Chapter 13: Behaviour in a Social Context

sexual strategies theory

-ancestral men who were predisposed to have sex with more partners increased the likelihood of fathering more children and passing on their genes -women maximized their reproductive success by selecting mates

social loafing is more likely to occur when

-people believe that individual performance within the group is not being monitored -the task (goal) has less value or meaning to the person -the group is less important to the person -the task is simple and the person's input is redundant with that of other group members -person is fatigued

Fritz Heider

-pioneer of attribution theory -maintained that our attempts to understand why people behave as they do typically involve either personal or situational attributions

social structure theory

-proposes that most of the sex differences in mating strategies and preferences occur because society directs men into more advantaged social and economic roles

preseason involves...

a communicator who delivers a message through a channel to an audience within a surrounding context

in trying to persuade someone, is it more effective to present only your side of the issue or to also present the opposition's arguments and then refute them?

a meta-analysis indicates that, overall, the two-sided refutational approach is more effective

prejudice

a negative attitude toward people based on their membership in a group

fundamental attribution error

a tendency to underestimate the impact of the situation and overestimate the role of personal factors when explaining other people's behaviour

discrimination

overt behaviour: it involves treating people unfairly based on the group to which they belong

when consistency is high but consensus and distinctiveness are low, what type of attribution do we make?

personal

theory of planned behaviour

view that our intention to engage in a behaviour is strongest when have a positive attitude toward that behaviour, when subjective norms (our perceptions of what other people think we should do) support our attitudes, and when we believe that the behaviour is under our control

when is groupthink most likely to happen

when a group is: -under high stress to reach a decision -insulated from outside input -has a directive leader who promotes her or his personal agenda -has a high cohesion, reflecting a spirit of closeness and ability to work well together

how can fundamental attribution error be reduce?

when people have time to reflect on their judgements or are highly motivated to be careful e.g. when asked about the factors causing the columbine shooting, the american public placed more emphasis on the availability of guns, and other situational factors rather than just calling the shooters bad kids

self-fulfilling prophecy

when people's erroneous expectations lead them to act in a way that brings about the expected behaviours (in the other person), thereby confirming the original impression they had of the other person (whether it was from something they were told prior to meeting the person)

when is dissonance maximized?

when the behaviour threatens our sense of self-worth or produces negative consequences that were foreseeable

when would primacy effects decrease and recency effects increase?

when we are asked to avoid making snap judgements, are reminded to carefully consider the evidence, and are made to feel accountable for our judgements

social compensation

working harder in a group than alone because you expect that your colleagues either don't have enough ability or will slack off

what does categorization of people lead to the perception of?

-"in groups" and "out groups" -in group favouritism: a tendency to favour in-group members and attribute more positive qualities to "us" than to "them" -out-group derogation: reflects a tendency to attribute more negative qualities to "them" than to "us"

Factors that affect conformity

-Group size: conformity increased from 5-35% as group size increased from 1-4/5 confederates but further increases in size did not increase conformity -Presence of a dissenter: when one confederate disagreed wit the others, this greatly reduced real participants' conformity. When someone dissents, this person saves as a model for remaining independent from the group

passionate love

-a form of love that involves intense emotional arousal and yearning for one's partner -less stable than compassionate and declines more quickly over time

stereotypes

-a generalized belief about a group or category of people -represents a powerful type of schema

in stating your position to an audience that disagrees with you, should you present extreme arguments, or should you present a position that is only moderately discrepant with their viewpoint?

-a highly credible communicator can afford to present a more discrepant viewpoint than a low-credibility community -however, in general, a moderate degree of discrepancy is more effective

lowballing

-a manipulation technique in which a persuader gets someone to commit to some behaviour and then increases the "cost" of that same behaviour -having already made the commitment, you may find it easier to rationalize the added costs or may feel obligated to the person to whom you made the commitment

foot-in-the-door technique

-a manipulation technique in which the persuader gets someone to comply with a small request first (getting "foot in the door") and later presents a larger request -this technique results in increased participation and compliance

transfer of excitation

-a misinterpretation of one's state of arousal that occurs when arousal actually is caused by one source, but the person attributes it to another source -sometimes emotional arousal caused by some other factor may sometimes be misinterpreted as love

door-in-the-face technique

-a persuader makes a large request, expecting you to reject it ("slam the door" in the persuader's face), and then presents a smaller request -you are more likely to agree to the smaller request having first been asked to do the large request

attitude

-a positive or negative evaluative reaction toward a stimulus -attitudes help to define out identity, guide out acting and influence how we judge people

social role

-a set of norms that characterizes how people in a given social position ought to behave -e.g. role of university student

deindividuation

-a state of increased anonymity in which a person, often as part of a group or crowd, engages in disinhibited behaviour

three factors that help explain why the attitude-behaviour relationship is strong in some cases but weak in other

-attitudes influence behaviour more strongly when counteracting situational factors are weak (financial incentives, conformity and obedience pressures, deindividuation, groupthink and other conditions may lead people to behave in ways that are at odds with their inner convictions -second, attitudes have a great influence on behaviour when we are aware of them and when they are strongly held. Attitude-behaviour consistency increases when people consciously think about their attitudes before acting -third, general attitudes are better at predicting general classes of behaviour, and specific attitudes are better at predicting specific behaviours

counterattitudinal behaviour

-behaviour that is inconsistent with our attitude -produces dissonance only if we perceive that our actions were freely chosen rather than coerced

two basic routes to persuasion

-central route to persuasion -peripheral route to persuasion

Stanley Milgram

-examined conformity and obedience to authority figures -had participants that acted as teachers administer shocks to the learners (who were actually confederates) when they answered questions wrong -obedience was high (65%)

two major components of credibility

-expertise -trustworthiness

Muzafer Sherif social norm experiment

-found that even randomly created groups develop norms -involved an optical illusion called the auto kinetic effect: people stare at a dot of light projected onto a screen in a dark room, they begin to perceive the dot as moving, even though it is stationary -students randomly placed into groups of three and made further judgements -as members with each group heard each others judgements their judgements covered and a group norm evolved -the norms varied across judgments -individuals were retested individually a year later and the judgements continued to reflect their groups norm

"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse"

-four behaviours that couples headed for unhappiness or divorce often exhibit -criticism -contempt -defensiveness -stonewalling (listener withdrawal and non responsiveness)

symptoms of groupthink

-group members who express doubt are faced with direct pressure to stop "rocking the boat" -some members serve as mind guards by preventing negative information from reaching the group -members display self-censorship and withhold their doubts, creating a potentially disastrous illusion of unanimity in which each member comes to believe that "everyone else seems to agree with the decision"

Soloman Asch;s landmark conformity experiments

-groups of uni students performed several trials of a simple visual task -only one member of the group was an actual participants (the rest were accomplices) -group members sat around a table and were called on in order -real participant sat next to last -every confederate intentionally have the same wrong answer on some trials (asked to judge which comparison lines were the same as the standard line) -asch found that 1/4 of participants never conformed -1/4 conformed frequently -the rest conformed once or a few times during debriefing many participants were puzzled by the difference between their own and the group's perceptions -some felt that the group was wrong but went along to avoid possibly making waves or rejection -behaviour reflects normative social influence

role conflict

-happens when the norms accompanying different roles clash -e.g. university student that has a job might find it hard to juggle both

holistic thinking and attribution

-holistic view is reflected in the belief that all events are interconnected and therefore cannot be understood in isolation -this leads to more complex views about the causes of behaviour -the same underlying psychological principle: a link between holistic thinking and beliefs about causality-- seems to account for information seeking differences between cultures as well as among individuals within each culture

communicator credibility

-how believable the communicator is -often the key to effective persuasion

matching effect

-in romantic relationships, the tendency for partners to have a similar level of physical attractiveness

Situational (external) attributions

-infer that aspects of the situation cause a behaviour -Bill was provoked into insulting Carl

personal (internal) attributions

-infer that people's behaviour is caused by their characteristics -Bill insulted Carl because Bill is a rude person

attributions

-judgements about the causes of our own and other people's behaviour and outcomes -influence our subsequent behaviour and emotions e.g. attribute your A on an exam to hard work will help you to feel more pride and continue to exert more effort than if you attribute it to an east test

uncertainty oriented people

-look for information, particularly in situations that are new and unpredictable -follow central route when issues are personally relevant

Anthony Greenwald implicit association test

-measures covert prejudice -series of word pairs, such as "black-pleasant" "white-pleasant" are flawed on a computer screen -as soon as you se each pair your task is to press a computer key as quickly as you can, and this represents your reaction time -the principle underly this test is that people react more quickly when they perceive that the two words in each pair are associated with each other than when they don't fit together -the larger discrepancy in reaction times, the stronger are the person's underlying negative attitudes

experiments found that performance on learning tasks worsened when cofactors or an audience were present, what was Robert Zajonc theory for this paradox?

-mere physical present of another person increase our arousal -as arousal increases, we become more likely to perform whatever behaviour happens to be our dominant response to the specific situation -when we are first trying to learn a task, our dominant response is to make errors. therefore, performing in front of an audience or with cofactors should impair performance -but who a task either is simple or complex but well learned, our dominant response usually is to perform the task correctly (presence of coactors enhances performance -this phenomenon is called social faciliatation

certainty oriented people

-more likely to rely on peripheral information when the information is self-relevant -more influenced by factors such as speaker attractiveness or expertise

what qualities are sought in an ideal mate?

-mutual attraction/love -dependable character -emotional stability -pleasing disposition

who help launch the field of social psychology? What was their hypothesis

-norman triplett -hypothesis: the presence of others energizes performance (confirmed with evidence)

why does group polarization occur?

-normative social influence: individuals who are attracted to a group may be motivated to adopt a more extreme position to gain the group's approval -informational social influence: during group discussions, people hear arguments supporting their positions that they had not previously considered

what types of characteristics increase social loafing?

-occurs more strongly in all-male groups than in all-female or mixed-sec groups, possibly b/c women may be more concerned about group outcomes than men -participants from individualistic cultures exhibit more social loafing that people from collectivistic cultures in which group goals are especially valued

peripheral route to persuasion

-occurs when people do not scrutinize a message and are influenced mostly by other factors, such as a speaker's attractiveness or a message's emotional appeal -people with a low need for cognition are more strongly influenced by peripheral cues

central route to persuasion

-occurs when people think carefully about a message and are influenced because they find the arguments compelling -central route typically use when it is personally relevant: when it will actually affect us in some way -people who have a high need for cognition tend to follow the central route to persuasion

Characteristics of the most effective persuader

-one who appears both to be an expert and to be presenting the truth in an unbiased manner -one who advocates a point of view contrary to his or her own self-interest

primacy effect

-our tendency to attach more importance to the initial information that we learn about a person -this is due to the fact that we tend to be most alert to information we receive first and -initial information may shape how we perceive subsequent information (first impression)

Erich Fromm's five fundamental types of love

-parental love -erotic (sexual) love -self love love for humanity -love of God

why is the saying "birds of a feather, flock together" true?

-people are most often attracted to others who are similar to themselves -we like people with similar attitudes because they validate our view of the world

social exchange theory

-proposes that the course of a relationship is governed by rewards and costs that the partners experience -rewards include companionship, emotional support, and the satisfaction of other needs -costs may include the effort spent to maintain the relationship, arguments, conflicting goals, and so forth -overall outcome in a relationship can be positive or negative

how can people reduce dissonance so that it no longer produces an attitude change

-rationalizing that their attitude or their behaviour wasn't important -by finding external justification -by making other excuses e.g. people who drank and have a negative attitude toward drinking rationalize it by saying "other people drink more than i do" "im not perfect, but other people are still worse"

mental set

-readiness to perceive the world in a particular way -powerfully shapes how we interpret a stimulus

factors that influence destructive obedience

-remoteness of the victim: obedience is greater when the victim is out of sight -closeness and legitimacy of the authority figure: obedience iss highest when the authority figure is close and perceived as legitimate -cog in a wheel: obedience increases when someone else does the dirty work -personal characteristics: personal characteristics do not greatly affect the obedience of the subjects, the differences in obedience are weak or non existent

social norms

-shared expectations of how people should think, feel and behave -cement that binds social systems together -often regulate daily behaviour without our conscious awareness

minority influence

-sometimes the minority can influence the majority's behaviour -the minority must be highly committed to its POV, remain independent in the face of majority pressure, and be consistent over time, yet appear to keep an open mind -minority influence is strongest when it maintains a highly consistent position over time -if the minority appears too unreasonable, deviant, or negative, it may cause the majority to shift their attitudes even further away from the minority's position

culture and attribution

-tendency to attribute other people's behaviour to personal factors reflects a Westernized emphasis on individualism -non western cultures make more situational attributions due and western cultures make personal attributions

conformity

-the adjustment of individual behaviours, attitudes, and beliefs to a group standard -without conformity we would have social chaos

psychological sense of community

-the feeling of being part of a larger collective and being engaged with others in pursuing common goals -people with high need for affiliation show a stronger psychological sense of community

ways to prevent groupthink

-the leader should remain impartial during discussions -regularly encourage critical thinking -bring in outsiders to offer their opinions -divide the larger group into subgroups--to see if each subgroup independently reaches the same decision

norm of reciprocity

-the norm that when other people treat us well, we should respond in kind -e.g. if i do something nice for you now, you will feel pressure to reciprocate later

self-disclosure

-the sharing of innermost thoughts and feeling -plays a key role in helping relationships to grow -fosters intimacy and trust, and intimacy and trust foster self-disclosure (reciprocal relationship)

mere exposure effect

-the tendency to evaluate a stimulus more favourable after repeated exposure to it

self-serving bias

-the tendency to make relatively more personal attributions for success and situation attributions for failure -protect our own self esteem

Daryl Bern's self perception theory

-the theory that we make inferences about our own attitudes by observing how we behave -you observe how you have acted, and infer how you must have felt to have behaved in this fashion

neurological component of love

-the ventral segmental area of the brain is triggered when you think about the person you love -this results in the release of dopamine, which is related to pleasure -norepinephrine increases and serotonin decreases (HR and BP increase) -prefrontal cortex shows lower activity levels (we are likely to engage in riskier behaviours)

triangular theory of love

-the view that various types of love result from different combinations of three core factors: intimacy, commitment, and passion -Proposed by Robert Sternberg

consummate love

-ultimate form of love -occurs when intimacy, passion, and commitment are all present

reasons why the fundamental attribution error applies to how we perceive other people's behaviour rather than our own

-we have more information about the present situation when making judgements about ourselves -figure ground relations come into play: when you watch others behave, they are the "figure" that stands out against the background. But when we behave, we are not "watching" ourselves/ We are part o f the background, and the situation that we are in stands out

when do social norms lose invisibility

-whe they ar violated -when we examine behaviour across cultures and historical periods

persuading with fear arousal

-works best when the message evokes moderate fear and provides people with effective, feasible ways to reduce the threat -if the message is too frightening, people may reduce their anxiety by simply denying the message or the communicator's credibility y

what standards are outcomes in a relationship evaluated against?

1. comparison level - the outcome that a person has grown to expect in relationships 2. comparison level for alternatives - focuses on potential alternatives to the relationship (other options), and influences the person's degree of commitment

Four basic reasons that people affiliate (according to Craig Hill)

1. to obtain positive stimulation 2. to receive emotional support 3. to gain attention 4. to permit social comparison

three types of information that determine the attribution we make

According to Harold Kelley: -consistency -distinctiveness -consensus

compassionate love

an affectionate relationship characterized by commitment and caring about the partner's well-being; sometimes contrasted with passionate love, which is more intensely emotional

social facilitation

an increase tendency to perform one's dominant response in the mere presence of others

What is the primary aspect of deindividuation that disinhibits behaviour?

anonymity to outsiders was the key. Conditions that make an individual less identifiable to people outside the group reduce feelings of accountability and. slightly but consistently, increase the risk of antisocial actions

why does social loafing occur?

collective effort model: on a collective task, people will put forth effort only to the extent that they expect their effort to contribute to obtaining a valued goal

normative social influence

conformity motivated by gaining social acceptance and avoiding social rejection

informational social influence

following the opinions or behaviour of other people because we believe they have accurate knowledge and what they are doing is "right"

"social psychology's most indispensable concept"

quote from Gordon Allport about attitude

what creates our mental sets?

schemas: -mental frameworks that help us organize and interpret information

difference and similar between cognitive dissonance theory and self perception theory

similar: both predict that counterattitudinal behaviour will produce attitude change -difference: dissonance theory assumes that we experience hightened physiological arousal (tension produced by dissonance) when we engage in counteradditudinal behaviour

when consistency, distinctiveness and consensus are all high what type of attribution are we likely to make?

situational

compliance technique

technique to get a person to say yes when they really want to say no -foot in door technique -lowballing -door in the face technique -norm of reciprocity

social comparison

the act of comparing one's personal attributes, abilities, and opinions to those of other people

social loafing

the tendency for people to expend less individual effort when working in a group that when working alone

group polarization

the tendency for the "average" opinion of group members to become more extreme when like-midid people discuss an issue

groupthink

the tendency of group members to suspend critical thinking because they are motivated to seek agreement

theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger)

the theory that people strive to maintain consistency in their beliefs and actions, and that inconsistency creates dissonance--unpleasant arousal that motivates people to restore balance by changing their cognitions cognitive dissonance -- uncomfortable state of tension

cognitive-arousal model of love

the view that passionate love has interacting cognitive and physiological components