Psychology Chapter 12

causes of social loafing

(1) People acting as part of a group feel less accountable, and therefore worry less about what others think (2) Group members may view their individual contributions as dispensable (3) When group members share equally in the benefits, regardless of how much they contribute, some may slack off; unless highly motivated and strongly identified with group, people may free-ride on others' efforts

most likely to conform when

- Feel incompetent/insecure - Group has 3 or more people - Everyone else in the group agrees - Admire group's status and attractiveness - Haven't made prior commitment to response - Know others in group will observe our behavior - Are from a culture that strongly encourages respect for social standards

ways to convince people to cooperate for their mutual betterment

-agreed upon regulations -better communication -promoting awareness of our responsibilities toward community, nation, and the whole of humans

Obedience was highest when

-the person giving the orders was close at hand and was perceived to be a legitimate authority; -when the victim was depersonalized or at a distance; -when there were no role models for defiance; -the authority figure was supported by a powerful or prestigious institution

Pro social behavior

Behavior that intends to help or benefit someone

Gender prejudice

Despite equality between the sexes in intelligence scores, people have tended to perceive their fathers as more intelligent than their mothers. Worldwide, women are more likely to live in poverty, they represent nearly 2/3 of illiterate adults, and 30% have experienced intimate partner violence. In many places sons are valued more than daughters

Explicit Ethnic Prejudice

Despite increased verbal support for interracial marriage, many people admit that in socially intimate settings (dating, dancing, marrying), they personally would feel uncomfortable with someone of another race. Subtle prejudice may also take the form of "microaggressions", such as race related traffic stops or people's reluctance to choose a train seat next to someone of a different race

GRIT

Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction - a strategy designed to decrease international tensions One side first announces its recognition of mutual interests and its intent to reduce tensions. It then initiates one or more small, conciliatory acts

Happiness and helpfulness

Happy people are helpful people is one of the most consistent findings in all of psychology. Happiness breeds helpfulness, but helpfulness also breeds happiness. People who give money away are happier than those who spend it almost entirely on themselves. Just reflecting on a time where one spent money on others provides most people with a mood boost

Sexual orientation prejudice

In most of the world, gay and lesbian people cannot openly and comfortably disclose who they are and whom they love. Anti-gay attitudes are most common among men, older adults, and those less educated. Gay and lesbian people experience substantially higher rates for depression and related disorders, even after controlling for income and education differences

Promoting Peace: Communication

Mediators help each party to voice its viewpoint and to understand the other's needs and goals.

Ingroup and outgroup

Much discrimination involves not outgroup hostility but ingroup networking and mutual support. The urge to distinguish enemies from friends predisposes prejudice against strangers

Promoting Peace: Contact

Positive contact- especially noncompetitive contact between parties of equal status- typically helps. In many schools, ethnic groups segregate themselves in lunchrooms, classrooms, and elsewhere on school grounds. People in each group tend to think that they would welcome more contact with the other group, but they assume the other group does not reciprocate the wish. When such mirror image perceptions are corrected, friendships may form and prejudices melt

Media Models for Violence

Repeatedly viewing on screen violence tends to make us less sensitive to cruelty. It also primes us to respond aggressively when provoked. When we find ourselves in new situations, uncertain how to behave, we rely on social scripts. People sometimes imitate what they've viewed. Music lyrics also write social scripts. Repeatedly watching pornographic films, even nonviolent films, makes sexual aggression seem less serious

blame the victim

The tendancy to believe that it is the fault of the victim if bad things happen to them. This may feed prejudice

situational attribution

attributing behavior to the situation

other-race effect

the tendency to recall faces of one's own race more accurately than faces of other races, emerges during infancy, between 3 and 9 months of age

social exchange theory

the theory that our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs

scapegoat theory

the theory that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame -evidence of this comes from high prejudice among economically frustrated people -to boost their own status, people may denigrate others, which explains why a rival's misfortune sometimes provides a twinge of pleasure -negative emotions feed prejudice

cognitive dissonance theory

the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent. For example, when our awareness of our attitudes and of our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes

Aversive events

those made miserable often make others miserable. Hot temperatures, physical pain, personal insults, foul odors, cigarette smoke, crowding, and a host of others can also evoke hostility. Violent crime and spousal abuse rates have been higher during hotter years, seasons, months, and days

empathize

to show or feel understanding of another's feelings or problems

chameleon effect

unconsciously mimicking others expressions, postures, and voice tones to help us feel what they are feeling

reward theory of attraction

we will like those whose behavior is rewarding to us, including those who are both able and willing to help us achieve our goals

bystander intervention

we will only help if the situation enables us to NOTICE the incident, INTERPRET it as an emergency and to ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY for helping. At each step, the presence of others can turn us away from the path that leads to helping

vivid cases

when something is vivid in our minds, we tend to think that it happens more than it really does; this can lead to prejudice

ingroup

"Us"—people with whom we share a common identity.

outgroup

"them" - those perceived as different or apart from our ingroup

physical atractiveness

Attractiveness influences first impressions for both sexes. Physical attractiveness predicts how often people date and how popular they feel, and initial impressions of people's personalities. We perceive attractive people as healthier, happier, more sensitive, more successful, and more socially skilled. Income analysis show a penalty for plainness or obesity and a premium for beauty. People's attractiveness is surprisingly unrelated to their self esteem and happiness. Strikingly attractive people are sometimes suspicious that praise for their work may simply be a reaction to their looks. Less attractive people have been more likely to accept praise as sincere. Beauty is in the eye of the culture, and cultural ideals change over time. By providing reproductive cues, bodies influence sexual attraction. The face tends to be the better predictor of overall physical attractiveness. Those we like we find attractive. As we see our loved ones again and again, their physical imperfections grow less noticeable and their attractiveness grows more apparent

Aggressive behavior

Biological, psychological, and social cultural influences on aggressive behavior. Complex behaviors including violence have many causes, making any single explanation and oversimplification. Aggression is a biopsychosocial phenomenon. Historical trends suggest that the world is becoming less violent over time. Aggression arises from the interaction of persons and situations.

Individualism

Cultural focus on an independent self

Cultural influence

Culture transmits the customs and beliefs that enable us to communicate, to exchange money for things, play, eat, and drive. Face to face with a different culture, we become aware of the cultural winds. Norms grease the social machinery and can free us from self-preoccupation. Cultures vary, cultures change, and cultures shape our lives.

Internet and group polarization

Electronic communication and social networking have created virtual town halls where people can isolate themselves from those with different perspectives. By attuning our bookmarks and social media feeds to sites that trash the views we despise, we can retreat into partisan tribes and revel in foregone conclusions. The longer participants spend in closed "Dark Web" forums, the more violent their messages become. Separation+conversation = polarization By amplifying shared concerns and ideas, Internet enhanced communication can also foster social ventures.

Self disclosing intimacy + mutually supportive equity =

Enduring companionate love

The biology of aggression

Genes influence aggression. The monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene helps break down neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin. People who have low MAOA gene expression tend to behave aggressively when provoked. There is no one spot in the brain that controls aggression. But animal and human brains have neural systems that, given provocation, will either inhibit or facilitate aggression. Studies of violent criminals have revealed diminished activity in the frontal lobes, which play an important role in controlling impulses. Our genes engineer our individual nervous systems, which operate electrochemically. As men age, their testosterone levels and their aggressiveness diminishes. Another drug that sometimes circulates in the bloodstream -alcohol- unleashes aggressive responses to frustration. Just thinking you've imbibed alcohol can increase aggression. Alcohol also inclines people to interpret ambiguous acts and provocations

Collectivism

Honoring group standards

believing the world is just

If the world is just, people must get what they deserve. Hindsight bias often comes into play, promoting a blame-the-victim mentality (which also reassures people that terrible crimes couldn't happen to them). People also have a basic tendency to justify their culture's social systems. We are inclined to see the way things are as the way they ought to be

Similarity

In real life, opposites retract. The more alike people are, the more their liking endures. Similarity breeds content. Proximity, attractiveness, and similarity are not the only determinants of attraction. We also like those who like us. To be liked is powerfully rewarding

Reinforcement, modeling, and self control

In situations where experience has taught us that aggression pays, we are likely to act aggressively again. To foster a kinder, gentler world we had best model and reward sensitivity and cooperation from and early age, perhaps by training parents to discipline without modeling violence. Crime rates have also been higher and average happiness has been lower in times and places marked by a great disparity between rich and poor. Cultures and families where fathers are minimally involved also have had high violence rates

cognitive dissonance

Inner tension that a consumer experiences after recognizing an inconsistency between behavior and values or opinions

modern matchmaking

Internet-formed friendships and romantic relationships are on average slightly more likely to last and be satisfying. Nearly a quarter of heterosexual and two-thirds of same-sex couples met online. Internet friendships often feel as real and important as in person relationships. Influences on our first impressions of potential romantic partners: -people who fear rejection often elicit it -given more options, people's choices become more superficial -men wish for future contact with more of their speed dates; women tend to be choosier. But this difference disappears if the conventional roles are reversed, so that men stay seated and women circulate.

Implicit ethnic prejudice

Prejudice is often implicit, an automatic attitude- and unthinking knee jerk response. Researches have demonstrated that even people who deny harboring racial prejudice may carry negative association. Our expectations influence our perceptions. Fatigue, which diminishes one's conscious control and increases automatic reactions, amplifies racial bias in decisions to shoot. Unconscious prejudices can cause discrimination even without conscious discriminatory intent. By monitoring our feelings and actions, and by replacing old habits with new ones based on new friendships, we can work to free ourselves from prejudice.

Violent video games

They can prime aggressive thoughts, decrease empathy, and increase aggression. Those who play a lot of violent video games become more aggressive and see the world as more hostile. Compared with non gaming kids, they get into more arguments and fights and earn poorer grades. Due partly to the more active participation and rewarded violence of game play, violent video games have even greater effects on aggressive behavior and cognition than do violent TV shows and movies.

Forming categories

We categorize people by race, with mixed race people often assigned to their minority identity. People's attention is drawn to the distinctive features of the less familiar minority. We recognize how greatly we differ from other individuals in our groups. The members of some other group seem to look and act alike, while "we" are more diverse. To those in one ethnic group, members of another often seem more alike than they really are in attitudes, personality, and appearance. With effort and with experience, people get better at recognizing individual faces from another group.

preservation of innovation

We enjoy things that were unknown to most of our century ago ancestors, including electricity, indoor plumbing, antibiotics, and the internet. This is due to our culture's mastery of language and then division of labor

Promoting Peace: Cooperation

What reduces conflict is not mere contact, but cooperative contact. Cooperation can lead people to define a new, inclusive group that dissolves their former subgroups. Members of interracial groups who work together on projects typically come to feel friendly towards one another. Just imagining the shared threat of global climate change reduces international hostilities. As we engage in mutually beneficial trade, as we work to protect our common destiny on this fragile planet, and as we become more aware that our hopes and fears are shared, we can transform misperceptions that feed conflict into feelings of solidarity based on common interests

Promoting Peace: Conciliation

When conflicts intensify, images become more stereotyped, judgements more rigid, and communication more difficult, or even impossible. GRIT, without weakening one's retaliatory capability, this modest beginning opens the door for reciprocity by the other party. As working toward shared goals reminds us, we are more alike than different. Thanks to cultural sharing, every modern society is enriched by a cultural mix.

The power of individuals

When feeling coerced, we may react by doing the opposite of what is expected, thereby reasserting our sense of freedom. Committed individuals can sway the majority and make social history. Technological history is often made by innovative minorities who overcome the majority's resistance to change. The powers of social influence are enormous, but so are the powers of the committed individual

Lessons from the obedience studies

With kindness and obedience on a collision course, obedience usually won. These experiments demonstrated that strong social influences can make people conform to falsehoods or capitulate to cruelty. After the first acts of compliance or resistance, attitudes began to follow and justify behavior. In any society, great evils often grow out of people's compliance with lesser evils. Cruelty does not require devilish villains. All it takes is ordinary people corrupted by an evil situation.

self-fulfilling prophecy

a belief that leads to its own fulfillment -individuals and nations alike tend to see their own actions as responses to provocation, not as the causes of what happens next

Equity

a condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give to it -mutually sharing one's self and possessions, making decisions together, giving and getting emotional support, promoting and caring about each other's welfare: all these acts are at the core of every type of loving relationship

culture of honor

a culture defined by its members' strong concerns about their own and others' reputations, leading to sensitivity to insults and a willingness to use violence to avenge any perceived wrong -higher rates of students bringing weapons to school and school shootings

stereotype

a generalized (sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized) belief about a group of people

Conflict

a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas

role

a set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave

Social traps

a situation in which the conflicting parties, by each pursuing their self-interest rather than the good of the group, become caught in mutually destructive behavior -they challenge us to reconcile our right to pursue our personal well being with our responsibility for the well being of all

Conformity

adjusting our behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard

passionate love

an aroused state of intense positive absorption in another, usually present at the beginning of a love relationship -emotions have two ingredients: physical arousal plus cognitive appraisal -arousal from any source can enhance one emotion or another, depending on how we interpret and label the arousal Adrenaline makes the heart grow fonder

social-responsibility norm

an expectation that people will help those needing their help, such as young children. -people who attend weekly religious services often are admonished to practice this, and sometimes they do

reciprocity norm

an expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them

norm

an understood rule for accepted and expected behavior. Norms prescribe "proper" behavior.

Prejudice

an unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and its members. Prejudice generally involves stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings, and a predisposition to discriminatory action.

aggression

any physical or verbal behavior intended to harm someone physically or emotionally

dispositional attribution

attributing behavior to the person's stable, enduring traits

Social scripts

culturally modeled guide for how to act in various situations

Attitudes

feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events

Proximity

geographic nearness, friendship's most powerful predictor. Mating starts with meeting. By 3 months, infants prefer photos of the race they most often see- usually their own. We are even somewhat more likely to marry someone whose first or last name resembles our own. Familiarity feeds fondness. No face is more familiar than your own

social facilitation

improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others

normative social influence

influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval

informational social influence

influence resulting from one's willingness to accept others' opinions about reality

mirror-image perceptions

mutual views often held by conflicting people, as when each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful and views the other side as evil and aggressive -feed cycles of hostility

central route persuasion

occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts

peripheral route persuasion

occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker's attractiveness

positive support

positive interactions outnumber negative interactions by at least 5 to 1

superordinate goals

shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation

mood linkage

sharing of moods

self-disclosure

the act of revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others -breeds liking, and liking breeds self disclosure

companionate love

the deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined

Culture

the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next

group polarization

the enhancement of a group's prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group -can amplify a sought-after spiritual awareness, reinforces the resolve of those in a self-help group, or motivates activists working for a cause -can feed extremism and even suicidal terrorism

Deindividuation

the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity

Groupthink

the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives -fed by overconfidence, conformity, self justification, and group polarization, has led to fiascos like the Bay of Pigs -prevented when a leader welcomes various opinions, invites experts' critiques of developing plans, and assigns people to identify possible problems

Best odds of helping someone occur when...

the person appears to need and deserve help. the person is in some way similar to us. the person is a woman. we have just observed someone else being helpful. we are not in a hurry. we are in a small town or rural area. we are feeling guilty. we are focused on others and not preoccupied. we are in a good mood.

mere exposure effect

the phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them

Minority influence

the power of one or two individuals to sway majorities

Personal control

the power of the individual

Social control

the power of the situation

frustration-aggression principle

the principle that frustration- the blocking of an attempt to achieve some goal- creates anger which can generate aggression

social psychology

the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another

mood contagion

the spillover of one's positive or negative moods onto others

bystander effect

the tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present

fundamental attribution error

the tendency for observers, when analyzing others' behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition

social loafing

the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable

just-world phenomenon

the tendency for people to believe the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get

foot-in-the-door phenomenon

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

ingroup bias

the tendency to favor our own group

attribution theory

the theory that we explain someone's behavior by crediting either the situation or the person's disposition

Discrimination

unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members

altruism

unselfish regard for the welfare of others