Final study guide
ABC of Social Psychology
Affect, Behavior, Cognition
Theory of Planned Behavior
Attitude -> intention -> behavior
Conditions under which attitudes are likely to predict behavior
Behavior is predicted by attitudes toward the specific behavior in question
Dunn, Wilson, & Gilbert (2003)
Experiment: happiness is dependent on assigned dormitory
Teper, Inzlicht, & Page-Gauld (2003)
Experiment: how likely are you to cheat on a test
DeWall, et al., 2010
In this experiment, experimental group took aspirin daily for three weeks whereas control group took placebo. After three weeks, members of both groups played cyberball. Taking aspirin reduced the subjective experience of painful social rejection and the activation of pain neural networks.
Implicit and explicit attitudes
Over time, explicit attitudes become implicit because it becomes a habit
Vazire (2010)
Participants rated themselves and their friends on personality traits for which they took various objective tests. Self-ratings were more accurate for internal/non-evaluative traits (levels of optimism), ratings were equally accurate for observable/non-evaluative traits (e.g. messiness), and friend ratings were more accurate for internal/evaluative traits (e.g. intelligence)
Nishimura, et al. 2012
Participants were hooked up to physiological equipment and said they were going to measure their heartbeat. Researchers then played back a pre-recorded heartbeat rather than the participants' actual heartbeat and asked the participants to rate the attractiveness of women. If the pre-recorded heartbeat were faster, participants would find the subject significantly more attractive. If the pre-recorded heartbeat were slower, participants would find the subject less attractive/neutral. Assuming your heart as beating faster makes you think other people are more attractive.
The Florida effect replication (Cesario,Plaks & Higgins, 2006)
Participants with implicit positive attitudes toward the elderly walked more slowly after "elderly" priming, whereas participants with negative attitudes walked more quickly after "youth" priming.
Need for self-esteem
People tend to take more credit for success than blame they do for failure
Brain and self
Prefrontal cortex structures are active when thinking about oneself
Kassin, Godstein, & Savitsky, 2003
Researchers asked some participants to perform a mock crime by stealing $100 from a lab. The interrogators were made to believe that some of the participants were guilty whereas others were innocent. Those who were assumed to be guilty were asked more coercive, incriminating questions, making observers believe that they were guilty.
Culture and self concept
Some cultures are more collectivistic and others are more individualistic
Attitude
a positive, negative, or mixed reaction to a person, object or idea that influences our behavior towards someone or something
Culture
a system of enduring meanings, beliefs, values, assumptions, institutions, and practices shared by a large group of people
Mark test
an animal is anesthetized and is given a mark on their face. When the animal recovers from the anesthetic, they are given access to a mirror. If the animal touches or investigates the mark on its own face, it is implied that the animal perceives the reflected image as itself and not another animal.
Self Awareness in humans and animals
awareness of the self as an entity that is distinct from others and the environment
Self-handicapping
behaviors designed to sabotage one's own performance in order to provide a subsequent excuse for failure
Self Affirmation
bolstering the self in one important domain buffers the impact of threats in another (gets people out of tunnel vision)
Situational attributions
cause of behavior is something about situation (e.g. he has a spouse whose medical bills bankrupted them)
Personal attribution
cause of behavior is something about the person's disposition, personality, attitude
Personal attributions
cause of behavior is something about the person-disposition, personality, attitudes (e.g. he is lazy)
Situational attribution
cause of behavior is something about the situation
Cognitive Heuristics
cognitive shortcuts that allow us to think quickly, but often lead to error
Cyberball
computer simulation where person playing is made to feel isolated and ostracized
Dimensional theory
conceptualize human emotions by defining where they lie in two dimensions (arousal and valence)
Self-serving bias
credit self for successes but blames environment for failure
Culture and Attribution
culture shapes in subtle but profound ways the kinds of attributions we make about people, their behavior, and social situations.
Downward Social Comparison
defensive tendency to compare ourselves with others who are worse off than we are
Social Roles
describe roles that carry expected behaviors (e.g. I am a girl.)
Personality descriptors
describes specific traits (e.g. I am kind)
The Cross-group friendship study (Page-Gould, Mendoza-Denton, & Tropp, 2008)
experiment at UC Berkeley to study cross-group friendships (white and Hispanic/black students). Hypothesis: implicit prejudice leads to increase in cortisol response. But as closeness develops, the stress response will decrease. Procedure: Three hour-long sessions of fast friend procedure (50% would be meeting same group friends, 50% would be meeting cross-race friends). Cortisol was measured after. The participants would also have to write journal responses for 10 days. Cross-group friendships reduce intergroup anxiety and increases intergroup approach. It is most beneficial for people who are most likely to avoid it.
Rule & Ambady, 2007
experiment where participants were exposed to images of homosexual and heterosexual men and were asked to judge whether a person is gay or straight
Terror management theory (Greenberg, Soloman, Pyszczynski)
humans cope with the fear of their own deaths by constructing worldviews that help to preserve their self-esteem. These worldviews provide meaning and purpose and a buffer to our anxiety.
Covariation Theory
if a response is present when X is present, and absent when X is absent, X is presumed to be the cause of the response
CEO fortune 500 experiment
in an experiment with all male CEOs, black men with baby faces were predicted to be more successful whereas white men with baby faces were predicted to be less successful
Cognitive dissonance
inconsistent cognitions arouse psychological tensions that people become motivated to reduce
Basking in Reflected glory
increase self-esteem by associating with others who are successful
Self
individual consciousness of one's identity; frame of reference that powerfully influences our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
Thin Slicing
making very quick decisions with small amounts of information
Pizarro's TED talk -- the Strange Politics of Disgust
o Basic emotions influence attitudes o Our subconscious can be manipulated through association o Priming people with disgust causes people to make harsher moral decisions
Misattribution of Arousal
o Physiological response for different response is very similar; we try to find an explanation for our biological responses o Our arousal coming from scary things/other situations might be confused for our arousal for falling in love
Affective forecasting
overestimates emotional impact
Confirmatory Hypothesis Testing
people are often blinded by their existing beliefs and ask loaded questions to confirm their hypothesis
Implicit Egotism
people are quicker to associate "self" words with positive traits than with negative traits
Cooperation Study (Wolosin, Sherman, & Till, 1973)
people credit themselves if successful but blame their partners or task features if they fail
Correspondence Inference Theory
people learn about others from behavior that is freely chosen, unexpected/deviating from a norm, and results in a small number of desirable outcomes
Facial Features
people make predictions based on facial features
Belief in a just world
people need to view the world as a just place in which we "get what we deserve" and "deserve what we get"; orientation that leads people to disparage victims
False-consensus effect
people overestimate the extent to which others share their opinions, attributes, and behaviors
Base-rate fallacy
people rely more on graphic, dramatic events instead of relying on statistics and actual probabilities
The better-than-average effect
people think highly of themselves
Actual self
person's basic self-concept and who they think they are
Priming
process by which a recent experience increases the accessibility of certain thoughts, emotion, and action tendency
Priming
process by which a recent experience increases the accessibility of certain thoughts, emotions, and action tendencies; can bias your thoughts, behavior, and emotions
Attribution
process of inferring the causes of events or behaviors
Self esteem
reflects a person's overall subjective emotional evaluation of his or her own self worth
Six basic emotions
sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise, happiness
Factors that increase attitude strength
self-interest/interest of close others, relation to deeply-held values, knowledge, attack against attitude
Right prefrontal lobe
self-recognition
Medial prefrontal lobe
self-referential info processing (anything that reminds you of yourself)
Dual process theory of social perception and cognition
social perception happens through automatic (uncontrolled) and controlled processes
Multicultural research
social psychologists examine racial and ethnic groups within cultures
Cross-cultural research
social psychologists examine the similarities and differences across a variety of cultures
Social cognition
study of how we perceive, remember, and interpret information about ourselves and others
Self-Concept
sum total of beliefs that people have of themselves
Fundamental attribution error
tendency to attribute other people's behavior to internal rather than external forces
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
tendency to behave in a way that elicits the expected behavior of others
Availability heuristic
tendency to estimate the likelihood that an event will occur based on how easily it comes to mind
Perseverance of Beliefs
tendency to retain to one's initial beliefs even after they have been discredited
The Confirmation Bias
tendency to search info that confirms our hypothesis
Social Psychology
the scientific study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in a social context
Sociometer Theory (Leary and Baumeister)
theory that self-esteem is a gauge that monitors our social interactions and sends us signals as to whether our behavior is acceptable to others. In this case, self-esteem serves as an indicator of how we are doing in the eyes of others. The threat of social rejection is lowered and the need to regain approval and acceptance decreases.
Moral forecasting
underestimates emotional impact
Gordon Allport's definition
use scientific methods to understand and explain how the thought, feeling, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others
Individualism
values independence, autonomy, self-reliance
Collectivism
values interdependence, cooperation, social harmony
Associated Networks
various concepts are semantically connected and stored in our memory together. When a concept gets activated, other concepts close in the network get co-activated.
Categorical theory
we have six separate categories
Self-esteem threat related tunnel vision
we narrow our focus to one facet of the self, can only focus on the threat and nothing else
The cognitive miser
we only attend to important stimuli because we have limited capacity to process incoming information
Bi-cultural priming study (Chiao et al. (2009)
when primed with the individualistic cultural mindset, Asian Americans showed stronger activation in the medial prefrontal cortex when making general judgments. When primed with collectivistic cultural mindsets, Asian Americans showed stronger activation in the MPFC when making contextual judgments.
The original Florida effect study (Bargh et al, 1996)
when primed with words related to the "elderly" stereotype, participants walk more slowly out of the experiment
Ought self
who others think you should be
Ideal self
who you think you should be
Culture and self-esteem
• Asian Americans and European Americans are quicker to associate themselves with positive words (e.g. happy) than with negative words (e.g. vomit) • East Asians, like Westerners, are quick to associate themselves with positive traits • Individualists present themselves as unique and self-confident, whereas collectivists present themselves as modest, equal members of a group.
The Link between Attitudes and Behavior
• Attitudes are likely to predict behavior if attitudes are similar to actual behavior • Behavior is predicted by attitudes towards specific behavior in question
What goes into an attitude?
• Behavior intention ("I intend to ____") • Behavior ("I did _____") • Cognition ("I think _____") • Affective responses ("It makes me ___ that ____")
Social pain = physical pain
• Both affect dACC and anterior insula activity • Consequences: lower body temperature, increased cortisol, more affiliative behavior, more aggression
Self Discrepancy Theory (Higgins et al.)
• If ideal and actual selves overlap a lot, it leads to satisfaction. • If ideal and actual selves don't overlap a lot, it leads to feelings of disappointment, frustration, sadness, and could lead to depression. • If actual and ought selves overlap a lot, it leads to feelings of security. • If actual and ought selves don't overlap a lot, it leads to feelings of guilt, shame, and could lead to anxiety-disorder
Are positive illusions adaptive?
• In the past, psychologists believed that an accurate perception of reality is vital to mental health. However, with the mechanisms of self-enhancement, more and more people see themselves better than average. People with high self-esteem appear to be better adjusted in personality tests and interviews. • The illusion of control, unrealistic optimism and other self-enhancement biases enable people to see themselves as better than average. People display more confidence in their interactions and are more successful in social relations as a result. • However, positive illusions can give rise to chronic patterns of self-defeating behavior (e.g. people escape from self-awareness through alcohol and drugs) • There is no simple answer but people who harbor positive illusions of themselves are likely to enjoy the benefits and achievements of high self-esteem and social influence
Priming study (Bargh & Pietromonaco, 1982)
• Method: participants were given an initial perceptual vigilance task and were asked to identify the location of stimuli (words) presented in the subject's parafoveal visual field. • Even when participants are not aware of the content of the primes, priming increased the likelihood that the primed categories was used to interpret subsequently presented ambiguous category-related information
Levels of Self
• Minimal self: conscious experience of the self as distinct from the environment • Objectified self: cognitive capacity to serve as the object of one's own (or others') attention • Symbolic self (narrative self): ability to form an abstract mental representation of oneself through language
Culture Self Study (Chiao et al. 2009)
• Participants filled out a self-report measure on individualistic vs. collectivistic values. Researchers then used fMRI to observe brain structures active during self-judgment. • Participants who endorse individualistic cultural values show greater medial prefrontal cortex response to general relative contextual self-descriptions
Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996)
• Priming of social behavior without awareness • Procedure: researchers gave participants a word search that contained either neutral words or words associated with achievement motivation. Participants are then asked to form as many words as possible using a set of Scrabble letter tiles in a 3-minute time limit. • Observations: 57% of those primed with achievement-related words (experimental group) continued to write after the time was up, compared to 22% in the control group.
Self-affirmation study (Critcher & Dunning, 2015)
• Procedure: researchers asked participants to fill in a general self-esteem scale 24 hours before the experiment. The experimental group had values-based affirmation and was asked to rank and write about a particular value. The control group did nothing. Both groups took a difficult test on creative thinking skills that would predict success in future careers, inducing threat. The researchers then measured their self-worth and perceived test abilities. • Results: self-affirmation provides perspective by broadening their sense of self and not allowing the threat to dominate their sense of self
Is the self specially represented in the brain?
• The self is a frame of reference that powerfully influences our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors • Our sense of identity is biologically rooted • Synaptic connections in the brain used for memory makes sense of continuity needed for a normal identity possible • Certain areas of the brain are more active when lab participants see a picture of themselves rather than a picture of another person
The Self-Other Knowledge Asymmetry (SOKA) Model
• We know ourselves better than others do when it comes to traits that are "internal" and hard to observe (e.g. neuroticism) • No self-other difference when it comes to traits that are "external" and easy to observe (e.g. extraversion) • Others may actually know us better than we know ourselves when it comes to observable traits (e.g. intelligence)