Social Psychology Exam 1

Correlation and causation, third variable/third factor

Researchers can also use statistical techniques that extract the influence of the third variables, as when the correlation between self esteem and achievement evaporated after extracting intelligence and family status (this is known as adding a control variable). o Random assignment overcomes the third variable problem by distributing all other variables equally among experimental groups

Random sampling

a sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion

Attitude

o Beliefs and feelings related to a person or an event o Evaluation of people, objects, and ideas

Milgram's Obedience to Authority studies

Milgram conducted many variations, finding when obedience was strongest Institutional prestige Distance Legitimacy + presence of the authority Other rebels!

Priming with physical warmth (coffee study)

Participants who held a hot cup of coffee made warmer judgements of people/ cooperated better. People holding a cold coffee make cold judgements toward people.

Selecting nylons (stocking) from an identical set (Wilson & Nisbett)

Wilson & Nisbett unconscious choice; right-ward bias; people made up reasons (knit, weave, sheerness, elasticity) as to why their choice was better than the others, in reality they were all the same

The Pygmalion effect

Pygmalion effect is related to self fulfilling prophecies o Sculpture sculpted a beautiful woman and he fell in love with her that she actually came to life. o If we believe something, it will happen

Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (not a study per se, but: what level of self-esteem do most people have?;

average

Independent self. ?

construing one's identity as an autonomous self

Field research

research done in natural, real-life settings outside the laboratory

Self-Esteem and perceptions of acceptance study (Cameron et al., 2010)

asked how much does she like you? lower self esteem individuals said 4 out of 5; higher self esteem individuals said 4.75 out of 5

Carol Dweck: "The power of believing you can improve"-What's the significance of saying "not yet"?

o High school in Chicago where students had to pass a certain number of classes to graduate and if they did not pass they did not get a failing grade they got a not yet. o This is important because if you get a failing grade you think I am nothing but if you get not yet you understand you are on a learning curve, it gives you a path into the future o it also give her insight into her event early in her career o she wanted to see how children coped with challenge and difficulty so she gave 10 year olds problems that were slightly too hard for them. Some acted in a remarkably positive way... they said things like I love a challenge. They understood that their abilities could be developed. They had a growth mindset. But others thought it was catastrophic. From their more fixed mindset perspective their intelligence had been up for judgement and they failed. o Instead of luxuriating in the power of yet they were gripped in the tyranny of now. SO what do they do next? They say they would probably cheat next time instead of studying more if they failed a test.. In another study where they failed they looked for someone who did worse than them to make to them feel better. And in study after study they had run from difficulty. Scientists measured the electrical activity from the brain as students confronted an error. The fixed mindsets had little activity in the brain because they run from the challenge. The ones with the growth mind had their brains on fire with yet. They engage deeply. they process the error and learn form it and correct it o Are we raising our children for now instead of yet. Are we tasing kids who are obsessed with getting A's. Are we raising kids who don't know how to dream big dreams. Their biggest goal is getting the next A. And are they carrying this need for constant validation with them into their future lives? Maybe, because employers are coming to me and saying, "We have already raised a generation of young workers who can't get through the day without an award." o So what can we do? How can we build that bridge to yet? -Here are some things we can do. First of all, we can praise wisely, not praising intelligence or talent. That has failed. Don't do that anymore. But praising the process that kids engage in, their effort, their strategies, their focus, their perseverance, their improvement. This process praise creates kids who are hardy and resilient. -There are other ways to reward yet. We recently teamed up with game scientists from the University of Washington to create a new online math game that rewarded yet. In this game, students were rewarded for effort, strategy and progress. The usual math game rewards you for getting answers right, right now, but this game rewarded process. And we got more effort, more strategies, more engagement over longer periods of time, and more perseverance when they hit really, really hard problems. -Just the words "yet" or "not yet," we're finding, give kids greater confidence, give them a path into the future that creates greater persistence. And we can actually change students' mindsets. In one study, we taught them that every time they push out of their comfort zone to learn something new and difficult, the neurons in their brain can form new, stronger connections, and over time, they can get smarter. -Look what happened: In this study, students who were not taught this growth mindset continued to show declining grades over this difficult school transition, but those who were taught this lesson showed a sharp rebound in their grades. We have shown this now, this kind of improvement, with thousands and thousands of kids, especially struggling students. - So let's talk about equality. In our country, there are groups of students who chronically underperform, for example, children in inner cities, or children on Native American reservations. And they've done so poorly for so long that many people think it's inevitable. But when educators create growth mindset classrooms steeped in yet, equality happens. And here are just a few examples. In one year, a kindergarten class in Harlem, New York scored in the 95th percentile on the national achievement test. Many of those kids could not hold a pencil when they arrived at school. In one year, fourth-grade students in the South Bronx, way behind, became the number one fourth-grade class in the state of New York on the state math test. In a year, to a year and a half, Native American students in a school on a reservation went from the bottom of their district to the top, and that district included affluent sections of Seattle. So the Native kids outdid the Microsoft kids. - This happened because the meaning of effort and difficulty were transformed. Before, effort and difficulty made them feel dumb, made them feel like giving up, but now, effort and difficulty, that's when their neurons are making new connections, stronger connections. That's when they're getting smarter.

Self-serving cognitions study (Sinclair & Kunda, 2000)

o Self serving cognitions is when we take credit for success and distance ourself from our failures o Making connections between ourselves and positives o 1/17/19

Priming the elderly stereotype

o These were the instructions: In front of you is a sheet of paper with a list of five-word sets. I want you to make a grammatical four-word sentence as quickly as possible out of each set. him was worried she always are from Florida oranges temperature shoes give replace old the o We don't realize it but this but it primes us to old people o They than had participants go to another room to finish the study o People who were exposed to the old person stereotype weren't even really aware of it but they walked slower (old person stereotype) o and people who do not like old people may walk faster.

Linda Problem (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973)

o This is regards to the representativeness heuristic o Consider Linda, who is 31, single, outspoke, and very bright. She majored in philosophy in college. As a student, she was deeply concerned with discrimination and other social issues, and she participated in antinuclear demonstrations. Based on that description, would you say it is more likely that a. Linda is a bank teller b. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement o Most people think b is more likely, partly because Linda better represents their image of feminists. But as yourself: Is there a better chance that Linda is both a bank teller and a feminist than that she's a bank teller (whether feminist or not?) As Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1983) reminded us, the conjunction of two events cannot be more likely than either one of the events alone.

Fundamental Attribution Error - nervous woman study (Gilbert et al., 1988)

o They showed participants a silent video of a woman acting nervously during a conversation o Some were told she was discussing sex and others were told she was discussing vacation destinations. o Half of the participants were distracted while being shown the video (they had to memorize numbers) and the other half were not distracted o They then had to rate whether the woman was an anxious person o Participants who were not distracted and were told that she was discussing vacation made a dispositional attribution and said that the woman was an anxious person. o The participants who were not distracted and watched the video thinking she was discussing sex attributed her nervousness to the situation because sex is an anxiety producing topic. o The participants who were shown the video thinking she was talking about vacation and were distracted said that the woman was just an anxious person o The participants shown the video thinking they were talking about sex and who were distracted attributed her anxiety not to the tricky topic but to her personality. o this probably is implying that we are too focused on other things in life that we do not think of what the situation is behind things, we just attribute it to personality.

Situational Distinctiveness studies (e.g., schoolchildren and the gender of their homes) - McGuire et al., 1979; School children and hair color, place of birth, etc...

o This study goes along with Asserting uniqueness and do we ever want to be different? and obviously by the name situational distinctiveness studies o Seeing oneself as unique appears in people's "spontaneous self-concepts" o William McGuire and his Yale University colleagues invited children to "tell us about yourself". In reply, the children mostly mentioned their distinctive attributes. Foreign born children were more likely than others to mention their birthplace. Redheads were more likely than black-and brown- haired children to volunteer their hair color. Thin and overweight children were the most likely to refer to their body weight. Minority children were the most likely to mention their race. o Likewise, we become more keenly aware of our gender when we are with people of the other gender. o The principle, says McGuire, is that "one is conscious of oneself insofar as, and in the ways that, one is different". o Thus, "If I am a Black woman in a group of White women, I tend to think of myself as a Black; if I move to a group of Black me, my blackness loses salience and I become more conscious of being a woman."

Mindset priming study (Apple logo: Fitzsimons et al.) ?????????????

o We can also prime mindsets : the way people think of things o We associate apple with creativity more than IBM. People then showed a brick and we looked at it more creatively I think

Trait centrality study (warmth vs cold; Asch, 1946) ?????????????????????

o We form our impressions based on our first impressions o There are central traits and peripheral traits o Solomon Asch (1946) o- Forming impression of others is more than adding together individual information [] we from impression of the entire person based on the interaction between different pieces of information - Some pieces of information (central traits) are more important than others (peripheral traits) - Asch showed its not just the sum of the parts. It is a more holistic judgement giving more weight to some things over others.https://www.all-about-psychology.com/solomon-asch.html

Dan Gilbert: "The psychology of your future self" - How much and how often do we change?

o We often make decisions that our future selves so often regret (Our young selves pay goo money to get a tattoo and when we get older we pay good money to get the tattoo removed. - we have a fundamental misconception about the power of time.... Everyone knows the rate of change slows over the human life span. Children change by the minute but your parents change by the year ... what is the name of the magic al point where change goes from a gallop to a crawl. The answer for most people is now. o We all walk around with an illusion that our personal history has just come to an end, we have just become the people that we are always meant to be and that we will be for the rest of our lives. o They did a study in the change in peoples values. o They asked people to predict how much their values would change in the next ten years and others how much their values had changed in the last ten years. o They found that change does slow down as we age but that we are wrong because it does not slow as nearly as much as we think. At every age from 18 to 68 in the data set people vastly underestimated how much change they would experience over the next ten years. This is called the end of history illusion. o To show the magnitude of this effect you can see that 18 year olds anticipate changing only as much as 50 year olds actually do. It is not just values but also personality. o When they asked people how much they expected to change in the next 10 years and how much they thought they changed in the last ten years and what they found was that once again the rate of change does slow as we age but at every age people underestimate how much their personalities will change in the next decade. o And it isn't just values and personality. Ask people about their likes and dislikes, their basic preferences. They asked half of the people if they thought it would change in the next ten years and half of them to tell them did that change in the last ten years. o People predict that there friend they have now they will have in ten years but people who are ten years older say oh that changed. o This matters quite a bit. Because it affects our decision making in important ways o The then asked people to predict for them how much they would pay now to see your current favorite musician play in 10 years? o on avg people said $129 and when they asked the other people how much would you pay now to see your favorite musician from 10 years ago play this week they said $80. o In a perfectly rationale world these should be the same number but we pay for the opportunity to indulge our current preferences because we overestimate their stability o This might have to due with the ease of remembering vs the difficulty of imagining. It is hard to imagine who we are going to be. Then we mistakenly think because it is hard to imagine it is not likely to happen. o When people say they can't imagine that they are talking about their own lack of imagination and not about the unlikelihood of the event they are describing. o We only recognize ho much change happens in a decade when we look back on the fact. It as if for most of us the present is a magic time, the moment in which we finally become ourselves. o Humans are works in progress that mistakenly think they are finished. o The person you are now is as temporary as all of the people you have ever been o the one constant in our life is change.

Social representations ?

o A society's widely held ideas and values, including assumptions and cultural ideologies. Our social representations help us make sense of our world. o The beliefs we take for granted - known as social representations are often our most important yet least questioned convictions. Sometimes, however, someone from outside the camp will call attention to subtle biases. o For ex: Marxist critics called attention to competitive, individualist biases - for example, the assumption that conformity is bad and that individual rewards are good.

Facial feedback effect

o You may be skeptical of the self perception effect. Experiments on the effects of facial expressions suggest a way for you to experience it. o Those induced to repeatedly practice happy (versus sad or angry) expressions may recall more happy memories and find the mood lingering. o Clever follow up studies have found multiple more examples of this facial (and body) feedback effect: - When people are instructed to sit straight and push out their chest, they feel more confidence in their written ideas than when sitting slouched forward and with eyes downcast. o Motions trigger emotions

acceptance

Acceptance occurs when you genuinely believe in what the group has persuaded you to do - you inwardly and sincerely believe that the group's actions are right. o For example, you might exercise because you accept that exercise is healthy. ... you get a flu shot because you believe that it will help prevent you from getting sick

Chameleon effect

Another form of social cognition is what researchers (1999) call the "chameleon effect" - or mimicking someone else's behavior. o Picture yourself in one of their experiments, working alongside a confederate who occasionally either rubbed her face or shook her foot. Would you - like their participants - be more likely yo tub your face when around the face rubber or shake your foot when around the foot shaker? if so, it would write likely be an automatic behavior, done without any conscious intention to conform; this social mimicry apparently develops in early childhood.

Internal vs. external attributions/ dispositional vs. situational attributions

Attributing peoples behavior to their personality or their situation

Independent vs. dependent variable

Independent variable: causes or influences the dependent variable. Dependent variable: hypothesized to depend on or be caused by the independent variable.

Not-so-obvious ways values enter psychology

o Culture o Social Representations o Value judgements - defining the good life and giving professional advice, etc.

Mass hysteria

Mimmicry- also known as suggestibility- can also occur on a large scale, known as mass hysteria. o "Another disturbing case began with a mystery. One day in 2011, high school student Katie Krautwurst woke up from a nap twitching uncontrollably, her arms flailing and head thrashing, and continued to twitch every few seconds. A few weeks later her best friend started twitching, too, and then more and more girls, until 18 girls at the school were affected. Parents became concerned that some contaminant at the school was causing the disorder, and two of the girls and their mothers told the Today Show they were desperately seeking a cure. The next day, a neurologist who had treated several of the girls offered his diagnosis: conversion disorder, or a form of mass hysteria caused when psychological stress is unconsciously expressed in physical symptoms (Dominus, 2012). It then spread as a social contagion. The case fit the usual profile for mass hysteria, which is more common among young women."

Theory

o A theory is an integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events. Theories are a scientific shorthand. o Facts are agreed upon statements about what we observe. Theories are ideas that summarize and explain facts. o Theories not only summarize but also imply testable predictions, called hypotheses. o A good theory - Effectively summarizes many observations, and - makes clear predictions that we can use to [] confirm or modify the theory [] generate new research, and [] suggest practical applications o when we discard theories, it is not usually because they have been proved false. Rather, like old cars, they are replaced by newer, better models.

Big ideas in social psychology

o Social Thinking o Social Influences o Social Relations

IAT

The most widely used measure of implicit attitudes is the implicit association test, which uses reaction times to measure how quickly people associate concepts. o One ca , for example, measure implicit racial attitudes by assessing whether White people take longer to associate positive words with Black faces than with White faces/ o They report that - implicit biases are pervasive: For example, 80% of people show more implicit dislike for the elderly compared with the young - People differ in implicit bias. - People are often unaware of their implicit biases o A review of the available research reveals that behavior is predicted best with a combination of both implicit and explicit (self report) measures. Both together predict behavior better than either alone

Self-Perception Theory, students hearing about tuition increase - Wells & Petty (1980)

"Our facial expressions also influence our attitudes. In a clever experiment, Gary Wells and Richard Petty (1980) had University of Alberta students "test headphone sets" by making either vertical or horizontal head movements while listening to a radio opinion piece. The students who made vertical head movements—who were nodding (a nonverbal signal of agreement)—were most likely to later say they agreed with the opinion piece. Try it yourself when listening to someone: Do you feel more agreeable when nodding (nonverbally saying "yes") rather than shaking your head (nonverbally saying "no")? Even being seated in a left- rather than right-leaning chair has led people to lean more left in their expressed political attitudes (Oppenheimer & Trail, 2010)!"

Self-affirmation theory

If, in the privacy of your room, you say something you don't believe, your dissonance will be minimal. It will be much greater if there are unpleasant results- if someone hears and believes you, if the statement causes harm and the negative effects are irrevocable, and if the person harmed is someone you like. If, moreover, you feel responsible for those consequences - if you can't easily excuse your act because you feely agreed to it and if you were able to force its consequences - then uncomfortable dissonance will be aroused. Why is "volunteering" to say or do undesirable things so arousing? Because, as the self affirmation theory suggests, such acts are embarrassing. They make us feel foolish. They threaten our sense of personal competence and goodness. Justifying our actions and decisions is therefore self affirming; it protects and supports our sense of integrity and self worth. o What do you suppose happens, then, if we offer people who have committed self contradictory acts a way to reaffirm their self worth, such as doing good deeds? In several experiments people whose self concepts were restored felt much less need to justify their acts. People with high and secure self esteem also engage in less self justification. o SO, dissonance conditions do indeed arouse tension, especially when they threaten positive feelings of self worth/. But is this arousal necessary for the attitudes follow behavior effect? Steele and his colleagues believe the answer is yes. In one of their experiments, the induced university of Washington students to write essays favoring a big tuition increase. The students reduced their resulting dissonance by softening their antituition attitudes - unless after writing the unpleasant essays they drank alcohol. Apparently, drinking relaxed them enough to eliminate the arousal of dissonance.

Insufficient justification

Imagine you are a participant in a famous experiment staged by the creative Festinger and his student Carlsmith (1959). For an hour, you are required to perform dull taks, such as turning wooden knobs again and again. After you finish, the experimenter (Carlsmith) explains that the study concerns how expectations affect performance. The next participant, waiting outside, must be led to expect an interesting experiment. The seemingly upset experimenter, whom Festinger had spent house coaching until he became extremely convincing, explains that the assistant who usually creates this expectation couldn't make this session. Wringing his hands, he pleads, "could you fill in and do this?" It's for science and you are being paid, so you agree to tell the next participant (who is actually the experimenters accomplice) what a delightful experience you have just had. "Really?" responses the supposed participant. "A friend of mine was in this experiment a week ago, and she said it was boring." "oh, no" you respond, "it's really very interesting. You get good exercise while turning some knobs. I'm sure you'll enjoy it." Finally, you complete a questionnaire that asks how much you actually enjoyed your know turning experience. Now for the prediction: Under which condition are you most likely to believe your little lie and say that the dull experiment was indeed interesting? when paid $1 for fibbing, as some of the participants were? or when paid a then lavish $20, as others were? Contrary to the common notion that big rewards produce big effects, Festinger and Carlsmith made an outrageous prediction: those paid just $1 (hardly sufficient justification for their actions, they would experience more discomfort (dissonance) and thus be more motivated to believe in what they had done. Those paid $20 had sufficient justification for what they had done (so much money!) and hence should have experience less dissonance. The results confirmed this intriguing prediction.

Confirmation bias

People also tend not to seek information that might deprive what they believe. We are eager to verify our beliefs but less inclined to seek evidence the might disprove them, a phenomenon called the confirmation bias. For example, opponents of same sex marriage gave up the chance to win money to avoid hearing from those on the other side- and so did supporters of sam sex marriage. o Across a variety of political and social issues, both liberals and conservatives preferred not to learn more about the other side's arguments. Thus people often choose their news sources and Facebook friends to align with their beliefs, a phenomenon known as "ideological echo chambers". o Confirmation bias appears to be a system 1 snap judgement, where our default reaction is to look for information consistent with our presupposition. o Stopping and thinking a little- calling up system 2 - makes us less likely to commit this error. For example: researchers had college students read an article arguing for the death penalty. Those who read the article in a dark, standard font did not change their opinions. But when the words were in light gray and italics, more shifted their beliefs - probably because straining to read the words slowed down participants' thinking enough for them to consider both sides. Contemplation curtails confirmation. o Confirmation bias helps explain why our self images are so remarkably stable. In experiments researchers discovered that students seek, elicit, and recall feedback that confirms their beliefs about themselves. people seek as friends and spouses those who bolster their own self views - even if they think poorly of themselves. Remedies for overconfidence o One lesson is to be wary of other people'a dogmatic statements. Even when people are sure they are right, they may be wrong. Confidence and competence do not always coincide. o Two techniques have successfully reduced the overconfidence bias. One is prompt feedback. In everyday life, weather forecasters and those who set the odds in horse racing both receive clear, daily feedback. Perhaps as a result, exerts in both groups do quite well at estimating their probable accuracy. o When people think about why an idea might be true, it begins to seem true. Thus, a second way to reduce overconfidence is to get people to think of one good reason why their judgements might be wrong; that is, force them to consider disconfirming information. o Still, we should be careful not to undermine people's reasonable self confidence or to destroy their decisiveness.

Sources of attitudes.

SOURCES OF ATTITUDES ARE COGNITIVE, AFFECTIVE, AND BEHAVIORAL SOURCES o cognitive sources - active goals [] Goal relevant objects are evaluated more positively than goal irrelevant object STUDY ??????? [] participants name friends who do and do not help them achieve various goals [] they manipulated goal salience with scrambled sentence task (achieve, accomplish) []Then the participants listed their most important friends as the ones who helped them achieve something. But when they were not goal primed they ranked their friends equally. O Affective sources - Evaluative conditioning [] Association with positive/ negative events [] Emotions that drive us to have certain attitudes [] the experiences you have will make you feel different ways toward things. you form attitudes. [] The feelings things make you feel drive your attitude toward it [] The way things pair together in your mind affect your attitude [] if you have associations with things you may feel a way towards it [] Ex: Went to grandmas as a kid and the house smelled and now that smell make you happy because it reminds you of grandma - Mere Exposure Effect [] repeated contact with something increases our liking of it [] The more we see something the more we tend to like it [] STUDY: the more the student goes to the class, the more her classmates will like her [] Picture preference. You prefer the mirror image of yourself because that is what you see the most. o Behavioral sources - Don't attitudes determine behavior? - We pay attention to other peoples attitudes to predict their behavior - we think attitudes predict behavior but attitude predicts behavior, behavior predicts attitude, and other factors affect both.

Reactance

The theory of psychological reactance - that people act to protect their sense of freedom - is supported by experiments showing that attempts to restrict a person's freedom often produce an anti-conformity :boomerang effect". Reaching your adults with anti drinking messages or smokers with anti smoking messages might now work: people with the highest risk are often the least likely to respond to programs designed to protect them, possibly due to their reactance. o Reactance might also explain why most people find it so difficult to eat right and exercise.

Manipulation (between groups vs. within groups or between-subjects vs. within-subjects) ?

Types of Manipulation o Between Groups - Each person experiences only one level of independent variables - For example, participant recalls offense from victim OR transgressor perspective o Within groups - Each person experiences each level of independent variable - For example, participant recalls offense from BOTH victim and transgressor perspective [] order effects - generally need to counterbalance [] Neg effects: Contamination; order effects o we typically use between group design

Informational influence/conformity vs. normative influence/conformity

o A person may bow to the group (a) to be accepted and avoid rejection or (b) to obtain important information. o Deutsch hand Gerad (1955) named these two possibilities normative influence and informational influence. o Normative influence springs from our desire to be liked, and the second from our desire to be right. o Normative influence is "going along with the crowd" to avoid rejection, to stay in people's good graces, or to gain their approval. o Informational influence captures how beliefs spread. Just as people look up when they see others looking up, they use the same fork others are using at a fancy dinner party. o In the laboratory and in everyday life, groups often reject consistent non conformers. o As most of us know, social rejection is painful; when we devote from group norms, we often pay an emotional price. o Normative influence leads to compliance, especially for people who have recently seen others ridiculed or who are seeking to climb a status ladder. o Normative influences- information about the average behavior of other people- often sways us without our awareness. o Informational influence, on the other hand, leads people to privately accept others' influence as a source of information. o Your friends have extra influence on you for informational as well as normative reasons. If your friend buys a particular car or takes you to a particular restaurant, you will gain information that may lead you to like what your friends like- even if you don't care what your friend likes. Our friends influence the experiences that inform out attitudes. However, that influence doesn't last forever: In one study, conformity to others' opinions lasted no more than three days. o SO, concern for social image produces normative influence. the desire to be correct produces informational influence. In day to day life, normative and informational influence often occur together.

Better-than-average effect/above average effect

o Above average effect (aka better than average effect): People see themselves as better than average on most positive dimensions o We tend to exhibit this on vague, hard to define skills o Over emphasize our own skills in estimating percentiles - Easy tasks: "I'm pretty good, so I must be above average" - Difficult tasks: "I'm lousy, so I must be below average" o We use a heuristic - replace a tough question with an easier question to answer o Self serving bias also appears when people compare themselves with others o On subjective, socially desirable, and common dimensions, most people see themselves as better than the average person. o Compared with people in general, most people see themselves as more ethical, more competent at their job, friendlier, more intelligent, better looking, less prejudiced, healthier, and even more insightful and less biased in their self assessments. Even men convicted of violent crimes rated themselves as more moral, kind, and trustworthy than most people. o Many people believe that they will become even more above average in the future. o Group members' estimates of how much they contribute to a joint task is typically over 100% because each person thinks they do more than the other typically

Debriefing

o Ethical principles mandate investigators to debrief participants. Fully explain the experiment afterward, including any deception. The only exception to this rule is when the feedback would be distressing, such as by making participants realize they have been stupid or cruel

Common sense (or "folk wisdom")

o Absence makes heart grow fonder BUT Out of sight, out of mind o You only live once BUT Better safe than sorry o Opposites attract BUT Birds of a feather flock together o Common sense statements: can contradict each other and coexist with their exact opposites. o Common sense statements are unreliable sources through which to understand social behavior o Common sense statements tend to justify a given behavior o Social behavior also often contradicts "common sense" Who would rate a boring psychology study as more enjoyable? Someone who received $20 for doing the study Someone who received $1 for doing the study o Common sense statements: - Can contradict each other and coexist with their exact opposites - are unreliable sources through which to understand social behavior - tend to justify a given behavior o Fluency (how easy something is to process) is used as a heuristic for many things... including truth Rhyming is one way to increase fluency "Woes unite foes" vs "Woes unite enemies" Font matters too! (Song & Schwarz, 2008) Judgments and decisions may be influenced by things outside of our awareness. o Right ward bias - we tend to choose stuff on the right even if it is the same as all of the other options

Self-fulfilling prophecies

o Beliefs that end up causing what we expected o When we believe something about someone, we may behave in a way that elicits confirming behavior from them o Pygmalion effect Self fulfilling prophecies: 3 steps 1st: originates in perceivers expectations 2nd: perceivers behavior toward the target 3rd: Targets behavior toward the perceiver and then it goes back to stage one because now the target is reacting to the perceiver in a way that fulfills his initial expectations EXS: o Teachers were told 20 students had great practice o teachers behavior then changes toward these students. teachers may help them and encourage them more/ pay more attention to them. Those students ended up doing better and therefore fulfilled the prophecy o Our social beliefs and judgements do matter. They influence how we feel and act, and by doing so may help generate their own reality. When our ideas lead us to act in ways that produce they apparent confirmation, they have become what sociologist Robert Merton (1948) termed self fulfilling prophecies - beliefs that lead to their own fulfillment. If, led to believe that their bank is about to crash, its customers race to withdraw their Monet, their false perceptions may create reality, noted Merton. If people are led to believe that stocks are about to soar, they will indeed. o In laboratory games, hostility nearly always begets hostility: if someone believes an opponent will be noncooperative, the opponent often responses by becoming noncooperative. Each party's perception of the other as aggressive, resentful, and vindictive induces the other to display those behaviors in self defense, thus creating a vicious, self perpetuating circle. o In another experiment, people anticipated interacting with another person of a different race. When led to expect that the person disliked interacting with someone of their race, they felt more anger and displayed more hostility toward the person. o When someone loves and admires us, it helps us become more the person he or she imagines us to be

Obedience, compliance,

o Compliance is conforming to an expectation or a request without really believing in what you are doing. o EX: You say you like you friends favorite band even though you don't o These acts of compliance are often to reap a reward or avoid a punishment- for example, you might have followed your high school's dress code even though you thought it was dumb, because they was better than detention. o In other words, compliance is an insincere, outward conformity. o Obedience, or complying with a direct command, is a variation on compliance. If your father tells you to clean up your room and you do - even if you don't want to - that's obedience. Obedience means doing something you wouldn't do otherwise because someone else says you need to. If you get a flu shot because you mom tells you to - rather than because you think it will help - that's obedience.

Conformity (and when do people conform/factors that predict conformity)

o Conformity can be good (when it keeps people from cutting in line) or bad (When it leads someone to drive drunk or to join in racist behavior). o In Western individualistic cultures, where submitting to peer pressure is discouraged, the word conformity carries a negative connotation. o Conformity is the overall term for acting differently due to the influence of others. Conformity is not just acting as other people act. It is acting or thinking different from the way you would think and act if you were alone. Thus, conformity is a change in behavior or belief to accord with others. o Acceptance and compliance are two varieties of conformity.

Overjustification effect

o Contrary to the notion that rewards always increase motivation, necessary rewards can have a hidden cost. rewarding people for doing what they already enjoy may lead them to attribute their action to the reward. If so, this would undermine their self perception that they do it because they like it. o Experiments confirmed this over justification effect. Pay people for playing with puzzles, and they will later play with the puzzles less than will those who play for no pay. o Promis children a reward for doing what they intrinsically enjoy (for example, playing with markers), and you will turn their play into work. o As self perception theory implies, an unanticipated reward does not diminish intrinsic interest, because people can still attribute their actions to their own motivations. And if compliments for a good job make us feel more competent and successful, this can actually increase our intrinsic motivation. When rightly administered, rewards may also boost creativity.

Correlational and experimental research (advantages and disadvantages to each)

o Correlational research - "The study of naturally occurring relationships among variables" - Researcher systematically measure the relation between two or more variables - to what degree can one variable be associated with the other? -1.0 to +1.0 - Correlations are usually .15-.5, this means half the time there is a relationship - some hypotheses cannot practically or ethically be tested experimentally - Useful for establishing that two variables are associated [] but correlation is not causation! o Social psychological research can be laboratory research (a controlled situation) or field research (everyday situations). And it varies by method- whether correlational (asking whether two or more factors are naturally associated) or experimental (manipulating some factor to see its effect on another). o Experiments - With experiments, we overcome the shortcomings of correlational designs. We CAN draw conclusions about what causes what by using: [] Random assignment [] Manipulation of the independent variable o Correlational research advantage - you can examine the important variables in natural settings - it tends to occur in real world settings where we can examine factors such as race, gender, and social status- factors that we cannot manipulate in a laboratory. - can suggest cause and effect relationships o Correlational research disadvantage - ambiguous interpretation of cause and effect - knowing that two variables change together (correlate) enables us to predict one when we know the other, but correlation does not specify cause and effect o Experimental research advantages: - You can actually determine cause and effect because you can get rid of confounding variables - replication allows for confirmation o Experimental research disadvantages: - Ethics are a big question - We need to be cautious, however, in generalizing from laboratory to life. Although the laboratory uncovers basic dynamics of human existence, it is still a simplified, controlled reality. - Would we get similar results with people of different ages, educational levels, and cultures? that is always an open question - ethics - sometimes correlational is better because of ecological validity

Dual attitude system

o Dual attitude system is differing implicit (automatic) and explicit (consciously controlled) attitudes toward the same object. Verbalized explicit attitudes may change with education and persuasion; implicit attitudes change slowly, with practice that forms new habits. o EX: in my head I want to be a nicer person with more patience, but then my implicit attitude makes me mean.

Embodied cognition

o Even physical sensations, thanks to our embodied cognition, prime our social judgments and vice versa: - After assessing a cold person, people judge the room as colder than those who instead assessed a warm person. People who ate alone judged the room temperature as colder than those who ate with others. Social exclusion literally feels cold. - when sitting in a wobbly chair, people rate other couples' relationships as more unstable o The bottom line: Our social cognition is embodied. The brain systems that process our bodily sensations communicate with the brain systems responsible for our social thinking.

Demand characteristics

o Experimenters also seek to hide their predictions lest the participants, in the eagerness to be "good subjects", merely do what is expected (or, in an ornery mood, do the opposite). o o In subtle ways, too, the experimenter's words, tone of voice, and gestures may call forth the desired responses. Even search dogs trained to detect explosives and drugs are more likely to bark false alerts in places where their handlers have been misled into thinking such illegal items are located. To minimize such demanded characteristics - cues that seem to "demand" certain behavior - experimenters typically standardize their instructions or even use a computer to present them.

Mundane realism vs. experimental realism and deceptio

o Experiments do not need to have mundane realism. That is, laboratory behavior need not be like everyday behavior, which is typically mundane, or unimportant. o But the experiment should have experimental realism - it should engage the participants. Experimenters do not want participants consciously play- acting or bored; they want to engage real psychological processes. o Achieving experimental realism sometimes requires deceiving people with a plausible cover story. If the person in the next room is actually not receiving the shocks, the experimenter does not want the participants to know that. That would destroy the experimental realism. Thus approximately one third of social psychological studies in the past decades used deception, in which participants did not know the study's true purpose o Experimenters also seek to hide their predictions lest the participants, in the eagerness to be "good subjects", merely do what is expected (or, in an ornery mood, do the opposite).

Behavioral confirmation

o Experiments show that erroneous beliefs about the social world can induce others to confirm those beliefs, a phenomenon called behavioral confirmation. o For example, male students talked on the telephone with women they thought (from having been shown a picture) were either attractive or unattractive. 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. o Behavioral confirmation also occurs as people interact with partners holding mistaken beliefs. People whom others believe are lonely behave less sociably. People who believe they are accepted and liked (rather than disliked) then behave warmly - and do get accepted and liked.

Why do we need a science of social psychology? Can't er rely on our experiences and common sense?

o Folk wisdom, lay theories o They can contradict each other and they are unreliable sources through which to understand social behavior o it often contradicts "common sense" a lot o Social behavior also contradicts "common sense" - Who would rate a boring psychology study as more enjoyable [] someone who received $20 for doing the study [] Someone who received $1 for doing the study o Rhyme as reason in aphorisms - Fluency (how easy something is to process) is used as a heuristic for many things... including truth o Rhyming is one way to increase fluency - "woes unite foes" vs "Woes unite enemies" - Font matters too! o Judgements and decisions may be influenced by things outside of our awareness. o We need social psychologists because we might not know why half said they thought the foes were true but like no one said the enemies one was true. o and why right ward bias is a thing o Right ward bias: we tend to choose answers closer to the right. But we do not really notice it. - If given the same of 4 things and asked which one we liked the most we would choose C or D and when told they are all identical people would deny it. the value of social psych o We cannot rely on lay people's beliefs, intuitions, and judgement: - folk wisdom/ intuition/ lay theories = unreliable - people make errors in their informal thinking - social behavior is often counterintuitive - we are often unaware of influences on our behavior o Social psychology helps us understand and predict when and why people behave the way they do o We need to understand social behavior to improve it! Another reason for social psychology o Despite the powerful influence of situations on our behavior, we tend to commit the Fundamental Attribution Error - We overestimate person effects - and we underestimate the power of the situation o We need a scientific approach to understand how features and situations work together to influence behavior

Heuristics: representativeness and availability

o Heuristics - we have to make a ton of judgements all of the time so we use heuristics - Heuristics are "mental short cuts" or "rule of thumb" o They are really useful because of the complex world we live in but can lead to faulty beliefs and suboptimal decisions. o Two examples of heuristics: - Representative - availability o Our cognitive system is fast and frugal and it specializes in mental shortcuts. With remarkable ease, we form impressions, make judgements, and invent explanations. We do so by using heuristics - simple, efficient thinking strategies. Heuristics enable us to make routine decisions with minimal effort. In some situations, however, haste makes error The representative heuristic o TO judge something by intuitively comparing it to out mental representation of a category is to use representativeness heuristic. o Representativeness (typicalness) usually reflects reality, But it does not always. o Consider Linda, who is 31, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy in college, As a student, she was deeply concerned with discrimination and other social issues, and she participated in antinuclear demonstrations. Based on that description, would you say it is more likely that (a) Linda is a bank teller (b) Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement. Most people think b is more likely, partly because Linda better represents their image of feminists. But ask yourself: is there a better chance that Linda is both a bank teller and a feminist than that she's a bank teller (whether feminist or not)? The conjunction of two events cannot be more likely than either one of the events alone The availability heuristic: o the more easily we recall something, the more likely it seems o The availability heuristic explains why vivid, easy- to - Imagine events, such as shark attacks or disease with easy to picture symptoms, may seem more likely to occur than harder to picture events. o Likewise, powerful anecdotes can be more compelling than statistical information. o We fret over extremely rare child abduction, even if we don't buckle children in their car sears every time we dread terrorism but are indifferent to global climate change. o In short, we worry about remote possibilities while ignoring higher probabilities, a phenomenon that social scientists call our "probability neglect". o Because news footage of airplane crashes is ready;y available memory for most of us, we often suppose we are more at risk traveling in commercial airplanes than in cars. o EX: my fear of being in a shooting. o it may also make us more sensitive to unfairness, as our struggles are more memorable than our advantages.

Lottery winners study (Brickman, Coates, & Janoff-Bullman (1978)

o In regards to impact bias: overestimating the impact of emotion causing events o We are often wrong when predicting how we will feel and behave in various situations Predicting feelings o How happy would you be today if ... - It was just a typical day? - you won the lottery? - You became paralyzed? o How happy would you be one year from now if the above things happened today. o You would say predicted feeling would be - Lottery winners were happier - accident victims were sadder o But after a year they were all back at the same levels o We have an inability to forecast our emotions

Narcissism

o High self esteem becomes especially problematic if it crosses over into narcissism, or having an inflated sense of self. o Most people with high self esteem value both individual achievement and relationships with others. Narcissists usually have high self esteem, but they are missing the piece about caring for others. o Narcissists think they are better than others o Although narcissists can be outgoing and charming early on, their self centeredness often leads to relationship problems in the long run. o In a series of experiments conducted by Brad Bushman and Roy Baumeister (1998), undergraduate volunteers wrote essays and received rigged feedback that said "this is one of the worst essays I've read!" Those who scored high on narcissism were much more likely to retaliate, blasting painful noise into the headphones of the student they believed had criticized them. Narcissists weren't aggressive toward someone who praised them. o Narcissists are especially likely to lash out when the insult is delivered publicly - and thus punctures their carefully constructed bubble of superiority. o the idea that an overinflated ego is making up for their insecurities is not true for narcissists. o It may originate in childhood. In a longitudinal study, when parents believed their children deserved special treatment, the children scored higher on narcissism six months later. In contrast, parents' feelings of love and kindness to their children were not linked to narcissism.

Social comparison (including upward and downward social comparisons)

o How do we decide I we are rich, smart, or short? One way is through social comparisons. Others help define the standard by which we define ourselves as rich or poor, smart or dumb, tall or short: we compare ourselves with them and consider how we differ. o Much of life revolves around Social comparisons. o Downward social comparison - ??????????????????? - western individualists like to make comparisons with others that boost their self esteem. o Making comparisons with worse others o They may also actively try to make others do worse o Study: - The participants either had to take a test that they were told was an intelligence test or one that was just a game - Then they were told that there performance was a little below average - The people who thought it was an intelligence test, rather than just a game, were more upset. - The participants then had to give clues to friends or strangers and could choose the difficulty level of the questions - Our friends being smarter than us is more threatening than a stranger being smarter than us - SO they found when there was a lot relevance to their self esteem (people who played the game) they gave their friends easy questions. - People who had taken the intelligence test gave their friends and strangers hard questions but did it more to their friends. - They wanted their friend to fail so they did not look stupid in comparison to their friend o Upward Social Comparison - Social comparisons can also diminish our satisfaction in other ways. When we experience an increase in affluence, status, or achievement, we "compare upward"- we raise the standards by which we evaluate our attainments and compare ourselves with others doing even better. When climbing the ladder of success, we tend to look up, not down. - When facing competition, we often protect our shaky self concept by perceiving our competitor as advantages. For example, college swimmers believed that their competitors had better coaching and more practice time.

Hypothesis

o Hypotheses serve several purposes - They allow us to test a theory by suggesting how we might try to falsify it. - Predictions give direction to research and sometimes send investigators looking for things they might never have considered - The predictive feature of good theories can also make them practical. A complete theory of aggression, for example, would predict when to expect aggression and how to control it. o It is a testable proposition that describes the relationship that may exist between events (A prediction)

Misinformation effect

o In its search for the truth, the mind sometimes constructs falsehood. o asked to imagine that, as a child, they knocked over a punch bowl at a wedding about one fourth will later recall the fictitious event as something that actually happened. o In the typical experiment, people witness an event, receive misleading information about it (or not), and then take a memory test. The results find a misinformation effect in which people incorporate the misinformation into their memories. They recall a yield sign as a stop sign, hammers as screwdrivers, Dr. Henderson as "Dr. Davidson", etc. o Suggested misinformation may even produce false memories of supposed child sexual abuse. o This process affects our recall of social as well as physical events. Jck Croxton and colleagues (1984) had students spend 15 minutes talking with someone. Those who were later informed that this person liked them recalled the person's behavior as relaxed, comfortable, and happy. Those who heard the person disliked them recalled the person as nervous, uncomfortable, and not so happy.

Cognitive Dissonance, boring task (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959)

o In regards to cognitive dissonance o "Imagine you are a participant in a famous experiment staged by the creative Festinger and his student J. Merrill Carlsmith (1959). For an hour, you are required to perform dull tasks, such as turning wooden knobs again and again. After you finish, the experimenter (Carlsmith) explains that the study concerns how expectations affect performance. The next participant, waiting outside, must be led to expect an interesting experiment. The seemingly upset experimenter, whom Festinger had spent hours coaching until he became extremely convincing, explains that the assistant who usually creates this expectation couldn't make this session. Wringing his hands, he pleads, "Could you fill in and do this?" Page 102 It's for science and you are being paid, so you agree to tell the next participant (who is actually the experimenter's accomplice) what a delightful experience you have just had. "Really?" responds the supposed participant. "A friend of mine was in this experiment a week ago, and she said it was boring." "Oh, no," you respond, "it's really very interesting. You get good exercise while turning some knobs. I'm sure you'll enjoy it." Finally, you complete a questionnaire that asks how much you actually enjoyed your knob-turning experience. Now for the prediction: Under which condition are you most likely to believe your little lie and say that the dull experiment was indeed interesting? When paid $1 for fibbing, as some of the participants were? Or when paid a then-lavish $20, as others were? Contrary to the common notion that big rewards produce big effects, Festinger and Carlsmith made an outrageous prediction: Those paid just $1 (hardly sufficient justification for a lie) would be most likely to adjust their attitudes to their actions. Having insufficient justification for their actions, they would experience more discomfort (dissonance) and thus be more motivated to believe in what they had done. Those paid $20 had sufficient justification for what they had done (so much money!) and hence should have experienced less dissonance. As Figure 4 shows, the results confirmed this intriguing prediction.*"

Downward social comparisons study (Tesser & Smith, 1980)

o In regards to downward social comparison - The participants either had to take a test that they were told was an intelligence test or one that was just a game - Then they were told that there performance was a little below average - The people who thought it was an intelligence test, rather than just a game, were more upset. - The participants then had to give clues to friends or strangers and could choose the difficulty level of the questions - Our friends being smarter than us is more threatening than a stranger being smarter than us - SO they found when there was a lot relevance to their self esteem (people who played the game) they gave their friends easy questions. - People who had taken the intelligence test gave their friends and strangers hard questions but did it more to their friends. - They wanted their friend to fail so they did not look stupid in comparison to their friend

Psychological immune system (and immune neglect). ?

o Negative events: Immune neglect - this kicks in when something bad happens - "Psychological immune system" includes strategies for rationalizing, discounting, forgiving, and limiting emotional trauma - We don't think about this when we think of something bad happening to us

Line judgment study - Asch (normative influence)

o In regards to normative influence and group pressure o Imagine yourself as one of Asch's volunteer subjects. You are seated sixth row in a row of seven people. The experimenter explains that you will be in a study of perceptual judgements, and then asks you which of the three line in a figure matches the standard line. You can easily see that it'a line 2. So it is no surprise when the five people responding before you all say, "Line 2." o The next comparison proves as easy, and you settle in for that seems like a simple test. Bu the third trial startles you. Although the correct answer seems just as clear cut, the first person gives a wrong answer - "Line 1." 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 epistemological dilemma: "What is true? Is it what my peers tell me or what my eyes tell me?"o Dozens of college students experienced that conflict in Asch's experiments. Those in a control condition who answered alone were correct more than 99% of the time. Acsh wondered: If confederates coached by the experimenter gave identical wrong answers, would people declare what they would otherwise have denied? Although some people never conformed by giving the wrong answer, 75% did so at least once. All told, 37% of the responses were conforming. o Of course, that means 63% of the time people did not conform. The experimenters show that most people "tell the truth even when others do not."

Autokinetic effect study - Sherif (informational influence)

o In regards to social norms and norm formation and informational influence o Muzafer Sherif (1935, 1937) wondered whether it was possible to observe the emergence of a social norm in the laboratory. Like biologists seeking to isolate a virus so they can experiment with it, Sherif wanted to isolate and then experiment with norm formation - to figure out how people come to agree on something o Imagine you are a participant in one of Sherif's experiments. You find yourself seated in a dark room. 15ft in front of you, a pinpoint of light appears. At first, nothing happens. Then for a few seconds it moves erratically and finally disappears. The experimenter asks you to guess how far it moved. The dark room gives you no way to judge distance, so you offer an uncertain "six inches." The experimenter repeats the procedure. This time you say, "Ten inches." With further repetitions, your estimate continues to average about eight inches o The next day you return to the darkened room, joined by two other participants who had the same experience the day before. When the light goes off for the first time, the other two people offer their best guesses from the day before. "One inch," says one. "Two inches," says the other. A bit taken aback, you nevertheless say "Six inches." With repetitions of this group experience, both on this day and for the next two days, will your responses change? The results suggest they will: Sherif's male student participants changed their estimates markedly. A group norm typically emerged. (The norm was false because the light never actually moved. Sherif had taken advantage of an optical illusion called the autokinetic phenomenon,

Fundamental Attribution Error - Castro speech study (Jones & Harris, 1967)

o In regards to the fundamental attribution error o The discounting of the situation, called the fundamental attribution error, appears in many experiments. In the first study, Edward Jones and Victor Harris (1967) had Duke University students read debaters' speeches supporting or attacking Cuba's leader at the time, Fidel Castro. When told that the debater chose which position to take, the students logically assumed it reflected the person's own attitude. But what happened when the students were told that the debate coach had assigned the position? Students still inferred that the debated had the assigned leanings. People seemed to think, "I know he was assigned that position, but I think he really believes it.."

Preferences for mirror image vs. non-mirror-image photos

o In regards to the mere exposure effect o We even like ourselves better the way we're used to seeing ourselves. In a delightful experiment, researchers showed women pictures of themselves and their mirror images. o Asked which picture they liked Bette, most preferred their mirror image - the image they were used to seeing in the mirror. o When close friends of the women were shown the same two pictures, the preferred the true picture - the image they ere used to seeing. o Implications o Advertisers and politicians exploit the mere exposure phenomenon. When people have no strong feelings about a product or candidate, repetition alone can increase sales or votes.

Individualism and collectivism

o Individualism - For some people, especially those in industrialized Western cultures, individualism prevails. Identity is self contained. becoming an adult means separating from parents, becoming self-reliant, and defining one's personal, independent self. One's identity- as a unique individual with particular abilities, traits, values, and dreams - remains fairly constant. - Individualism flourishes when people experience affluence, mobility, urbanism, economic prosperity, and mass media, and when economies shift away from manufacturing and toward information and service industries. - such changes are occurring worldwide and, as we might therefore expect, individualism is increasing globally. -For those in individualistic cultures, self esteem is more personal and less relational. - If a westerner's personal identity is threatened, she will feel angrier and sadder than when her collective identity is threatened. - Unlike Japanese, who persist more on tasks when they are failing, people in individualistic countries persist more when succeeding, because success elevates self esteem. o Collectivism - Most cultures native to Asia, Africa, and Central and South America place a greater value on collectivism, by respecting and identifying with the group. - In these cultures, people are more self critical and focus less on positive self views. - when speaking, people using the languages of collectivist countries say "I" less often. -In collectivist cultures, self esteem tends to be malleable (context-specific) rather than stable (enduring across situations). o Conservatives tend to be economic individualists and moral collectivists. Liberals tend to be economic collectivists and moral individualists.

Planning fallacy

o One of the most common errors in behavior prediction is underestimating how long it will take to complete a task (called the planning fallacy). o For EX: The Sydney Opera House was supposed to be completed in 6 years; it took 16. o EX: I think it will only take 2 mins to get to Cathy and the third floor but it takes me 6 mins and then I am late to class o So how can you improve your self predictions? - The best way is to be more realistic about how long tasks took in the past. Apparently, people underestimate how long something will take because they misremember previous tasks as taking less time than they actually did. Another useful strategy: Estimate how long each step in the project will take. o People are equally bad at predicting how money they will spend.

Culture and self-esteem

o Individualistic cultures -For those in individualistic cultures, self esteem is more personal and less relational. - If a westerner's personal identity is threatened, she will feel angrier and sadder than when her collective identity is threatened. - Unlike Japanese, who persist more on tasks when they are failing, people in individualistic countries persist more when succeeding, because success elevates self esteem. o Collectivism - Most cultures native to Asia, Africa, and Central and South America place a greater value on collectivism, by respecting and identifying with the group. - In these cultures, people are more self critical and focus less on positive self views. - when speaking, people using the languages of collectivist countries say "I" less often. -In collectivist cultures, self esteem tends to be malleable (context-specific) rather than stable (enduring across situations).

Illusory correlation

o 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. o Other experiments confirm this illusory correlation phenomenon : People easily misperceive random events as confirming their beliefs o If we believe correlation exists, we are more likely to notice and recall confirming instances. o 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. o The illusion of control breeds overconfidence and, frequently, losses after stock market trading costs are subtracted o People like feeling in control and so, when experiencing a lack of control, will act to create a sense of predictability. In experiments, loss of control has led people to see illusory correlations in stock market information, to perceive nonexistent conspiracies, and to develop superstitions.

Knowledge activation (related: spreading activation)

o Large set of information stored in memory but we can't have everything accessible all of the time o What we think of and can access varies in momentary activation o More activated information is more likely to be used o Frequently and recently encountered information is more activated o Priming: perception of a stimulus activates the mental representation of the object o Spreading activation: activation of a set of information increases the activation of related information. so you have one thing primed and then It spreads. So we see a picture of a husky which makes us think of dog which makes us think of cat or we might think of snow

Predicting our behavior; predicting our feelings

o Many of life's big decisions involve predicting our future feelings. o For EX: would marrying this person lead to a lifelong contentment? Would entering this profession make for satisfying work? o We are terrible at both o When do attitudes predict behavior? o Attitudes determine behavior under specific circumstances: - Social influences on attitudes are minimized [] being sick, bad weather, etc - other influences on behavior are minimized - attitude corresponds closely to the behavior - attitude is salient [] make people aware of their attitudes and they will be more likely to have behavior that matches them

Availability heuristic and division of labor (Ross & Sicoly, 1979)

o Married students filled out scale of what percentage of each job vs their spouses do o Provided examples of their and their spouse's contributions. o Most couples' combined estimates of their contribution added up to more than 100 o Them doing the work is not available in our head. Us doing the work is.

Mere exposure effect

o Mere exposure to all sorts of novel stimuli - nonsense syllables, Chinese calligraphy characters, musical selections, faces- boosts people's ratings of them. o Attitudes toward social groups can also be changed by mere exposure: When people read stories about transgender individuals accompanied by pictures, they become more comfortable and less afraid of transgender people. o People of differing nationalities, languages, and ages prefer the letters appearing in their own names and those that frequently appear in their own language.

Miasattribution, attribution theory and dispositional vs. situational attributions

o Misattribution effect is mistakenly attributing a behavior to the wrong source. o Men's misreading of women's warmth as a sexual come on - an example of misattribution- can contribute to sexual harassment or even rape. Many men believe women are flattered by repeated requests for dates, which women more often view as harassment o Misattribution is particularly likely when men are in positions of power. A manager may misinterpret a subordinate woman's submissive or friendly behavior and, full of himself, see her in sexual terms. o. Attribution theory analyzes how we explain people's behavior and what we infer from it. We sometimes attribute people's behavior to internal causes (for example, someone's disposition or mental state) and sometimes to external causes (for example, something about the situation). A teacher may wonder whether a child's underachievement is due to lack of motivation and ability (an internal cause or a dispositional attribution) or to physical and social circumstances (an external cause or situational attribution). Also, some people are more inclined to attribute behavior to stable personality, whereas others are more likely to attribute behavior to situations.

Self-serving bias and self-serving attributions

o Most of us have a good reputation with ourselves. In studies of self esteem, even low scoring people respond I the midrange of possible scores. o One of psychology's most provocative yet firmly established conclusions is the potency of self serving bias - a tendency to perceive oneself favorably. o Many dozens of experiments have found that people accept credit when told they have succeeded. They attribute the success to their ability and effort, but they attribute failure to external factors, such as bad luck or the problem's inherent "impossibility". o Similarly, in explaining their victories, atheletes commonly credit themselves, but they attribute losses to something else: bad breaks, bad referee calls, or the other team's super effort or dirty play. This phenomenon of self serving attributions (attributing positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to something else) is one of the most potent of human biases. That might be for a good reason: Making self serving attributions activates brain areas associated with reward and pleasure o Self serving attributions contribute to marital discord, worker dissatisfaction, and bargaining impasses. o We help maintain our positive self images by associating ourselves with success and distancing ourselves from failure. o Ironically, we are even biases against seeing our own bias. People claim they avoid self serving bias themselves but readily acknowledge that others commit this bias.

Hindsight bias (or the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon)

o One problem with common sense is that we invoke it after we know the facts. o Events are far more "Obvious" and predictable in hindsight than beforehand. o When people learn the outcome of an experiment, that outcome suddenly seems unsurprising- much less surprising that it is to people who are simply told about the experimental procedure and the possible outcomes. o Likewise, in everyday life we often do not expect something to happen until it does. Then we suddenly see clearly the forces that brought the event about and feel unsurprised. Moreover, we may also misremember our earlier view. o Errors in duding the future's foreseeability and in remembering our past combine to create hindsight bias o We can draw on our stockpile of proverbs to make almost any result seem to make sense o The I knew it all along phenomenon can have unfortunate consequences. It is conducive to arrogance- an overestimation of our own intellectual powers. o Moreover, because outcomes seem like they should have been predictable, we are more likely to blame decision makers for what are in retrospect "obvious" bad choices than to praise them for good choices, which also seem "obvious". o For Ex: Starting after the 9/11 terror attack and working backward, signals pointing to the impending disaster seemed obvious. o Sometimes we are too hard on ourselves and we forget that what is obvious to us now was not nearly so obvious at the time o The point is not that common sense is predictably wrong. Rather, common sense usually is right - after the fact. And that is precisely why we need science to help us sift reality from illusion and genuine predictions from easy hindsight.

Cognitive dissonance

o One theory is that our attitudes change because we are motivated to maintain consistency among our thoughts (known as cognitions). That is the implication of cognitive dissonance theory. o The theory is simple, but its range of application is enormous. o It assumes that we feel tension, or "dissonance," when two of our thoughts or beliefs ("cognitions") are inconsistent. Festinger argued that to reduce this unpleasant arousal caused by inconsistency, we often adjust our thinking. o Dissonance theory pertains mostly to discrepancies between behavior and attitudes. We are aware of both. Thus, if we sense an inconsistency, perhaps some hypocrisy, we feel pressure to change. That helps explain why cigarette smokers are much more likely than nonsmokers to doubt that smoking is dangerous.

Unrealistic optimism and defensive pessimism

o Optimism predisposes a positive approach to life. o studies of more than 90,000 people across 22 cultures reveal that most humans are more disposed to optimism than pessimism. o indeed, many of us have what researcher Neil Weinstein terms "an unrealistic optimism about future life events." In a 2006-2008 worldwide poll, most people expected their lives to improve more in the next 5 years than they did in the past 5 years - an especially striking expectation considering the worldwide recession that followed. Partly because of their relative pessimism about others' fates, students perceive themselves as far more likely than their classmates to get a good job, draw a good salary, and own a home. o Illusory optimism increases our vulnerability. Believing ourselves immune to misfortune, we do not take sensible precautions. o For ex: Sexually active women who don't consistently use contraceptives perceived themselves, compared with other women at their university, as much less vulnerable to unwanted pregnancy. o On the other hand, optimism definitely beats pessimism in promoting self efficacy, health, and well being. o Pessimist even die sooner - apparently because they are more likely to suffer unfortunate accidents. If our optimistic prehistoric ancestors were more likely than their pessimistic neighbors to surmount challenges and survive, then small wonder that we are disposed to optimism. o Defensive pessimism can sometimes save us from the perils of unrealistic optimism. Defensive pessimism anticipates problems and motivates effective coping. o Students who exhibit excess optimism (as many students destined for low grades do) benefit from some self doubt, which motivates study. o The moral; Success in school and requires enough optimism to sustain hope and enough pessimism to motivate concern

Automatic and controlled processing and system 1/system 2

o Our thinking is partly automatic (impulsive, effortless, and without our awareness - system 1) and partly controlled (reflective, deliberate, and conscious- system 2). Automatic, intuitive thinking occurs not "onscreen" but offscreen, out of sight, where reason does not go. Automatic thinking Exs: o Schemas are mental concepts or templates that intuitively guide our perceptions and interpretations. Whether we hear someone speaking of religious sects or sex depends on how we automatically interpret the sound o 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 threat detection center ( the amygdala) before the thinking cortex has had any chance to intervene. o Given sufficient expertise, people may intuitively know the answer to a problem. Many skills, from piano playing to swinging a golf club, begin as controlled, deliberate process and gradually become automatic and intuitive. o Given but a very thin slice of someone - even just a fraction of a second glance at their photo- people's Snape judgements do better than chance at guessing whether someone is outgoing or shy, straight or gay. o Some things - facts, names, and past experiences - we remember explicitly (consciously) using system 2. But other things - skills and conditioned dispositions - we remember implicitly with system 1, without consciously knowing or declaring that we know.

Saying becomes believing effect

o People often adapt what they say to please their listeners o They are quicker to tell people goos news than bad, and they adjust their message toward the listener's views. o When induced to give spoken or written support to something they doubt, people will often feel bad about their deceit. Nevertheless, the begin to believe what they are saying (assuming they weren't bribed or coerced into doing so). When there is no compelling external explanation for one's words saying becomes believing.

Power of the situation

o People's behavior is highly influenced by the situation in which they find themselves o How talkative are you? How friendly? How aggressive? o Very powerful and dramatic o Kurt Lewin, the founder of social psychology said the behavior of people is always a function of the person and the situation

Spotlight effect studies (Gilovich, Medvec, & Savitsky, 2000)

o Target asked to put on Barry Manilow T shirt o Taken to room with observers who are filling out questionnaires o Asked how many observers would be able to say what is on the T shirt o The people wearing the shirt thought that 50% would be able to recall what shirt they were wearing but only 25% could.

Mere Exposure Effect, student attending classes - Moreland & Beach (1992)

o The more the student attends the class the more the people around them in that class are going to like them

How well do attitudes predict behavior? Under what conditions?

o People's expressed attitudes hardly predicted their varying behaviors. o There was a study where people were presented with an appealing task with a possible $30 prize and a dull task with no rewards. The participants had to do one of the tasks and assign a supposed second participant to the other. Only 1 in 20 believed that assigning the appealing taks with the reward to themselves was the more moral thing to do, yet 80% did so. In follow up experiments, participants were given coins they could flip privately if they wanted. Even if they chose to flip, 90% assigned themselves to the positive task! Was that because they could specific the consequences of heads and tails after the coin toss? In another experiment, Batson put a sticker on each side of the coin \, indicating what the flip outcome would signify.. Still, 24 of 28 people who made the toss assigned themselves to the appealing task. When morality and greed were put on a collision course, greed usually won. When attitudes predict behavior: o The reason why our behavior and our expressed attitudes differ is that both are subject to other influences - many other influences. o For an attitude to lead to a behavior, liking must become wanting, a goal must be set, the goal must be chosen. o Our attitudes do predict our behavior when these other influences on what we say and do are minimal, when the attitude is specific to the behavior, and when the attitude is potent. o We are terrible at both o When do attitudes predict behavior? o Attitudes determine behavior under specific circumstances: - Social influences on attitudes are minimized [] being sick, bad weather, etc - other influences on behavior are minimized - attitude corresponds closely to the behavior - attitude is salient [] make people aware of their attitudes and they will be more likely to have behavior that matches them When does our behavior affect our attitudes? o So, to some extent, our attitudes matter. We can think ourselves into a way of acting. o When role playing o Saying becomes believing o Evil and moral acts o Social movements Why does our behavior affect our attitudes? o Self presentation o Cognitive Dissonance o Self perception

Conceptual definition vs. operational definition

o Psychological theories involve concepts (e.g., helping, prejudice, fear) When we discuss theories, we have a conceptual definition of the variables o In order to study and use theories, we need to know exactly what to look for and do (e.g., holding a door open; sitting far away from someone; how people answer the question "are you afraid right now?") When we're studying an idea, we use an operational definition (aka operationalization) of the variables

Framing

o Researchers must also make sure that they constructed their surveys or questionnaires in a way that doesn't bias responses. o For ex: the order of questions on a survey can have a surprisingly big impact o when Joop van Der Pligt and co workers (1987) asked English voters what percentage of Britian's energy they wished came from nuclear power, the average preference was 41%. They asked other voters what percentage they wished came from (1) nuclear, (2) coal, and (3) other sources. The average preference for nuclear power among these respondents was 21%. o Survey wording is a very delicate matter. Even subtle changes in the tone of a question can have marked effects. o Sometimes even very subtle wording differences can have striking effects. o Order, response, and wording effects enable political manipulators to use surveys to show public support for their views. o Framing research also has applications in the definition of everyday default options. Without restricting people's freedom, thoughtfully framed options can "nudge" people toward beneficial decisions.

Replication

o Researchers must precisely explain their stimuli and procedures so that others can match them =. Many now file their methods and their detailed data in a public online, "open science" archive o Any single study provides some information - it's one estimate. Better is the aggregated data from multiple studies o Replication = confirmation

Regression toward the average/mean

o Researchers noted another way by which an illusion of control may arise: we fail to recognize the statistical phenomenon of regression toward the average. o o Because exam scores fluctuate 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 rather than to push the ceiling even higher. Conversely, students who earn low scores 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. o Sometimes we recognize that events are not likely to continue at an unusually good or bad extreme. o Experience has taught us that when everything is going great, something will go wrong, and that when life is dealing us terrible blows, we can usually look forward to things getting better. Often, though, ew fail to recognize this regression effect.

Role

o Role playing is one situation in which our behavior affects our attitudes o The word role is borrowed from the theater and, as in the theater, refers to actions expected of those who occupy a particular social position. o When enacting new social roles, we may at first feel phony. But our unease seldom lasts. o EX: That first week on campus, for example, you may have been supersensitive to your new social situation and tried valiantly to act mature and to suppress your high school behavior. AT such times you may have felt self conscious. You observed your new speech and actions because they weren't;t natural to you. Then something amazing happened: your pseudo-intellectual talk no longer felt forced. The role began to fit as comfortably as your old jeans and T shirt. o The people took the roles in the Stanford Prison experiment

Self-concept, Working self-concept

o Self concept is what we know and believe about ourselves o Self changes from context to context - this is called working self concept

Self-efficacy

o Self efficacy is how competent we feel on a task o Believing in our own competence and effectiveness pays dividends. o Children and adults with strong feelings of self efficacy are more persistent, less anxious, and less depressed. They also live healthier lives and are more academically successful. o In everyday life, self efficacy leads us to set challenging goals and to persist o Self efficacy, like self esteem, grows with hard won achievements o If you can believe you can do something, that is self efficacy. If you like yourself overall, that's self esteem.

Self-esteem, sociometer model of self-esteem. ???????????

o Self esteem is a person's overall self evaluation or sense of self worth. o Self esteem is how much value people place on themselves -High self esteem = feel good about self - Low self esteem = feel less good/ uncertain about self o In general most have a pretty good self concept o when we talk about low self esteem in research it is people who are typically average not TERRIBLE o Self Esteem as a sociometer - we think about our value in the eyes of others - how accepted and valued are we? - acceptance and rejection experiences

Central vs. peripheral traits

o We form our impressions based on our first impressions o There are central traits and peripheral traits o Solomon Asch (1946) o- Forming impression of others is more than adding together individual information [] we from impression of the entire person based on the interaction between different pieces of information - Some pieces of information (central traits) are more important than others (peripheral traits) - Asch showed its not just the sum of the parts. It is a more holistic judgement giving more weight to some things over others.

Self-perception theory

o Self perception theory assumes that we make similar inferences when we observe our own behavior. as when we make inferences about other people's attitudes. o When our attitudes are weak or ambiguous, it's similar to someone observing us from the outside. Hearing myself talk informs me of my attitudes; seeing my actions provides clues to how strong my beliefs are. If I observe myself acting as a leader, I begin to think of myself as a leader. When I smoke, I begin to think of myself as a smoker. o This is especially so when I can't easily attribute my behavior to external constraints. The acts we freely commit are self revealing. o "One fired of mine was shaking while standing offstage waiting to give a lecture and inferred he was really nervous. When he discovered the floor over the air handling system was vibrating, his self perceived nervousness vanished.

Self-presentation theory

o Self presentation theory assumes that for strategic reasons we express attitudes that make us appear consistent o The first explanation begins as a simple idea: we all care about what other people think of us. People spend billions on clothes, diets, cosmetics, and plastic surgery- all because of their fretting over what others think. o We see making a good impression as a way to gain social and material rewards, to feel better about ourselves, even to become more secure in our social identities. o No one wants to look foolishly inconsistent. to avoid seeming so, we express attitudes that match our actions. o To appear consistent to others, we may automatically pretend we hold attitudes consistent with our behaviors. Even a little insincerity or hypocrisy can pay off in managing the impression we are making - or so self presentation theory suggests. o Does our feigning consistency explain why expressed attitudes shift towards consistency with behavior? to some extent, yes - people exhibit a much smaller attitude change when a fake lie detector discourages them from trying to make a good impression. o But there is more to attitudes than self presentation, for people express their changed attitudes even to someone who has no knowledge of their earlier behavior. Two other theories explain why people sometimes internalize their self presentations as genuine attitude changes.

Self-schema

o Self schemas are templates or ideas we have for understanding the self - beliefs of how we act in certain situations, how we are as a person. Ideas we have about ourself in relation to others - integrate and summarize thoughts, feelings, experiences about self in particular domain o we all have multiple self schemas o they influence the way we behave in a certain situation o The elements of your self concept, the specific beliefs by which you define yourself, are your self schemas. o Schemas are mental templates by which we organize our worlds. o Our self schemas - our perceiving ourselves as athletic, overweight, smart, or anything else - powerfully affect how we perceive, remember, and evaluate other people and ourselves. o If being an athlete is one of your self schemas, then you will tend to notice others' bodies and skills, will quickly recall sports-related experiences, and will welcome information that is consistent with your self schema as an athlete. o The self schemas that make up or self concepts help us organize and retrieve our experiences. ..... o In situations we tend to think of what makes us different from others o study on school children who mentioned their gender in spontaneous self description. Boys who grow up in a female household were more likely to mention they were a boy and same for girls in a male household o SO because of their home situation they feel the need to mention their gender o Our working self concepts are fluid ...... In an example: we see a picture of a chair and have a schema of a chair Then we are shown pictures of other things that we most likely would not have identified as chairs if we did not have this schema in our head already.

Things people do to preserve self esteem

o Self serving cognitions o self handicapping o Social comparisons o Temporal comparisons

Overconfidence/the overconfidence phenomenon

o So far we have seen that our cognitive systems process a vast amount of information efficiently and automatically. But our efficiency has a trade off; as we interpret our experiences and construct memories, our automatic System 1 intuitions are sometimes wrong. Usually, we are unaware of our errors - in other words, we display overconfidence. o Two researchers (1979) gave people factual statements and asked them to fill in the blanks, as in the following sentence: "I feel 98% certain that the air distance between New Delhi and Beijing is more than ---- miles but less than ---- miles." Most people were overconfident: approximately 30% of the time, the correct answers lay outside the range they felt 98% confident about. o "people frequently cut things too close - arriving late, missing planes, or bouncing checks". In thinking we know exactly how something will go, we too often miss the window. o Ironically, incompetence feeds overconfidence. It takes competence to recognize competence. Students who score the lowest on tests of grammar, humor, and logic are the most prone to overestimating their abilities. Those who don't know what good logic or grammar is are often unaware that they lack it. o Researchers re created this phenomenon in experiments, confirming that our ignorance of our ignorance sustains our self confidence. Follow up studies found that this "ignorance of one's incompetence" occurs mostly on relatively easy seeming tasks. On more obviously difficult tasks, poor performers more often appreciate their lack of skill. o Researchers had college students predict in September whether they would drop a course, declare a major, elect to live off campus next year, and so forth. Although the students felt, on average, 84% sure of those self predictions, they were wrong nearly twice as often as they expected to be. o 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. By exam day, the possibility of failure looms larger and confidence typically drops.

Zanna and cooper (1974)

o So there were 3 pills: one that was supposed to get rid of anxiety and one that was supposedly supposed to induce anxiety and one with no effect. idk People decide on their own attitudes and feelings from watching themselves behave in various situations. This is particularly true when internal cues are so weak or confusing they effectively put the person in the same position as an external observer. Self-Perception Theory provides an alternative explanation for cognitive dissonance effects. For example Festinger and Carlsmith's experiment where people were paid $1 or $20 to lie. Cognitive dissonance says that people felt bad about lying for $1 because they could not justify the act. Self-perception takes an 'observer's view, concluding that those who were paid $1 must have really enjoyed it (because $1 does not justify the act) whilst those who were paid $20 were just doing it for the money. Note that this indicates how changing people's attitudes happens only when two factors are present: They are aroused, feeling the discomfort of dissonance. They attribute the cause of this to their own behaviors and attitudes. Research Zanna and Cooper gave people a placebo pill and asked them to perform a counter-attitudinal activity. Control people who were told the pill was a placebo did as expected, becoming more supportive of the attitude (because they had enacted it). Others, who were told that the pill would make them tense, did not change their attitude, as they could attribute their dissonance to the effects of the pill.

Social Psychology Social psychology (vs. sociology, personality psychology)

o Social Psychology is a science that studies how situations influence us, with special attention to how people view and affect one another. o More precisely, it is the scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another. o It is the scientific study of social thinking, social influence, and social relations o Compared with sociology (the study of people in groups and societies), social psychology focuses more on individuals and performs more experiments. o Compared with personality psychology, social psychology focuses less on differences among individuals and more on how people, in general, view and affect one another. o Social psychology is a scientific discipline that "attempts to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behavior of individuals is influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others" (Allport, 1924-1985) o

Priming temptations (food) activates inconsistent goal (diet)

plate of brownies, i'm on a diet those who spontaneously activated the goal of studying when presented with TV received better grades

Social Relations (one of the big ideas of social psychology)

o Social behavior is also biological behavior - biology and experience both shape us. Nature v Nurture. - As evolutionary psychologists remind us, our inherited human nature predisposes us to behave in ways that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce. - Social neuroscience asks questions like, what brain areas enable our experiences of love and contempt, helping and aggression, perception and belief? - To understand social behavior we must consider both under-the-skin (biological) and between-skins (social) influences. - We are bio-psycho-social organisms. o Feelings and actions toward people are sometimes negative (prejudiced, aggressive) and sometimes positive (helpful, loving)

Social Influence (one of the big ideas of social psychology)

o Social influences shape behavior - We speak and think in words we learned from others - We long to connect, to belong, and to be well thought of. - Sometimes the power of a social situation leads us to act contrary to our expressed attitudes. [] Ex: I don't want to curse anymore but whenever I hang out with people who curse, I curse - Indeed, powerfully evil situations sometimes overwhelm good intentions, inducing people to accepts falsehoods or comply with cruelty. Under Nazi influence, many decent people became instruments of the holocaust. - our culture helps define our situations. For ex: If you live in a country not very accepting of same sex relationships then you probably will not be accepting either, and vice versa - Ex: I act different around my Bruce friends than I do around my cru friends - Our attitudes and behavior are shaped by external social forces. o Dispositions shape behavior - Internal forces also matter. - our inner attitudes affect our outer behavior. Ex: Our political attitudes influence our voting behavior. [] Ex: I do not drink because I think it is wrong and stupid - our attitudes also follow our behavior, which means we often believe strongly in what we have committed ourselves to or suffered for. - Personality dispositions also affect behavior. Facing the same situation, different people may react differently.

Self-handicapping

o Sometimes people sabotage their chances for success by creating impediments that make success less likely- known as self handicapping o Researchers have documented other ways people self handicap. fearing failure, people will - reduce their preparation for important athletic events - give their opponent and advantage - perform poorly at the beginning of a task to not create unreachable expectations - Not try as hard as they could during a tough, ego involving task o Far from being deliberately self destructive, such behaviors typically have a self protective aim. Unfortunately this strategy usually backfires: students who self handicap end up with lower GPAs. o Why would people handicap themselves with self defeating behaviors? recall that we eagerly protect our self images by attributing failures to external factors. o Thus, fearing failure, people might handicap themselves by paying half the night before a job interview or playing video games instead of studying before a big exam. o When self image is tied up with appearance, it can be more self deflating to try hard and fail than to procrastinate and have a ready excuse. If we fail while handicapped in some way, we can cling to a sense of competence; if we succeed under such conditions, it can only boost our self image. o Handicaps protect both self esteem and public image by allowing us to attribute failures to something temporary or external rather than to lack of talent or ability

Affective forecasting

o Studies of "affective forecasting" reveal that people have greatest difficulty predicting the intensity and the duration of their future emotions. People mispredict how they would feel some time after a romantic breakup, receiving a gift, losing an election, winning a game, and being insulted. o I think if I won the lottery I would be the happiest person on this planet, but I would be happy but I would get used to it. I wouldn't feel like that all of the time

Impact bias

o Study after study reveals our vulnerability to implicit bias - overestimating the enduring impact of emotion causing events. o Faster than we expect, the emotional traces of such good tidings evaporate o We are especially prone to impact bias after negative events. o"Gilbert and Wilson invite you to imagine how you might feel a year after losing your nondominant hand. Compared with today, how happy would you be? You may have focused on what the calamity would mean: no clapping, no shoe tying, no competitive basketball, no speedy keyboarding. Although you likely would forever regret the loss, your general happiness some time after the event would be influenced by "two things: (a) the event, and (b) everything else" (Gilbert & Wilson, 2000). In focusing on the negative event, we discount the importance of everything else that contributes to happiness and thus overpredict our enduring misery. "Nothing that you focus on will make as much difference as you think," write researchers David Schkade and Daniel Kahneman (1998)." o Moreover, they say, people neglect the speed and the power of their coping mechanisms.

Temporal comparisons

o Subjective experience of time o We can use it to maintain our self esteem o in regard to temporal comparisons o The researchers told half of the participants to remember the course in which they received their best grade and then the other half to remember the course in which they got their worst grade o Then they were asked how long it felt since that happened (not actually though) o When it was a bad grade they made it a longer time, pushing it away from themselves o The best grade people said not too long ago because they want it to be with them still or close in time because it was so memorable.

Implicit egotism

o Suggest if we have positive views about ourself we have positive view of things associated with ourselves and that might affect our behavior o Things we associate with ourselves we like more o There is the studies showing this only happens with people with high self esteem; this is controversial o we like what we associate ourselves with o That includes the letters of our name and also the people, places, and things that we unconsciously connect with ourselves o If a stranger's or politicians face is morphed to include features of our own, we like the new face better. We are also more attracted to people whose arbitrary experimental code number resembles our birth date, and we are even disproportionately likely to marry someone whose first or last name resembles our own, such as by starting with the same letters o Virginia Beach has a disproportionate number of people named Virginia. o weirded yet, people seem to prefer careers related to their names. o The implicit egotism phenomenon does have its skeptics. Some argue that it is the "reverse casualty". For example, streets are often named after their residents, and towns are often named after their founders (Williams founded Williamsburg). And founders' descendants may stick around. o But they contend that implicit egotism is a real, though subtle, unconscious judgmental bias.

Spotlight effect and illusion of transparency

o The spotlight effect means seeing ourselves at center stage, thus intuitively overestimating the extent to which others' attention is aimed at us o Ex: I am concerned about a stupid ruffle in my shirt or something that literally no one else will notice o The spotlight effect is the tendency to overestimate extent to which our actions and appearance are noted by others o Keenly aware of our own emotions, we often suffer from an illusion of transparency. If we're happy and we know it, then our face will surely show it. And others, we presume, will notice. Actually, we can be more opaque than we realize. o Research shows that what we agonize over, others may hardly notice and soon forget o Ex: popcorn/ smoke alarm

Fundamental attribution error. aka correspondence bias

o The tendency to overlook the impact of a situation and attribute someone's actions to his or her disposition o It takes mental energy to overlook the effect of a situation on a behavior o but when it comes to us we don't do this. We blame the situation. o It occurs because use - we underestimate the power of situational factors - overlook or be unaware of situational factors - Person is focal, vivid, in action - Don't have enough resources to consider situational factors o Attributions have a big effect on how we acts towards people. If I think the person is a jerk for cutting me off I might flip him off instead of thinking oh well maybe it is an emergency and he has to get to the hospital or something The discounting of the situation, called the fundamental attribution error, appears in many experiments. In the first such study, the researcher had duke students read debaters' speeches supporting or attacking Cuba's leader at the time, Fidel Castro. When told that the debater chose which position to take, the students logically assumed it reflected the person's own attitude. but what happened when the students were told that the debate coach had assigned the position? Students still inferred that the debater had the assigned leanings. People seemed to think, "I know he was assigned that position, but I think he really believes it". o Even when people know they are causing someone else's behavior, they still underestimate external influences. o If Juan acts modestly, his conversation partner Ethan is likely to exhibit modesty as well. Juan will; easily understand his own behavior, bur he will think that poor Ethan suffers from low self esteem. o In short, we tend to presume that others are the way they act - even when we don't make the same presumption about ourselves

Belief perseverance

o Their research reveals that it is surprisingly difficult to demolish a falsehood after the person conjures up a rationale for it. o In an experiment... Each experiment first implanted a belief, either by proclaiming it to be true or by showing the participants some anecdotal evidence. Then the participants were asked to explain why it was true. Finally, the researchers totally discredited the initial information by telling the participants the truth: the information was manufactured for the experiment, and half the participants in the experiment had received opposite information. Nevertheless, the false belief survived approximately 75% intact, presumably because the participants still retained their invented explanations for the belief. Even though the belief was false, the participants still held it tight. This phenomenon, called belief perseverance, shows that beliefs can grow their own legs and survive discrediting. o these experiments suggest that the more we examine our theories and explain how they might be true, the more closed we become to information that challenges our beliefs.

Culture ?

o There are some not so obvious ways that values enter psychology. Culture is one of them o Culture is the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next. o This is the whole thing with if you live in a country where most people are not accepting of same sex relationships then you probably will also be not accepting. o Because scholars in any given area often share a common view point and come from the same culture; their assumptions may go unchallenged.

How do social psychologists study what they study?

o They looked for evidence by numbers not anecdotal o Theory - an integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events (Why does this happen?). A way to think how one type of behavior is related. Idea of how you think things are in the world o Hypothesis -extends a theory - It is a testable proposition that describes the relationship that may exist between events (A prediction) o Independent and dependent variables - Scientific explanations rest on the idea that events and conditions have causes. Research is often trying to find causes o Conceptual and operation definitions -psychological theories involve concepts (helping, prejudice, fear) [] When we discuss theories, we have a conceptual definition of the variables. - In order to study and use theories, we need to know exactly what to look for and do (holding a door open; sitting far away from someone; how people answer the question "are you afraid right now?") [] When we're studying an idea, we use an operation definition (aka operationalization) of the variables o You have to choose a method o Comparison groups - with experiments, comparing "groups" of people in different conditions (with only difference between them being the manipulated variable)

Priming

o Things we don't even consciously notice can subtly influence how we interpret and recall events. o Our memory system is a web of associations, and priming is the awakening or activating of certain associations o Experiments show that priming one thought, even without awareness, can influence another thought, or even an action. o In a host of studies, priming effects occur even when the stimuli are presented sublimely - too briefly to be perceived consciously. o What's out of sight might not be completely out of mind o If the word "bread" is flashed so briefly that it's just below your conscious awareness, you'll detect a related word like "butter" more quickly than an unrelated word like "bubble". o In another experiment, students were more likely to wobble on a balance beam in a room with posters of beer and vodka as opposed to apple or orange juice. o Unnoticed events can also subtly prime our thinking and behavior. o Researches observed that Dutch students exposed to the scent of an all purpose cleaner were quicker to idenitify cleaning related words, recalled more cleaning related activities when describing their day, and even kept their desk cleaner while eating a crumbly cookie. o And in a laboratory experiment, exposure to a fishy smell caused people to be suspicious of each other and cooperate less- priming notions of a shady deal as "fishy". All these effects occurred without the participants' conscious awareness of the scent and its influence. o EX: Watching a scary movie alone at home can activate emotions that, without our realizing it, cause us to interpret furnace noises as a possible intruder.

Terror management theory

o This argues that humans must find ways to manage their overwhelming fear of death. o If self esteem were only about acceptance, he counters, why do "people strive to be great rather than to just be accepted"? The reality of our own death, he argues motivates us to gain recognition from our work and values. There's a worm in the apple, however: Not everyone can achieve such recognition, which is exactly why it is valuable, and why self esteem can never be wholly unconditional (or not based on anything, such as when parents say, "You're special for just being you"). To feel our lives are not in vain, Greenberg maintains, we must continually pursue self esteem by meeting the standards of our societies. EX: I constantly trying to get great grades so I can be something someday

Selective exposure

o This is another way people minimize dissonance o Another way people minimize dissonance, Festinger believed, is through selective exposure to agreeable information. o 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 view point. Twice as many preferred supporting rather than challenging information. We prefer news that affirms us over news that informs us. o People are especially keen on reading information that supports their political, religious, and ethical views - a phenomenon that most of us can recognize from our own favorite news and blog sources. Moreover, people who have strong views on some topic - for instance, gun control, climate change, or economic policy - are prone to "identity protective cognition". To minimize dissonance, their beliefs steer their reasoning and their evaluation of data.

Predicting Behavior (responding to sexist remarks) - Swim & Hyers (1999)

o This is in regards to the power of social norms and predicting behavior o The students in one Pennsylvania State University experiment found it surprisingly difficult to violate the social norm of being "nice" rather than confrontational - even when they were thoroughly provoked. o Participants imagined themselves discussing with three others whom to select for survival on a desert island. They were asked to imagine one of the others, a man, injecting three sexist comments, such as, "I think we need more women on the island to keep the men satisfied." How would they react to such sexist remarks? Only 5% predicted they would ignore the comments or wait to wait to see how others reacted and 48% say they would comment on inappropriateness. But when other students were actually in the situation and heard a male confederate make these comments, 56% (not 5%) said nothing and only 16% commented on the inappropriateness . o Likewise, although people predict they would be upset by witnessing a person making a racial slur and would reject that person, those actually experiencing such an event typically exhibit indifference. These experiments demonstrate the power of social norms and show how hard it is to predict behavior, even our own behavior.

Counterfactual thinking (upward vs. downward counterfactuals)

o This is mentally simulating what might have been o Bronze medalists ( for whom an easily imagined alternative was finishing fourth - without a medal) exhibit more joy than silver medalists (who could more easily imagine having won the gold). o Similarly, the higher a student's score within a grade category (such as B+), the worse they feel. The B+ students who misses an A- by a point feels worse than the B+ student who actually did worse and just made a B+ by a point. o Such counterfactual thinking - imagining what could have been - occurs when we can easily picture an alternative outcome. o counterfactual thinking underlies our feelings of luck. When we have barely escaped a bad event- avoiding defeat with a last minute goal or standing near a fallen icicle - we easily imagine a negative counterfactual (losing, being hit) and therefore feel "good luck". "Bad luck" referee to bad events that did happen but easily might not have. o Imagining how past events might have turned out differently - Upwards counterfactuals: "if only..." [] elicit negative affect - Downwards counterfactuals: "at least..." [] elicit positive affect

Kelley's Covariation Theory / Model (distinctiveness, consistency, consensus)

o Type of attribution we make is determined by weighing 3 pieces of information: - Consensus - Distinctiveness - Consistency o Consensus: - DO other people behave this way in this situation? o Distinctiveness: Is the person's behavior unique to this situation? Do they act like this in all situations over time? Consistent across situations? o Consistency: Is the person's behavior consistency across time in this situation? Consistent in this situation across time?

Informed consent

o University ethics committees review social psychological research to ensure that it will treat people humanely and that the scientific merit justifies any temporary deception or distress. o Ethical principles mandate investigators to tell potential participants enough about the experiment to enable their informed consent.

Social Thinking (one of the big ideas of social psychology)

o We construct our social reality - There is an objective of reality out there, but we always view it through the lens of our beliefs and values [] For example, there was a Princeton v Dartmouth football game in which fistfights erupted and there were injuries on both sides. When psychologists had students watch videos from the game and determine who was responsible for it, people were much more likely to side with their school. [] Thinking back on the fights I had over jeans with Rachel and still thinking I was right and she started it - We explain peoples behavior, usually with enough speed and accuracy to suit our daily needs. When someone's behavior is consistent and distinctive, we attribute that behavior to her personality. [] For example, if you observe someone making repeated snide comments, you may infer that she has a nasty disposition, and then you try to avoid her - Your beliefs about yourself also matter. Do you have an optimistic outlook? Do you view yourself as relatively superior or inferior? Your answers influence your emotions and actions -- How we contour the world, and ourselves matters. o Our social institutions are powerful, sometimes perilous - Psychological science reveals a fascinating unconscious mind- an intuitive backstage mind. - Intuition is huge, but intuition is also perilous - For example, as we cruise through life, mostly on automatic pilot, we intuitively judge the likelihood of events by how easily they come to mind. - Car accidents are so common that they are not really on the news. But when a plane chases it is all over the news because it is not a common occurrence. So we readily carry available mental images of plane crashes and are therefore more afraid to fly than drive. [] I am not afraid of driving, but I am incredibly afraid of being in a shooting because they all over the news and car accidents aren't - Even our intuitions about ourselves err. - we intuitively trust out memories more than we should - we deny being affected by things that do influence us [] I deny the influence that people partying around me has on me. - We mispredict our own feelings. - and we often mispredict our own future - In most situations, "'fast and frugal" snap judgements serve us well. But in others, in which accuracy matters, such as when needing to fear the right things and spend our resources wisely, we had best restrain our impulsive intuitions with critical thinking. [] Buying 2 Jon tickets like an idiot o Attitudes shape, and are shaped by, behavior

Reflected appraisals and the looking glass self

o We get information about ourselves by using other people - reflected appraisals o We imagine how others see us and then see ourselves that way o We find others see us by how they treat us and how they respond when they see us o Looking glass self - self concept is what we believe others think of us o Limitations of reflected appraisals - people may not be honest with us - sometimes people are envious and down play ur positive characteristics or vice versa. o You want to make someone feel better so they down play your negative characteristics o The looking glass self - The looking glass self was how sociologist Charles H. Cooley (1902) described our use of how we think others perceive us as a mirror for perceiving ourselves. Fellow sociologist George Herbert Mead (1934) refined this concept, noting that what matters for our self concepts is not hoe others actually see us but the way we imagine they see us. ... People generally fell freer to praise than to criticize, they voice their compliments and restrain their insults. We may therefore, overestimate others' appraisal, inflating our self images. For example, people tend to see themselves as more physically attractive than they actually are.

False uniqueness effect, false consensus effect

o We have a curious tendency to enhance our self images by overestimating or underestimating how much others think and act as we do. On matters of opinion, we find support for our positions by overestimating how much others agree- a phenomenon called the false consensus effect. o When California college students thought about their favorite celebrity, they significantly underestimated how much others would express dislike for their idolized star. o When we behave badly or fail in a task, we reassure ourselves by thinking that such lapses also are common. After one person lies to another, the lair beings to perceive the other person as dishonest. o Dawes proposes that this false consensus may occur because we generalize from a limited sample, which prominently includes ourselves. Lacking other information, why not project ourselves; why not impute our own knowledge to others and use our responses as a clue to their likely responses? o Also we are more likely to spend time with people who share our attitudes and behaviors and, consequently, to judge the world from the people we know. o On matter of ability or when we behave well or succesfully, however, a false uniqueness effect more often occurs. We serve our self image by seeing our talents and moral behaviors as relatively unusual. Thus, we may see our failings as relatively normal and our virtues as relatively exceptional.

Spontaneous trait inference

o We often infer that other people's actions are indicative of their intentions and dispositions. If we observe Mason making a sarcastic comment to Ashely, we infer that Mason is a hostile person. When are people more likely to infer that others' behavior is caused by traits? For one thing, behavior that's normal for a particular situation tells us less about the person than does behavior unusual for that situation. o The ease with which we infer traits, a phenomenon called spontaneous trait inference, is remarkable. o Just 1/10th of a second exposure to someone's face leads people to spontaneously infer some personality traits/

Random assignment

o assigning participants to experimental and control conditions by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups o Each person has an equal chance of being in each group o Over comes the third variable problem by distributing ALL other variables equally among experimental groups (on average). o Makes groups equivalent - rules out the possibility that agreeableness causes both perceived similarity and liking

Temporal comparisons Study (Ross & Wilson, 2002)

o in regard to temporal comparisons o The researchers told half of the participants to remember the course in which they received their best grade and then the other half to remember the course in which they got their worst grade o Then they were asked how long it felt since that happened (not actually though) o When it was a bad grade they made it a longer time, pushing it away from themselves o The best grade people said not too long ago because they want it to be with them still or close in time because it was so memorable.

Self-presentation and self monitoring towards the end

o self presentation refers to our wanting to present a desired image both to an external audience (other people) and to an internal audience (ourselves). o We work at managing the impressions we create. We excuse or justify, or apologize as necessary to shore up our self esteem and verify our self images. Just as we preserve our self esteem, we also must make sure not to brag too much and risk the disapproval of others. o In one study, students who were told to "put your best face forward" actually made a more negative impression on people they just met than those who were not under self presentational demands. o One self presentation strategy is the "humblebrag," an attempt to disguise bragging behind complaints or false humility. One study found that humble bragging usually backfires, failing to either convey humility or to impress others. o In familiar situations, self presentation happens without conscious effort. In unfamiliar situations, perhaps at a party with people we would like to impress or in conversation with a crush, we are acutely self conscious of the impressions we are creating and we are therefore less modest than when among friends who know us well. o Self presentation depletes energy, which often leads to diminished effectiveness- for example, to less resistance on a tedious experimental task or more difficult stifling emotional expressions. o The upside is that self presentation can unexpectedly improve mood. People felt significantly better than they thought they would after doing their best to "put their best face forward" and concentrate on making a positive impression on their boyfriend or girlfriends. o Social networking sites such as facebook provide a new and sometimes intense venue for self presentation. o Users make careful decisions about which pictures, activities and interests to highlight in their profiles. o Tinkering with self presentation online apparently has benefits: people who edit their own facebook profile subsequently report higher self esteem. Self Monitoring o For some people, conscious self presentation is a way of life. They continually monitor their own behavior and note how others react, then adjust their social performance to gain a desired effect. o Those who score high on a scale of self monitoring act like social chameleons- they use self presentation to adjust their behavior in response to external situations. o Having attuned their behavior to the situation, they are more likely to express attitudes they don't really hold and less likely to express or act on their own attitudes. o those low in self monitoring care less about what others think. They are more internally guided and thus more likely to talk and act as they feel and believe. o Most us fall somewhere between those two extremes

Obedience: Hofling, nurses (1966)

ordered 22 nurses to give an overdose of Astroten; 21 sis it even though on the label it said the max dose, they didn't know the doctor, and it was not on their list of approved medications. and they did it

Evaluative conditioning

you attitude toward something is positive if you had a positive experience with it. If you have associations with things you may feel a certain way about it