Social Psychology Test 3 Review

Describe Asch's (1951) Line Judgment Task. Why did participants conform (i.e., what 'need' were they experiencing)?

Asch's Line study asked participants to match three lines to the standard line. Line B was the obvious match but the confederates all picked line C as the match, causing the participants to also choose line C, the obviously wrong answer.

What is proposed by Cognitive Dissonance Theory? What are these inconsistencies between?

Cognitive Dissonance Theory proposes that in order to keep cognitive consistency, people often change their discrepant beliefs, attitudes, behaviors or make exceptions for themselves

What is cognitive consistency?

Cognitive consistency in a person is shown when their attitudes fit and their behaviors.

What is "dissonance?"

Cognitive dissonance is experienced when a person chooses to act in a behavior that contradicts their personal beliefs.

Compare and contrast conformity, compliance, and obedience.

Conformity is the tendency to change our perceptions, opinions, or behavior in ways that are consistent with social or group norms. Compliance is the change in behavior that are elicited by direct requests. Obedience is changed behavior produced by commands of authority.

Which type of influence (informational or normative) can group majorities use?

Group majorities can use normative influence, because it deals with public conformity and not wanting to be a misfit within the group.

Which can group minorities/dissenters use?

Group minorities/dissenters can use informational influence, because this only works when the person believes that the others are correct in their judgements.

What type of conformity did Asch's study demonstrate?

In this study the participants public conformity was being changed, they did not want to feel awkward or like a misfit.

What is informational influence and what is the primary motivation for it?

Informational influence produces conformity when a person believes that other are correct in their judgement. The need for accuracy is the primary motivation for this type of influence

Why does insufficient justification lead to attitude change?

Insufficient justification allows for a lack of compensation for one's actions, so to keep consistency, one has to persuade themselves into changing their attitudes in order to cope.

What are the 2 proposed social benefits/explanations regarding the Chameleon Effect?

Mimicry allows for smoother interaction and communication with one another and mimicry can also lead to more favorable impressions and deeper connections.

What is social influence?

The ways that people are affected by the real and imagined pressures of others is social influence.

What is normative influence and what is the primary motivation for it? What type(s) of conformity does it lead to?

Normative influence leads people to conform because they fear the consequences of rejection that follows deviance. Normative leads to public conformity.

How do our attitudes change after we have made a difficult decision?

Our attitudes become more positive towards our decision and negative to the other choices we didn't choose

What did the researchers find?

Researchers found that those who were paid $20 or not paid at all reported low enjoyment while those who were only paid $1 reported high enjoyment

Describe Sherif's (1936) study on the autokinenetic effect. Why did participants conform (i.e., what 'need' or motivation were they experiencing)?

Sherif's study asked participants to determine how much a light was moving in a dark room, even though the light wasn't moving at all. When asked individually, their estimates were all over the place. When asked in groups, the more sessions they had the more in sync the estimates were and by session 3 they were all the same.

Describe the 4 steps of Cognitive Dissonance proposed by Cooper and Fazio (1984)

Step 1: Discrepant behavior must lead to unwanted negative consequences Step 2: We must feel personal responsibility for the negative outcomes Step 3: We must experience physiological arousal that causes tension or discomfort Step 4: We can attribute this arousal to the discrepant behavior

What is the "Chameleon Effect"?

The "Chameleon Effect" can be described as mirroring one another.

How does the amount of effort we expend or suffering we endure impact our attitude?

The more effort or suffering we give to a goal, the more likely we are to change our attitudes to make enjoy that goal.

Why does this happen?

This is because as the energy required to complete a committed goal increases, the more our attitudes need to change to stay consistent with our behaviors

What type of conformity did Sherif's study demonstrate?

This study demonstrated that their private conformity was being changed, because the participants turned to each other for guidance.

What type(s) of conformity does it lead to?

This type of influence leads to both public and private conformity.

Under what two conditions is it more likely for us to experience dissonance?

We are more likely to experience dissonance when discrepant behavior is freely chosen and when we have some knowledge of the consequences at the time of the behavior.

According to your book, what are the 5 ways we can reduce dissonance?

We can reduce dissonance by changing our previous attitude, changing our perception of the magnitude of our behavior, adding or noting a positive characteristic about the behavior, minimizing the importance of the conflict, or reducing the perceived choice that you had at the time of the behavior.

Self-Esteem/Affirmation Theories

acts that arouse dissonance do so because they threaten our self concept, reaffirming our self concept through other ways reduces the dissonance we feel.

Impression-Management Theory

motive to appear to be consistent rather,actually be inconsistent do so by regulating and controlling information in social interaction. Attitude does not change but we say it did for the sake of our public self-presentation

Describe the Festinger & Carlsmith (1959) experiment in which participants were asked to lie to confederates about how interesting the study was. What were the 3 conditions participants were assigned to?

In the Festinger and Carlsmith experiment, there were three groups. All three groups were required to complete the same very boring tasks for an hour. One group was paid $20 to lie to a confederate about how fun the tasks were, another group was paid $1, and the last group did not lie. Later, the participants were asked what they actually felt about the experiment.

Self-Perception Theory

the theory that when internal cues are difficult to interpret, people gain self-insight by observing their own behavior