POSC 421 MIDTERM

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short term memory (STM)

(sometimes referred to as "working memory."): Retains information 5 - 10 seconds (and longer, if it is constantly "rehearsed"); it can contain 7 +/- 3 "bits" of information.

homo psychologicus (1/2 models of decision making)

- "boundedly rational" actor - actors do not possess perfect information - there are limits to human beings' processing abilities - derives from social and cognitive psychology, and from neuroscience - actor "satisfices" instead of maximizing utility - he/she employs various cognitive shortcuts in order to manage "information overload" or a shortage of information - actors fail to update their beliefs, even when new information becomes available - group and broader social pressures may lead the actor to behave in non-rational ways, even contrary to his/her values/beliefs.

homo economicus (1/2 models of decision making)

- humans are fully rational actors - they possess perfect information - derived from macroeconomics - actors maximize "subject utility" - actors weigh costs and benefits of various actions - he/she then selects the option that delivers the greatest benefits relative to the costs - actors update their beliefs when new information becomes available

1. Reductionism -- Reducing a major figure's actions to a handful of early determinants 2. Overcomplexity -- Listing a full range of adult behaviors and linking each only to its most obvious antecedents

2 dangers of psychobiography?

value

A ______ is an enduring belief that a specific model of conduct or an end-state or a particular existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse model of conduct or end-state of existence. They are are "the criteria people use to select and justify actions and to evaluate people (including the self) and events."

active-positive; active-negative

According to Barber, the best presidential personality is _____-_____, and the worst to have is ____-___

- When the environment admits of restructuring; - If the leader is high up in a hierarchy; - If the political actor is very good at his or her job.

According to Fred Greenstein, when Can the Individual Actions of Political Leaders Affect Events?

"agentic state"

As individuals obeyed, they shifted into what Milligram calls the ____ ____; a psychological condition in which the individuals no longer see themselves as responsible for their own actions.

- it makes a difference if at least one other person stands up to the group -Students were shown a card with a line on it, then another card with three lines. Of the three, one was the same as on the first card; the other two were obviously difference. Subjects were asked to say out loud which line matched - it was expected there would be close to 100% accuracy. - placed a subject with 7 "other (fake)" group members to tell which line was the same length as the other three on the other card - rigged the experiment so that the 7 individuals would give the same wrong answer, leaving the real subject with a difficult dilemma. - But here's where the experiment on social conformity comes in. Confederates had instructions on how to respond for each test. All confederates would say the same thing - sometimes correctly identifying the line, sometimes not. Since the real subject was last, he would hear all the other answers first - Even when confederates identified the incorrect line, most responses were correct (about 63%). But the nearly 37% incorrect is huge, since it was obvious. Still most people had a mix of correct and incorrect, only 5% always conformed to the crowd, while 25% consistently defied the crowd. But most people could go one way or the other, suggesting the potential to conform to the crowd, even when the error is obvious. - Asch shows that in fact, conformity is an outcome in groups, and it happens much more than it should.

Asch's (psychologist Milligram followed)

schemas

Attributes in memory are linked into ______; structures that allow us to make inferences without necessarily having all possible information. What we put in LTM is not an exact reproduction of the physical stimulus. When you remember something, you usually structure it. They are structured memories, acquired through experience, that contain a category label, individual attributes, and exemplars. When it is activated, it functions as a scaffold for the orderly encoding of incoming information.

1. Character -- the way the President orients himself toward life, not for the moment, but enduringly. Character has its main development in childhood. 2. World View -- the individual's primary, politically-relevant beliefs, particularly his conception of social causality, human nature, and the central moral conflicts of the time. Develops during adolescence. 3. Style -- refers to habitual ways of performing his three primary political roles of rhetoric, personal relations, and homework. Style is how the President goes about doing what the office requires him to do. Develops in young adulthood.

Barber believes that crucial differences in presidential performance can be anticipated by an understanding of a potential President's personality, defined in 3 terms: what are they?

1. active versus passive - refers to the amount of energy a president puts into the job. Active = individuals who have vast amounts of energy and throw themselves enthusiastically into the job. passive = far less involved and do not hard so hard and prefer to steer an even course in policy. 2. positive versus negative - refers to the degree of satisfaction that the president gets out of doing his job (his level of contention in other words). Positive = they enjoy holding the position and derive immense satisfaction from it. Negative = feel bound by duty or responsibility to hold power, even though they hate exercising power or dislike the demands that go with it.

Barber's two dimensions within the notion of presidential character

1. George Washington's dignity, judiciousness, his aloof air of reserve and dedication to duty, fit the passive-negative or withdrawing type best. Washington did not seek innovation, he sought stability. 2. John Adams followed, a dour New England Puritan, much given to work and worry, an impatient and irascible man an active-negative President, a compulsive type. Adams was far more partisan than Washington, seeing many political enemies around him. 3. Then came Thomas Jefferson, clearly an active-positive personality. A child of the enlightenment, he applied his reason to organizing connections with Congress aimed at strengthening the more popular forces. A man of catholic interests and delightful humor, Jefferson combined a clear and open vision of what the country could be with a profound political sense. 4. The fourth President was James Madison, the constitutional philosopher thrown into the White House at a time of great international turmoil. Madison comes closest to the passive-positive, or compliant type; he suffered from irresolution, tried to compromise his way out, and gave in too readily to the war-hawks urging combat with Britain.

Conveniently, our first four presidents run through the different character types. What are they?

- Barber underestimates the differences of presidents and undermines the complexities of their personalities. - Barber's theory is also entirely too subjective and unscientific, much like most psychobiographies. - Another criticism would be that events and circumstances dictate the success of a presidency, rather than oversimplified personality traits

Criticisms of Barber's theory of the two dimensions

Extroverted;Conscientious

Discussion is less likely to result in group attitude changes in groups with members who are (on average) more ______ and ______

1. economics (equality/compassion v. market outcomes/self interest) 2. social (modern v traditional values, or social freedom v order).

Feldman thinks ideological thinking may have two separate domains...what are they?

Events in childhood exert a powerful impact on later development and that human beings are motivated by only two things: aggression and the sexual impulse...together, this is known as the PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

Freud's claim on psychobiography

1) identity specific outcomes and actions that the leader has affect on; usually unprecedented outcomes. 2) Formulate an explanation for these actions 3) identify the origins of these actions (particularly, the leaders' past experiences)

HOW CAN WE MEASURE PERSONALITY WITHOUT DIRECT ACCESS (3 ways)

• 1930 - psychologist who wrote a book about "psychopathology and politics" • He studied the men in politics who ended up in mental institutions • He wanted to know what makes people act a certain way in politics • He suggested that the idea political people are a product of private motives and putting them on external events that drive them o p}d}r=P p = person d = disposition r = external events (situation) P = politics

Harold Laswell

All are basically made up of a list of adjectives or phrases that ask the respondent to rate how well each adjective or phrase describes the respondent (sometimes others, but usually the person being measured is the respondent). Researchers then use these ratings to calculate scores for each of the Big Five traits

How is the big 5 measured?

several members of a group can be assigned each element of the problem for further research o Ex: AP, IR and CP concentrations of poli-sci o Leads to a single conformity...groups are the core part of politics. Think about political parties. Each party is battled by different wings

If the situation is complex in groupthinking...

newgroup syndrome

In a new group, members may be anxious and tentative, and may be inclined to take direction from a leader or an assertive member; leaders are critical to the formation of norms for new groups; when norms aren't formed there can be excessive conflict followed by conformity; UNLIKE GROUPTHINK YOU DON'T NEED STRESS OR PRESSURE FOR CONFORMITY. -Limited norms and procedure exist at the beginning - Leads to uncertainty among members - They are anxious, tentative, dependent, - And this more inclined to take direction from a leader - These lead to compliance and internalization by the group member, which leads toward conformity The idea is that groups have stages and different dynamics happen at each stage. - but this early stage - the new group - can be particularly important in leading the group to conformity and a lack of critical thinking.

NOT REALLY 1. He relied on qualitative cases - we may tend - as motivated reasoners, maybe - to emphasize that which fits our expectations and discard that which doesn't. Some argue Janis did this with his cases. 2. While Janis admits process isn't everything, there are no examples of failures to end up in groupthink - its presence always equals flawed decisions 3. His cases are all or nothing, things fit awfully well into either groupthink or vigilant decision making 4. Conceptual problems differentiating causes from consequences.

Is Janis right about groupthink?

"political personallity" results from the displacement of private problems onto public life. A person denied love at home may seek the love of the American people.

Lasswell's view on psychobiography

- how far will people go following the commands of an authority figure? - showed obedience to authority even in the absence of ethnic hatred, dehumanization, and economic distress - 65 percent (26 of 40) of experiment participants administered the experiment's final massive 450-volt shock - he believed that if you place people in a powerful situation, they go against their dispositions/beliefs - as proximity increased, obedience decreased - disobedience rose from 35% to 50% when the actor was heard - that is why some argues this experimenter was a situational analysis, not dispositional

Miligram's experiment

- The theory itself is not falsifiable in practice, which means whoever is presenting the argument cannot be proven wrong - There is also confirmation bias, individuals seek information that confirms their hypothesis. This is extremely unscientific as well. - There is also the problem of reductionism; "can we reduce our explanations to purely psychological variables?" - Another criticism of these methods is concerned with access. Do we really have access to the psychology of a president? Public image is a huge factor in reducing any psychological issues a president may have.

Problems with psychobiogrphy itself

cost-benefit decisions where you evaluate benefits and costs of decisions and its alternatives. The piece missing is the actual decision so how you decide is based on the greatest benefit with the smallest cost o Highest marginal utility o Just like the cost-benefit analysis

Rational decisions are...

openness to experience

Researchers find that individuals high on _________ ___ _________ are more interested in and knowledgeable about politics and are more likely to try to persuade others to vote for a particular candidate.

1. Affect (Attitude) 2. Cognition (belief) 3. Conation (Behavioral intentions)

Social scientists think of attitudes as having three components. What are they?

1. Automatic processing: Occurs without conscious thought. "System 1" 2. Controlled processing: Very concentrated thinking -- like writing a term paper. "System 2"

Some people refer to that part of attention and LTM that you are using at the same time as "active memory." There are two ways this works. What are they?

TRUE

T/F Leading to compliance and internalization by individual group member can relate to conformity in the group as a whole

TRUE

T/F The presence of a group is dominate over a single individual...in certain environments, some individuals become invisible

FALSE THEY DO

T/F groups never have even-valued positions

FALSE - CONSCIENTIOUSNESS

T/F: Agreeableness - supporting conservative candidates and parties

TRUE

T/F: Agreeableness is associated with both economic liberalism AND social conservatism

TRUE

T/F: Blacks are more likely than whites to view welfare policies as a means of remedying systematic social injustice. So, although Conscientiousness may be associated with conservative economic attitudes among white respondents, it may not be the case among black respondents

FALSE - CONSCIENTIOUSNESS

T/F: Emotional Stability associated with higher participation among individuals who believe that their participation is likely to be effective

TRUE

T/F: Feldman believes ideology is not uni-dimensional, rather two dimensional

TRUE

T/F: It is not always clear what the direction of causality is between belief and the affective (evaluative) component of an attitude is. For example: you can support OR oppose public school busing.

TRUE

T/F: Openness to Experience- supporting liberal candidates and parties

FALSE - Conscientiousness and Extroversion

T/F: People who score high on Emotional Stability are generally not associated with the decision to adopt a partisan affiliation

TRUE

T/F: People who score high on Openness to Experience are declining to identify with a major party because these individuals may be open to look at alternative perspectives

TRUE

T/F: Respondents tend to be more supportive of politicians who they perceive to have the same personality traits as they do

TRUE

T/F: Schemas make inference possible, because we have learned, through experience, that certain things go together. For example, various traits go together (e.g., "friendly" and "conscientious"). These pairings are sometimes called implicit personality theories. So if we know someone is helpful, we might guess that he or she is also kind, and generous.

TRUE

T/F: The big 5 studies relationships between the traits and an individual's decision to affiliate with a party. People who score high on Extroversion and Agreeableness are significantly more likely to identify with a major political party because people high on these traits are more likely to be attracted to the idea of affiliating with a social group.

TRUE

T/F: The circumstances that favor Data Driven processing (and not schematic processing) are: 1. Those in which a group of attributes simply do not cue any particular schema; OR!!! 2. Those in which the attributes blatantly contradict the most available schema.

TRUE

T/F: The main relationship research has showed about the big 5 is an association between Openness to Experience and liberalism and between Conscientiousness and conservatism

TRUE

T/F: The most consistent relationships between the big 5 and political participation were Extroversion and Openness to Experience a. Extroversion- higher rates of participation, since it leads people to want to engage in social activities b. Openness to Experience- higher rates of participation as well, since it leads people towards opportunities to hear new ideas and experience new things

FALSE - THOSE WHO SCORE HIGH

T/F: Those who score low on Emotional Stability are less likely to feel anxious about their economic futures; therefore, they respond less favorably to liberal redistributive policies intended to strengthen broad economic security

TRUE

T/F: Traits of authoritarianism, need for closure, and need for cognition predict social ideological preferences but not economic.

FALSE - situationism

T/F: the group-level form of dispositionism suggests that groups are more than the sum total of the individuals who compose them; once policy-makers form a group, the resultant body can in a sense "overwhelm" its members and take on a life of its own.

TRUE

T/F: the theory is that people high on Agreeableness are more likely to resist policies that challenge dominant social norms because they may threaten harmonious relationships

TRUE

T/F: those who score high on agreeableness would be more likely to respond sympathetically to individuals in economic need

Cognitive Consistency/dissonance theory

The _____ ____ theory suggests that people experience a state of psychological discomfort, as long as the mismatch between behavior and beliefs is perceived when they act in ways contrary to their on beliefs. We can change beliefs by changing behavior. That is, if a behavior is not consistent with an attitude, one option may be to bring the attitude into agreement with the behavior.

when does the person matter, NOT the situation o Groups can be efficient way to come to a decision o Legitimizes the situation...group makes a decision, NOT one single leader (more consensus) o Spread blame if something goes wrong... "I relied on this group" "political cover" o On the positive side, there are multiple points of view

The idea of groupthink is...

Associative Memory

The most widely accepted structure theory is the ______ ______ theory -- posits that memory is maintained in a pattern that allows spreading activation. When one thought is triggered the neurons from that node spread an impulse to all nodes attached to it; those nodes then spread to nodes attached to them, and so on. The energy causing the activation lessens over the network as is dissipates.

Schema theory

Theory that assumes human beings possess limited cognitive capacities and is in many ways compatible with the former. Rather than assuming that individuals search for cause and effect patterns or resemble naive scientists, the theory treats human beings as categorizers or lablers. Structure that represents stored knowledge about a concept and its attributes; after we categorize information we link it to our existing knowledge on a category.

Incentive/Classical Conditioning Theory

Theory that attitudes are paired with prior reinforcement. A person adopts the attitude that maximizes his or her personal gain. The reinforcement pairing can be implicit or explicit; it can be almost unconscious. Attitudes do not have built in continuity -- if the reinforcement changes, so should the attitude.

Learning theory

Theory that people learn attitudes the same way that they learn everything else; by simple association, imitation, and reinforcements. This process starts in childhood and continues throughout life; but attitudes remain generally consistent

attribution theory

Theory that people search for the cause in the behavior of others; the cause we attribute to something impacts our attitudes, but we make a lot of errors and use a lot of heuristics. Views humans as social information processors, drawing inferences about their and others' attitudes based on plausible, observable behavior. In a nutshell, self perception assumes people make the same sort of inferences about themselves as they do about others. People infer their attitudes like an observer would:

balance theory

Theory that people strive for balance in their attitudes and the information they're receiving. We are motivated to get impressions back in balance. One way to do that would change attitude to positive on the person or the policy. It's about consistency between attitudes, while the dissonance theory is between attitudes and behaviors.

fundamental attribution theory/error

Theory/Error that people are more likely to attribute others' negative behavior to internal dispositions rather than the situation Own Actions --> When good things happen, it is because of us, bad things because of the situation. Others' Actions --> when we are asked about others, we do the opposite - good things happen because of the situation (lucky!) and bad things happen because of who they are or what they did

1. Controlled -- very intense, concentrated. 2. Automatic -- May be complex, but uses little in the way of active resources; occurs through practice.

There are two types of processing in "active" (STM) memory. What are they?

lexical

There has been a tremendous amount of work in psychology trying to document the major types of personality traits. The best of this work has taken a _____ approach to discovering basic personality traits, derived from analyses of the natural-language terms people use to describe themselves and others.

openness to experience & extroversion; conscientiousness & emotional stability

Those high on ______ ____ ______ & ______ have larger social networks whereas _____ & _____ _____ are associated with smaller networks.

1. Conservative (right on social issues AND economy - lower right quadrant) 2. liberal (left on social issues AND economy - upper left quadrant) 3. libertarian (left on social issues but right on economy- upper right quadrant) 4. populist (left on economy but right on social issues - lower left quadrant)

What are Feldman's four ideologies?

1. Cogitions (trans-situational, private) 2. traits (trans-situational, public) 3. motives (situation-dependent, private) 4. social context (situation-dependent, public) SEE CHART ON PAGE 428!!!!!!

What are Winter's four elements to understand the personality of a leader?

1. Extraversion= having an energetic approach toward the social and material world; being excited to meet people 2. Agreeableness= is willing to compromise and be positive towards others who bring hostility to the table 3. Conscientiousness= having the impulse control to work towards goals 4. Emotional stability(neuroticism)= have a tendency toward being calm and even-tempered, even under stress 5. Openness to experience= the breadth, depth, originality, and complexity of an individuals' mental and experiential life

What are the big 5 personality traits?

1. ambition, 2. character integrity (ideals and values), 3. relationships with others (relatedness), and their relationship to political leadership and decision making

What are the three core presidential elements? (Obama reading)

1. Direction is what you are paying attention to. You cannot look at everything at once. a. Bottleneck at SS; and b. Bottleneck at transference from SS to STM. 2. Intensity: the extent of concentration, the amount of effort you are expending.

What are the two components of attention?

The most important trade-off that researchers face is between reliability and brevity. Some tests are longer with more of a spectrum on each topic, and obtain a more complete and reliable picture of the respondent's personality while others are shorter and direct in their questions (which means they could be included on other larger political surveys) but may not give a complete picture of their personality

What are the two problems when measuring the big 5?

A "perfect failure" due to a deeply flawed decision process - Bay of Pigs. The Kennedy team had: 1. The illusion of invulnerability - they felt they had the magic touch; Kennedy was unaccustomed to losing, as were team members 2. No one raised significant doubts publicly - illusion of unanimity 3. Suppression of personal doubts (some claimed later to have had them) 4. Robert Kennedy and Dean Rusk actively discouraged doubts (mindguards) 5. JFK encouraged complacency, failed to encourage advisers to ask tough question of the dominant CIA position. 6. Difficult to challenge the wisdom of those who seem to know what they are doing.

What happens in groupthink, according to Janis?

Attitudes refer to evaluation of specific objects, while values are much more general standards used as a basis for numerous specific evaluations across situations. Values are assumed to be relatively few in number, far fewer than the number of political attitudes and they are assumed to be relatively stable.

What is the difference between values and attitudes?

eugenics - our hereditary determines who we are ("hyper-disposition) and suggests human behavior is 100% determined by biology

What is the opposite of situationalism?

- Ambiguous situations - New situations - Complex situations - Contradictory situations - Whenever political actors lack ideologies, habits, and role requirements that guide their behavior.

When Does Personal Variability Affect Behavior?

Extraversion; Agreeableness

When people rate politician's personalities, rather than yielding five factors, their assessments tend to reduce to two factors: ______ and ______

(Vertzberger) - narrow scope, information processing complexity, creates parochialism and generate conformity.

Why can groupthink be bad sometimes?

- provide cognitive shortcuts - socialization - social pressure matters

Why do people obey authority?

sensory store (SS)

Your eyes, your ears, your hands, your nose. Somewhat of an independent system. It can retain stimuli very briefly (1-2 seconds).

- how would prison roles impact behavior? - the situation matters over the individual - The bad barrel approach - the apple can be good, but put it into a group with bad apples, and it will go rotten very quickly - the badness spreads. - even good people in a bad situation can be evil. It's not dispositionalist, it is situationist. In other words people are not either good or evil, not born good or evil, but it depends on the situation. - Zimbardo wanted to study the effects of prison life on both guards and inmates. To do so, he designed a study that would put people into a "prison" situation. Young men - mostly Stanford students. A "jail" in the basement of the psychology building. - First two days it seemed unreal to the participants. They knew they were in a study, so were probably self-conscious. But things quickly unraveled after that. - Some guards quickly became sadistic - "John Wayne" good at devising humiliating situations - sexual and otherwise. - Some prisoners became passive, some rebelled, one even had a nervous breakdown. - Situationalist perspective on behavior - structured by the environment in which people find themselves, not by their own traits and differences. It's the bad barrel idea - someone (authority) creates a bad barrel, and then the apples that go into that barrel - people - become bad themselves.

Zimbardo study

political ideology

_____ _____ is a compilation/summary of beliefs about politics and political issues. Ways of structuring understanding of politics and issues; the organization of political attitudes and beliefs.

social psychology

_____ _____ is usually most interested in people's behavior

cognitive psychology

_____ _____is concerned with how people think.

scripts

_____ can be defined as a coherent sequence of events expected by an individual, either as a participant or as an observer. Well-learned behavior often becomes scripted. ex: driving

social cognition

______ ______ looks for cognitive explanations for people's overt behavior.

Psychobiography

______ is an approach that "assumes that individuals are important in the sense that their psychological characteristics are held to have a meaningful impact on real-world events and outcomes. Dynamics of personality, influences on decision making, focus on a specific leader and point in time

Salience

_______ is a property of the interaction between context and stimuli.

groupthink

a process through which a group reaches a hasty or premature consensus and the group then becomes closed to outside ideas. in-group process striving for unanimity and therefore fails to realistically appraise alternatives. Prizes concurrence-thinking.

situation

an approach in which the environment that surrounds the individual is considered more important in shaping an actor's behavior

ego

follows the reality principle, demands of the id are constrained by reality. The part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity.

id

inherent instincts; response to bodily functions

long term memory (LTM)

memory that is permanent, essentially unlimited in capacity.

reality principle

principle that demands of the id are constrained by reality

- Zimbardo in the middle of it, rather than simply observing. - No clear experimental design, no control - cannot rule out various possibilities. Perhaps the participants were simply modeling expectations. Especially given a recent move - Cool Hand Luke - There is also a significant ethical/moral issue for the researcher - similar to Milgram, although in this case at least there was consent and debriefing. Still, should have been stopped. - The question is, even if some people were negatively impacted, was the knowledge gained worth that? And at least one person who participated had his life positively impacted - he made his life work dealing with prisoners - Doug, who had the nervous breakdown became a clinical psychologist working in prisons.

problems with the Zimbardo study

picking alternative that is good enough. May not be the best one, but the alternative is the best one o Not everything worth doing is worth doing well o In gov politics, in group decision making, we can rarely get to maximizing utility because there's too much involvement

satisficing

political psychology

study of interaction between politics and psychology; use of psych theories to understand political attitudes and behavior

superego

the part of a person's mind that acts as a self-critical conscience, reflecting social standards learned from parents and teachers.

disposition

the values/beliefs that make a person who he/she is the most important in shaping an actor's behavior - whether genetic, learned, or some combo - have at least some influence on behavior in an immediate sense.

1. Psychobiography - dynamics of personality, influences on decision making, focus on a specific leader and point in time 2. Theory based rating scales - measure the leader by people who know him/her well or by expert raters, coding based on specific scales - Normal vs pathological 3. Content Analysis - use the leader's own words - Leaders leave lots of words. - But are they his/her own words?

traditions of research for assessing personality (3)

conditioning

we learn something because it is immediately followed by a pleasant effect known as "reinforcement" -Skinner thinks there is no free will because there is a response to every stimulus. We are ALWAYS conditioned. We are buffeted by what happens to us. If we live in the right conditions, they can live a better lifestyle. There is nothing about you as an individual that can hold you back; if you fail, you didn't follow a condition


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