's incompetence helps explain David Dunning's (2005) startling conclusion from employee assessment studies that "what others see in us . . . tends to be more highly correlated with_____________outcomes than what we see in ourselves

objective

A self-fulfilling prophecy

occurs when we act on our initial impressions of others in a way that makes their behavior conform to those impressions.

self-serving explanations occur most when the self is "________________"—when the self is clearly threatened or when the person sees an opportunity to achieve a positive image

on the line

The term __________________ is what a person believes to be factually true. Thus, it is my opinion that eating vegetables is good for me, that wearing seat belts reduces traffic fatalities, and that New York City is hot in the summer.

opinion

A communicator's trustworthiness (and effectiveness) can be increased if he or she does not seem to be trying to influence our ________________

opinion.

How can we reduce this discomfort? Simply by changing our _________________

opinions or actions.

Robyn Dawes (1990) proposed that this false consensus may occur because we generalize from a limited sample, which prominently includes _________________

ourselves.

Students who score at the bottom on tests of grammar, humor, and logic are most prone to ___________their gifts at such. Those who don't know what good logic or grammar is are often unaware that they lack it

overestimating

In general, the more we trust the communicator, the more likely we are to be persuaded by the communicator's message if we are using the________________ channel of information processing.

peripheral

When a communicator has high credibility, the greater the discrepancy between the view he or she advocates and the view of the audience, the more the audience will be ________________; on the other hand, when a communicator's credibility is not high, he or she will produce maximum opinion change with moderate discrepancy.

persuaded

Stimulating thinking makes strong messages more _________________ and (because of counterarguing) weak messages less persuasive

persuasive

Geoffrey Cohen and his colleagues found that people who have recently received self- esteem affirming feedback (such as learning they are well liked) are also more receptive to _____________________

persuasive arguments.

In a study of people who were wired up to fMRIs while they were try- ing to process dissonant or consonant information, Drew Westen and his colleagues77 found that the reasoning areas of the brain virtually shut down when a person is confronted with dissonant information (suggesting that people don't want to contemplate information at odds with their cherished beliefs). But when subjects began to reduce cognitive dissonance, the emotional centers of their brains lit up—the same regions that get activated during any __________________, like eating ice cream or acing an exam.

pleasurable experience

A___________________ effect was obtained when there was a small interval between the first and second arguments and a large interval between the second argument and the verdict.

primacy

Inhibition (interference) is greatest if very little time elapses between the two communications; here, the first communication produces maximum interference with the learning of the second communication, and a ______________ will occur—the first speaker will have the advantage.

primacy effect

When identification or internalization are involved, the conforming behavior tends to persist in _____________

private.

In these experiments conformity was induced by information rather than by fear. But it is not always easy to distinguish between the two types of conformity. Often the behavior is identical; the key element that differentiates the two processes is the presence or absence of a _________________

punitive agent.

Well-educated or analytical people are responsive to _________________ appeals (Cacioppo & others, 1983, 1996; Hovland & others, 1949). Thoughtful, involved audiences often travel the central route; they are more responsive to reasoned arguments.

rational

example of poison parasite

re-creating a "Marlboro Man" commercial set in the rugged outdoors but now showing a coughing, decrepit cowboy.

A __________________ effect was obtained when there was a large interval between the first and second arguments and a small interval between the second argument and the verdict.

recency

obedience

refers to acquiescing to a demand from another. usually enforced by a threat of punishment.

According to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, when we use the __________________, we focus on the similarity of one object to another to infer that the first object acts like the second one.

representative heuristic

The _________________ is often used to form impressions and to make judgments about other persons and objects

representative heuristic

Terence Mitchell, Leigh Thompson, and colleagues (1994, 1997) report that people often exhibit _______________ —they recall mildly pleasant events more favorably than they experienced them.

rosy retrospection

example of Similarity

salespeople are sometimes taught to "mimic and mirror": If the customer's arms or legs are crossed, cross yours; if she smiles, smile back Another example: Theodore Dembroski, Thomas Lasater, and Albert Ramirez (1978) gave African American junior high students an audiotaped appeal for proper dental care. When a dentist assessed the cleanliness of their teeth the next day, those who heard the appeal from an African American dentist (whose face they were shown) had cleaner teeth. As a general rule, people respond better to a message that comes from someone in their group

What draws our attention is referred to as_____________. A person wearing a loud shirt, a person staggering, or someone shouting at another person are all salient events.

salient

examples of automatic thinking

schemas expertise emotional reactions unconscious thinking

Permanence can also result if, while complying, we discover something about our actions, or about the consequences of our actions, that makes it worthwhile to continue the behavior even after the original reason for compliance (the reward or punishment) is no longer forthcoming. This is called a _________________

secondary gain.

One way people minimize dissonance, Festinger believed, is through ______________ to agreeable information. Studies have asked people about their views on various topics, and then invited them to choose whether they wanted to view information supporting or opposing their viewpoint. By about a two to one ratio, people (less secure and openminded people, especially) preferred supporting rather than challenging information

selective exposure

A judgmental heuristic is a mental____________; it is a simple, often only approximate, rule or strategy for solving a problem. Some examples include "If a man and a woman are walking down a street, the man walks on the outside." "If a particular food item is found in a health food store, it must be good for you." "If a person is from a rural town in Arkansas, he or she must be intellectually backward."

shortcut

The homogeneity effect refers to the fact that we tend to see members of outgroups as more ___________ to one another than to the members of our own group—the ingroup.

similar

The "________________" tactic was an effective application of the foot-in-the-door technique, and it continues to be so today in the socialization of terrorists and torturers.

start small and build

____________________is one of the most heavily referenced of all the psychology areas, with clinical psychology, health psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, school psychology, psychology and legal processes, criminology, communications, business management, and business marketing all borrowing heavily from it. Social psychology includes many diverse and related areas such as persuasion, friendship, love, altruism and other forms of helping behavior, aggression and violence, prejudice and stereotyping, groups, the self, social cognitions, and attitudes and attitude change among others.

social psychology

most of the early business marketing professors (those who got their doctorates in the 1970's and early 1980's) came out of _____________________

social psychology programs.

This technique is also called the "bandwagon" effect. Its powerful effect is often used in advertising.

social validation

The "mere exposure effect" (Zajonc, 1968)

states that we tend to like stimuli better that we have been repeatedly exposed to. For example, if you show a person two images of the self, one a standard photographic image and the other a mirror image of the same standard photographic image, the person will prefer (like best) the mirror image

Schemas can also activate ______________which in turn simplify and distort judgments.

stereotypes

spot commercials on TV are especially effective when the campaign centers on a highly charged issue that arouses _______________ in voters. for example, willie horton released on furlough and raped woman

strong emotions

For on _____________________________, most people see themselves as better than the average person.

subjective, socially desirable, and common dimensions

Elizabeth Loftus and Mark Klinger found that there is no evidence that commercial ___________tapes can "reprogram your unconscious mind" for success.

subliminal

In their __________________ , Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski (1997; Greenberg, 2008) propose another reason why positive self-esteem is adaptive: It buffers anxiety, including anxiety related to our certain death

terror management theory

The "_________________" also uses the reciprocity norm to influence people. The idea of this technique is to make a request, and then before the target of the request says "no," the salesperson throws in a concession. The Girl Scout says, "would you like to buy a cup cake for $1?" Before you can say "yes" or "no," the Girl Scout says, "I'm going to reduce it to 75 cents." If you comply, presumably it is because you feel the need to concede after the Girl Scout has made a concession because you are being influenced by the reciprocity norm.

that's not all technique

four different aspects of the social context:

the comparison of alternatives, the thoughts primed by a situation, how a decision is framed or posed, and the way information is presented.

interpretive set explanation

the first items serve to create an initial impression that then is used to interpret subsequent information, either through the discounting of incongruent facts (that is, if Steve is intelligent, why should he be envious?) or by subtle changes in the meaning of the words further down the list (that is, being critical is a positive attribute if Steve is intelligent but a negative one if he is stubborn).

In studying how we interpret our social world, social psychologists have identified three general biases that often affect our attributions and explanations:_____________________

the fundamental attribution error, the actor-observer bias, and self-biases.

Lerner (1980) coined the phrase "______________" to explain why some people use the defensive attribution that "bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people." This law of Karma is sometimes stated, "what goes around comes around." It is a strong belief system held by many that helps them maintain an illusion of control.

the just world hypothesis

attention decrement explanation

the later items in a list receive less attention as the observers tire and their minds start to wander

As it turns out, human beings have a great capacity for self-deception. Even the most careful and conscientious person has a tendency to employ attributions in ways that lead to distortions of reality. There are a number of reasons for this including ________________

the need to enhance our sense of control, a need to confirm belief systems, and a need to enhance our self-esteem or to confirm our sense of self.

the attribution process.

the person looks for three pieces of information: the consistency of the actor's behavior (Does he or she always behave in this manner, in other situations, and at other times?), consensus (Do others behave in the same way in the same situation?), and/or the distinctiveness of the action (Is he or she the only one to behave in this manner?).

Thus, from our knowledge of the phenomena of learning, it would appear that, all other things being equal, the first argument will be more effective; this is called _________________

the primacy effect.

confirmation bias

the tendency to seek confirmation of initial impressions or beliefs.

social contex

the way things are presented and described

Describing their old precollege selves, their University of Waterloo students offered nearly as many negative as positive statements. When describing their present selves, they offered ______________ times more positive statements. "I've learned and grown, and I'm a better person today," most people surmise. Chumps yesterday, champs today.

three

Most models of attitudes have as their foundation the so called ______________

tricomponent model.

At least where _______________and behaviors are concerned, if we like and can identify with a person, his or her opinions and behaviors will influence us more than their content would ordinarily warrant

trivial opinions

In the Storms experiment,

two subjects engaged in a conversation while two observers watched; each observer was instructed to monitor one of the conversationalists. After the conversation, the actors and the observers indicated to what extent behaviors such as friendliness, talkativeness, nervousness, and dominance were due either to personal characteristics or to the situation. As you might ex- pect, the actors were more likely to explain their behavior in terms of the situation, whereas the observers explained the behavior in terms of the actor's personality dispositions.

one of the crucial factors that determines the likelihood that the participant's opinion will conform to that of the majority is whether the majority opinion is ___________

unanimous

The answer is that the process of reducing disso- nance is largely ___________________.

unconscious

Faced with a decision but lacking the expertise to make an informed snap judgment, our _____________ may guide us toward a satisfying choice.

unconscious thinking

Although self-serving pride may help protect us from depression, it can also be maladaptive. People who blame others for their social difficulties are often ______________ than people who can acknowledge their mistakes

unhappier

social psychology always brings the focus down to the individual as the ____________ of study.

unit

The just world belief can also turn a person's world upside down if he or she becomes a ____________. "How could this happen to me, I am a good person? What did I do wrong?" These individuals often need extensive counseling to help them come to terms with their new reality and slowly recover a sense of safety. They often blame themselves (blame the victim) during the early post-victimization stages to maintain a sense of control. For example, they may tell themselves that they might be a bad person after all and need to "get right with God" or lead a better life. With these changes they assume they will be able to feel safe again.

victim

The availability heuristic explains why ____________, easy-to-imagine events, such as shark attacks or diseases with easy-to-picture symptoms, may seem more likely to occur than harder-to-picture events

vivid

the more ____________the examples are, the greater their persuasive power.

vivid

Module 9 noted a situation in which attitudes fail to determine behavior:

when external influences override inner convictions

we evolved to respond to stone-age threats

—clear and present dangers (like tigers, snakes, or cavemen with clubs), not grad- ual ones (like droughts or more frequent hurricanes). We are also programmed to respond to human threats (like terrorism)