Social Psychology Exam 3
Risk Aversion
In decision making, the greater weight given to possible losses than possible gains.
Temporal Discounting
In decision making, the greater weight given to the present over the future. The finding that the present is more important than the future in decision making. The further in the future something lies, the less influence it has on the decision.
Certainty Effect
In decision making, the greater weight to definite outcomes than to probabilities and odds.
Counterfactual thinking
imagining alternatives to past or present events or circumstances.
Framing Whether
messages stress potential gains (positively framed) or potential losses (negatively framed)
TOTE
the self-regulation feedback loop of Test, Operate, Test, Exit The first test is a comparison of self against the standard. for example resolve to be nicer to pattern and realize that you are not. then move along to the operate phase in which you exert conscious control to change yourself to be nicer. then you may test yourself again. Am i being nice enough now? if yes then you have met the standard and exited. if no then continue in the operate phase.
Debiasing
(getting rid of bias) reducing errors and biases by getting people to use deliberate processing rather than automatic processing.
Counterregulation
(what the heck effect) Occurs when people indulge in a behavior they are trying to regulate after an initial regulation failure.
Panic Button Effect
A reduction in stress of suffering due to a belief that one has the option of escaping or controlling the situation, even if one doesn't exercise it.
Stroop test
A standard measure of effort full control over responses, requiring participants to identity the color of the word (which may name a different color)
Cognitive miser
A term used to describe peoples reluctance to do much extra thinking.
Priming
Activating an idea in someone's mind so that related ideas are more accessible.
Limited Resource Model of self control
All types of control rely on ONE limited energy source: Behavior control Thought control Emotion control Impulse control All forms of self-control deplete a limited resource, whether it is controlling behaviors (keeping yourself from punching someone), controlling thoughts (trying to focus on the lecture), controlling emotions (trying not to laugh at inappropriate times) or controlling impulses (trying not to eat the unhealthy dessert). Because self-control acts all rely on one resource, it is possible to deplete this resource. The limited resource model of self-control proposes that self-control is like a muscle, which can be worn out. That is, if you exert self-control on a number of different tasks, your ability to exert self-control on future tasks will be weakened. Think about all the things you do each day that require self-control. Anything that requires you to actively change your attention is using a little self control. Every time you have to remind yourself to pay attention, not think about x, do y, etc. All of that eats up a little bit of your self control.
Habit
An acquired behavior that, if allowed regularly, will become almost automatic.
Goal
An idea of some desired future state. Is the link between values and action. Tells you how to pursue and uphold your values.
Self Presentation
Any behavior we perform or inhibit to create a certain impression on other people. Involves presenting ourselves to others in a certain light (mostly favorable).
Limited Resource Model Experiments
Anytime you use self-control you have less strength less to control yourself later. If you have to control your impulses you will have less strength to force yourself to persist on future tasks. In this experiment, the experimenter placed cookies and radishes in front of the participants and told one group of participants that they couldn't eat the cookies but that they could eat the radishes. The other group was told that they could eat the cookies. The radishes group had to control their impulses to eat the cookies. Both groups then worked on impossible puzzles. Controlling impulse to eat the cookie made it difficult to regulate attention and to persistent on the unsolvable puzzle. Participants were told not to think of white bear. Under no circumstances think of a white bear! Test it out yourself. Do not think of a white bear. Is it difficult not to think of the white bear when instructed not to? Other participants where told they could think of a white bear. Then participants were asked to squeeze a hand grip for as long as they could. Participants who had to exert self-control (by controlling their thoughts about the white bear) held the grip much less time than the control group. Thought control made it hard for people to physically persist. In this experiment participants watch an emotional movie on the plight of the baby sea turtles. This is very sad. One group of participants were told to go with the flow and to feel their emotions freely. The other group was told to control themselves and display no emotion. Both groups then completed GRE problems. The group that had to control their emotions did worse than the other group. Control emotions led to difficulty exerting control over cognition.
Learned Helplessness
Belief that one's actions will not bring about desired outcomes, leading one to give up and quit trying. Because they think the failure is proof that they are incompetent losers.
Training Self-Control
Effective Self-Control Building Exercises Cutting back on sweets (as little as possible for 2 weeks) Hold a handgrip 2X/Day for as long as possible Measures -Stop Signal RT Task -Quitting Smoking (at least 1 month) ---Untrained Quitters: 12% ----Trained Quitters: 27% Or use your non-dominant hand to open doors or brush your teeth. Anything that requires self-control should be a good way to train yourself.
Self Regulation Failure
Extremely common - Eating behavior - Drug and alcohol consumption (avoid substances) - Sexually transmitted diseases (forgo contraceptives in favor of immediate pleasure) - Domestic abuse (failures of emotional and behavioral regulation) Here are some examples of self regulation failures: --Say you are trying to concentrate on this super awesome lecture, but you keep thinking about the weekend, what you're going to do etc. --Just broke up with your girlfriend or boyfriend, but no matter how hard you try, you can't stop thinking about your ex. --It's the night before an exam and you really need to study, but you can't stop playing video games. --Had a bad day driving home and someone cuts you off. Before you can stop yourself, you are giving some grandma the bird.
Gain-framed appeal
Focuses on how doing something will add to your health
Limited Resource Model Lemonade experiment
Gailliot et al. (2007) P's watched a video in which random words popped up. Some P's told to control themselves by not looking at words. P's then given lemonade (some with real sugar, some with artificial sweetener). P's then performed Stroop Task. Participants were first given a glass of lemonade to thank them for coming in to take part in the experiment. Ppl watched a video and had to ignore the words that popped up. This required self control. Then, participants did a Stroop task. In the Stroop task, color words are either printed in compatible or incompatible colors. You have to say aloud the color in which the word is written in. Our natural response is to read the name of the word. If a color word is written in a different (incompatible) color, you have to inhibit your natural response to say the color in which the word is written. You have to inhibit your initial reaction to respond with the correct answer (the color in which the word is written) on incompatible trials. This was the self-control task used in the experiment. We know that exercising self-control should make future attempts to exercise self-control less successful. So what happened? Did the type of drink the participants were give affect their performance on the Stroop task? We'll start with the participants who drank the placebo drink (lemonade sweetened with Splenda). Did these participants show the depletion effect? Yes! Participants who had to control their attention made more errors on the Stroop task than participants who did not have to control their attention (they simply watched the video normally). Now what about participants who drank the lemonade sweetened with sugar (i.e., glucose)? Participants who had to control their attention no longer demonstrated the depletion effect. That is, participants who controlled their attention and who then drank the sugary drink performed just as well as people who did not have to control their attention in the first place.
Self Regulation predicts?
Good relationships Success (more so than IQ) Less criminality Better mental health Self-regulation is essential to having good relationships!!
When do we attempt to explain others behaviors? Attributions
Hastie (1984) P's led to expect pos. or neg. behaviors of an individual P's wrote continuation of sentences about that person Beginning of sentence represented either pos. or neg. behavior When did continuation represent explanation? You'll notice that there are sometime that you are particularly interested in why people behave the way they do, and other times that you are considerably less interested. What makes the difference? Researchers were also interested in this question, so they conducted an experiment. Explain experiment in slow detail. The researchers told participants the experiment was on psycholinguistics. First, they read a short description of the person who ostensibly wrote several sentences that the participants would complete. Depending on condition, the participants were led to either expect positive behavior or negative behavior (e.g., in the positive behavior condition they read things like about how the person who wrote the sentence had won a chess competition, etc). The sentence itself indicated either that the person had done something positive or negative. The continuation of the sentence could have been an explanation of the behavior or anything else. For example, Sally went shopping in Friday (because she needed groceries OR and then she went to the movies). What you'll see from this graph, is that when people expect positive behaviors, they finished the sentence with relatively few explanations. When they expected positive behaviors and got the opposite of what they expect (i.e., negative behaviors), they tried desperately to explain why the behaviors contradicted their expectations. People prefer to explain unexpected events so that they can continue to make sense of their social world. The opposite is true when participants expected negative behaviors. Taken together, this indicates that people are particularly interested in making attributions for, or explaining, behaviors that are contrary to their expectations. If your expectations are met, everything is on the right track. If your expectations are not met, this indicates that there is a potential problem. Either you misread the situation and therefore made a false prediction or some other factor in the environment has affected the outcome. In order for you to direct your future behavior and predications about the behavior of others, you need to explain why the unexpected behavior occurred. Humans are designed to find patterns, and attributions are a useful way of making sense of the social world. As you'll see in slides to come, there are certain errors and biases that accompany attributions, and it will be useful for you in your personal life and relationships to make note of these exceptions.
overview of limited resource model
Initial acts of self-regulation deplete one's resources. True of anything that requires close guidance by the self. Implications for pursuing multiple goals that require lots of self-regulation.E.g., Dieting and quitting smoking at the same time. To reiterate again, exerting self control depletes a limited resource which then impairs your ability to control yourself on another task. Self-control acts refer to anything that requires close guidance by the self. This is particularly important for the pursuit of multiple goals that require self-regulation. We often have multiple regulatory goals at the same time. Think about people who are trying to diet and quit smoking at the same time. It is very difficult to do these two things at once. Even quitting smoking without trying to diet is very complicate. Think about people you know who have tried to quit. They usually do okay until they get stressed out, and then have a cigarette because they have used up all their self-control strength. Knowing that you have limited amounts of self-control, you may want to conserve self-control strength at certain times. It is probably a bad idea to do things that are too taxing before an exam. If you're going to be in a situation where you're going to be tempted, try to save your energy.
What kinds of attributions do we make?
Jones & Harris (1967) P's read pro- or anti-Castro speech Some P's told that students who wrote speech were assigned their topic Some P's told that students who wrote speech chose topic How Pro-Castro was student who wrote speech? Before we answer how pro-Castro each student was, let's think about this experiment critically. If someone forced you to do something, and then you were asked whether you did it of your own volition, what would you say? You'd probably say something along the lines of "Hey, they forced me to do this, it wasn't my choice". In other words, situational factors beyond your control pushed you to behave in a way that didn't align with your personal preferences. BUT! If you were asked to rate how much another person agreed with something they were forced to do, the game changes. Explain results starting with chosen essay and then moving to assigned essay. If the essay is assigned, there is no logical basis for inferring the preference of the essay writer. If 60% of the student body at the university sampled was anti-Castro, then there is a roughly 60% chance that the essay writer will disagree with the pro-Castro essay they wrote. Nonetheless, people tend to discount this when rating the writers agreement and focus instead only on the content of the essay (which indicated agreement).
Monitoring
Keeping track of behaviors or responses to be regulated.
Do we always attribute others behavior to internal causes?
Kelley's Covariation Model (1967) 3 types of relevant info. when explaining actions of others Now, we learned through the slide on the actor-observer bias that we often attribute other people's behavior to internal causes, but is this always true? No. There are times when we do not attribute other people's behavior to internal causes, but several factors have to line up. In the next slide, we'll talk about conditions that must be met in order to attribute people's behavior to external factors. Consistency Does the actor behave similarly in this situation on other occasions? Does Claire always throw coffee in Joe's face? YES = High Consistency Distinctiveness Does the actor behave similarly in other situations? Does Claire throw coffee in everyone's faces? NO = High Distinctiveness The first is consistency. Can you think of other examples of consistent behavior? Does somebody always study before the exam? Does somebody always drink coffee in the morning? Does somebody always greet their brother with a punch in the face? The next factor is distinctiveness. What are some other examples of distinct behaviors? Does somebody study before exams in all of their courses? Does somebody drink coffee only in a certain coffee shop? Does somebody greet most people with a smile but only their brother with a punch in the face? Consensus Do others behave similarly in that situation? Do other people throw coffee in Joe's face? YES = High Consensus The third factor is consensus. If other people behave similarly in another situation, it is likely that there is some kind of external force guiding the behavior of the group. Perhaps Joe is a jerk, and that is why everybody throws their coffee in his face. Perhaps everybody knows the instructor for your social psychology course is particularly difficult, and that is why you study for the exam.
Heuristics
Mental shortcuts that provide quick estimates about the likelihood of uncertain events.
Self Regulation Experiment
Mischel rounded up a bunch of four year olds, put a marshmallow in front of them and told them to try not to eat the marshmallow. If they waited 15 minutes without eating the marshmallow they would receive two marshmallows. But if they ate the one in front of them that's all they could have. Mischel testing to see which kids could delay gratification and control themselves to get a bigger reward. Years later, Mischel compared kids self-control with the marshmallow test to their SAT scores. Kids who delay gratification had much higher SAT scores than the one marshmallow kids. They were also better at coping with emotional stress and social cognitive pressures. Kids who delayed gratification were more successful students, less likely to abuse crack or cocaine, and had a higher sense of self-worth. They were less likely to be overweight, and were more likely to delay gratification when they were adults. All of this could be predicted (certainly with some variation--the marshmallow test doesn't guarantee you a good or bad life) based on a marshmallow test at the age of 4.
Motivation and Self Control
Motivation can (temporarily) restore self-control. Paying people to do the second task increases performance on the second task. But it might not work if you're super depleted If you're struggling to cross the Sahara, giving you money might not help you control yourself because your resources are actually really depleted. Money can restore your motivation when it's not particularly depleted.
Omission Bias
The tendency to take whatever course of action that does not require you to do anything (also called the default option)
Goal Shielding
Occurs when the activation of a focal goal the person is working on inhibits the accessibility of alternative goals. process of keeping others from interfering with your goals. When a person starts working toward one goal, the mind automatically shuts other goals away form consciousness. The more committed a person is to the current goal, the more effective the mind shields this goal by blocking thoughts of other goals.
Do we always attribute our own behavior to external causes?
Sedikides et al., (1998) P's worked in groups on a creativity task Success Condition: "You're in the 93rd percentile!" Failure Condition: "You're in the 31st percentile..." How much of your group's success/failure is due to you? Participants worked with a partner (who they did not know) and were asked to come up with as many uses for a brick and a candle as possible. This is a commonly used measure of creativity. Can anybody think of different ways we could use a brick? Here, you can see that when we fail, we uphold the pattern of making external attributions for our behavior. We succeed, however, our self-esteem is better served by making internal attributions. We don't want to say that we succeeded because the task was easy or because we set low goals, instead we want to say we succeeded through a combination of talent and motivation.
Israeli Judges Study
Study of 8 judges. Judging whether criminals deserved parole for good behavior. Judges see several cases per day—over 1000 cases in the study. DV: was the prisoner granted parole? IV: time of day. The researchers looked at time of day to predict whether someone would be granted parole. Shouldn't this be based on the seriousness of the crime they committed, or their good behavior in jail? Sure, those played a role, too, but time of day turned out to be a strong predictor of whether prisoners were granted parole. Why? Prisoners were granted parole much more frequently in the early morning and right after the judge had a meal. This might be because the judge was low in self control and didn't want to spend energy really figuring out if the person deserved parole. It's a much safer decision to let the prisoner stay in jail than to allow him on the streets and risk him committing another crime.
Self Serving Bias
Taking credit for successes (internal attributions) Blaming other people/factors for failures (external attributions)
Capacity for delay gratification
The ability to make immediate sacrifices for later rewards.
Capacity for Change
The active phase of self-regulation; willpower what goes on in the "operate phase" Willpower is like a muscle, getting depleted after it is used, but getting stronger with exercise.
Attributions
The casual explanations people give for their own and others' behaviors, and for events in general. an explanation why we or others engaged in a certain behavior One of the fundamental process people experience when thinking about other people is trying to explain why people exhibited certain behaviors. Even if we don't demand an explanation from other people, we often spend time thinking about why they behaved the way they did. Why did the baby in the picture shake his fist at us? Was it something we said? Is he grooming himself for the presidency? Has he already experienced a baby version of road rage? We want to know the answers to why people behave the way they do because our interpretation of their actions greatly affects our response to them. If you know that the baby is shaking his fist at you because you left him at the beach, you may feel guilty. If you interpret his fist-shaking as an involuntary muscle reaction, your interpersonal reaction to the first shake dramatically changes. You don't feel guilt. Instead, you laugh at his adorable cuteness.
Stroop effect
The finding that people have difficulty overriding the automatic tendency to read the word rather than name the ink color
Two Steps of Choosing
The first step involves whittling the full range of choices down to a limited few. This step can be done rather quickly. It entails some risk that a potential good choice will be rejected without careful consideration, but it is the only way that the human mind can deal with a large set of possible choices. The second step involves more careful comparison of the highlighted options. Most research focuses on this second step of decision making because typically researchers study how someone chooses among a few major options, instead of focusing on how someone reduces a large set of choices down to a few. The prevailing assumption is that people perform some sort of mental cost-benefit analysis for each option that comes out best But people make decisions that are subject to biases, errors, and other influences.
What is the difference between the fundamental attribution error and the actor-observer bias?
The fundamental attribution error is a part of the actor-observer bias. The fundamental attribution error is about how we attribute other people's behavior. The actor-observer bias is the larger concept that explains both how we attribute other people's behavior and how we attribute our own behavior.
Error Management Theory
The idea that both men and women seek to minimize the most costly type of error, but that men's worst error is not the same as women's. In an evolutionary perspective, the most costly type of sexual error for women was to reproduce with a non optimal male, while the most costly sexual error for a man was to man an opportunity to have sex and thus possibly to reproduce.
Reactance Theory
The idea that people are distressed by loss of freedom or options and seek to reclaim or reassert them. Reactance produces three main consequences. 1) it makes you want the forbidden option more and/or makes it seem more attractive. 2) may make you take steps to try to reclaim the lost option. (sneaking into concert) 3) You may feel or act aggressively toward the person who restricted your freedom.
Self Determination Theory
The theory that people need to feel at least some degree of autonomy (which means that at least some of their activities must be motivated by their inner drives and choices) and internal motivation. People may be motivated by something originating inside them or by some external pressure or force.
Status Quo Bias
The preference to keep things the way they are rather than change. People often stick with what they have, even when the alternatives might be better.
Self Regulation
The self's capacity to alter its own responses; self-control Enables people to be flexible, to adapt themselves to many different circumstances, rules, and demands. Effective self-regulation has three main components: The first is overriding impulses to work toward long-term goals.Overriding short-term desires in favor of long-term benefits (impulse control). Examples include: --Dieting: Choosing a less tasty lunch over an unhealthy but tasty choice. Long-term diet over short-term taste. --Class: Coming to class to improve your grade versus hanging out with friends/playing video games. The second part involves juggling goals.Or the active management of one's many needs and goals. Examples include: --All forms of time management: manage all the stuff you need to do in a given day or long term. --get up, get dressed, read for class, get to class on time, take notes, take a test, coordinate what to do at night, get ready, pick people up, work a job, save money for a trip, etc. --Where to spend your time: you have 2 exams, a term paper, and a couple homework assignments all due this week. Where do you spend your time? How you keep all your goals in order and decide on what to do at any given moment relies heavily on self-regulation. The third aspect of self-regulation is monitoring and altering thoughts, feelings, behaviors. This includes time you have to remind yourself to focus and persist. Examples include: --Paying attention in class. --Refraining from acting aggressively when you are angry. --Persisting when studying, working out, or working.
Actor/observer bias
The tendency for actors to make external attributions and observers to make internal attributions Tendency to make internal attributions for others behaviors "Jon kicked the dog because he's an $%#@$" Tendency to make external attributions for our own behaviors "I kicked the dog because it had rabies and was about to bite me" In general, people tend to make external attributions for their own (negative) behavior, and internal attributions for other people's (negative) behavior. If you want an easier way to remember this, think about an actor looking out. The actor can see all of the external causes for his/her own behavior. The observer is looking in at the person and assumes mostly internal causes of behavior. Can you think of examples of times that you made dispositional attributions for others and situational attributions for yourself? Is there a time you were rude to a friend or you saw another person act rudely toward their friend. Did you explain these two events in the same way?
Hot hand
The tendency for gamblers who get lucky to think they have a "hot" hand and their luck will continue.
Fundamental attribution error
The tendency for observers to attribute other people's behavior to internal or dispositional causes and to downplay situational causes Tendency to make dispositional attributions for others' behavior, even when plausible situational explanations exist Dispositional: Related to personality and internal traits The fundamental attribution bias talks about the attributions you make for other people's behavior. When someone a cashier is rude to you, you probably think it is because that person is a jerk. Even the cashier's behavior is unrelated to their dispositional traits, the fundamental attribution bias says that you will focus on dispositional attributions.
Planning Fallacy
The tendency for plans to be overly optimistic because the planner fails to allow for unexpected problems.
Gambler's fallacy
The tendency to believe that a particular chance event is affected by previous events and that chance events will "even out" in the short run.
Base rate fallacy
The tendency to ignore or underuse base rate information and instead to be influenced by the distinctive features of the case being judged.
Availability heuristic
The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which relevant instances come to mind.
Simulation heuristic
The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which you can imagine (or mentally stimulate) it.
Representativeness heuristic
The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the extent to which it resembles the typical case.
Anchoring and adjustment
The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by using a starting point (called and anchor) and then making adjustments up or down.
Confirmation bias
The tendency to notice and search for information that confirms one's beliefs and to ignore information that disconfirms one's beliefs.
Entity Theorists
Those who believe that traits are fixed, stable things (entities) and thus people should not be expected to change. Prefer to do things at which they are good, in order that success can gain them credit and admiration. Dislike criticism or bad feedback. Choose easier task.
Incremental Theorists
Those who believe that traits are subject to change and improvement. More likely to enjoy learning and challenges. They don't mind criticism or initial failure as much because they expect to improve. Choose harder task.
Goal failure
Two groups of Ps: Dieter or not Three conditions 1) Eat nothing (hungry) 2) Milkshake (full) 3) 2 Milkshakes (stuffed) DV: Taste test (w/ ice cream or cookies) Another factor related to self-control failure is that people occasionally give up too easily. Sometimes people give up on long term goals after a single instance of regulatory failure: 'I ate an M&M, might as well have some pizza.' In this experiment there were two groups of people who were either dieting or not dieting. Participants in each group were instructed to either eat nothing (so they were hungry), drink a milkshake, or drink two milkshakes (stuffed). The participants were asked to take part in a taste test. The experimenter then measured how much ice cream or how many cookies each participant ate. Who ate the most? The stuffed dieters went hog wild for the sweets. They feel like they've already blown their diet, and it doesn't matter what they do anymore. Rather than persist with their goal after drinking two milkshakes the dieters where like "what the heck". They extrapolated the single self-control failure to abandoning the goal entirely and eating a ton. This illustrates an important point about goal setting and planning. When you have a plan, you will not always stick to the plan. However, your success will depend heavily on how quickly you can get back onto the plan. Often how we handle deviation from the plan is more important than whether we actually deviate from the plan in the first place.
Limited Resource Model Lemonade analysis
Willpower can be depleted. Glucose is fuel for the brain. Effortful tasks deplete blood glucose. A sugar drink can help restore self-regulation (compared to a non-sugar sweetener). We know that willpower can be depleted. The research I just presented linked self-control to blood glucose. Glucose is the quick and dirty energy source for your brain that is consumed by intense mental/physical processes. When you exert self-control, you burn glucose. If were to do the thought, impulse, emotion control experiments but give another group of people sugary lemonade 20 minutes before they exert self-control and they don't show the performance deficits of regular depletion.
Zeigarnik Effect
a tendency to experience autonomic, instructive thoughts about a goal whose pursuit has been interrupted. If you start working toward a goal and fail to get there, thoughts about the goal will keep popping into your mind while you are doing other things, as if to remind you to get back on track to finish reaching that goal. one commonplace experience is that if the radio is turned off in the middle of a song that you like, you may have that song running through your mind for the rest of the day. people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. Remember how I mentioned that we goals dominate information processing? We know sometimes that are goals are interrupted. Have you ever stopped studying for your test the next day to go out with your friends? You may have notice that you cannot really enjoy yourself because you keep thinking how you should still be studying. This is called the Zeigarnik effect, and it is a way that the nonconscious helps us pursue our goals by reminding us of them when we have temporarily stopped pursuing them.
Self Defeating Behavior
any action by which people being failure, suffering, or misfortune on themselves.
Loss-framed appeal
focuses on how not doing something will subtract from your health.
Social cognition
focuses on thoughts about people and about social relationships