PSY 201 Ch. 12

What hormone supports passionate love? What hormone supports romantic love?

testosterone; oxytocin

How does being physically attractive influence others' perceptions?

Being physically attractive tends to elicit positive first impressions. People tend to assume that attractive people are healthier, happier, and more socially skilled than others.

Milgram's Follow-Up Obedience Experiment

In a repeat of the earlier experiment, 65% of the adult male "teachers" fully obeyed the experimenter's commands to continue. They did so despite the "learner's" earlier mention of a heart condition and despite hearing cries of protest after they delivered what they thought were 150 volts, and agonized protests after 330 volts.

Do violent video games teach social scripts for violence?

Nearly 400 studies of 130,000 people suggest video games can prime aggressive thoughts, decrease empathy, and increase aggression.

How do our attitudes and our actions affect each other?

Our attitudes often influence our actions, as we behave in ways consistent with our beliefs. However, our attitudes also follow our actions; we come to believe in what we have done.

What are two ways to reconcile conflicts and promote peace?

Peacemakers should encourage equal-status conflict and cooperation to achieve superordinate goals (shared goals that override differences).

What do the social influence studies teach us about ourselves? How much power do we have as individuals?

Strong social influences can make people conform to falsehoods or give in to cruelty; social control and personal control interact; minority influence is most effective if a position is taken firmly

stereotype

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

deindividuation

a loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity; thrives in many different settings

Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction (GRIT)

a strategy designed to decrease international tensions. One side recognizes mutual interests and initiates a small conciliatory act that opens the door for reciprocation by the other party

Chartrand and colleagues: findings

demonstrated chameleon effect with college students; automatic mimicry helps people to empathize and feel what others feel; the more we mimic, the greater our empathy, and the more people tend to like us

conformity

adjusting our behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard

social-responsibility norm

an expectation that people will help those dependent upon them

reciprocity norm

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

norm

an understood rule for accepted and expected behavior in a given group

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 act intended to harm someone physically or emotionally

People are more likely to conform when they...(6 factors)

are made to feel incompetent or insect, are in a group in which everyone else agrees, admire the group's status and attractiveness, have not already committed a response, know that others in the group will observe their behavior, are from a culture that strongly encourages respect for social standards

Prejudice is a negative ___. Discrimination is a negative ___.

attitude; behavior

components of prejudice

beliefs, emotions, predispositions to action

social scripts

culturally modeled guide for how to act in various situations

2 factor theory of emotion

emotions have 2 ingredients - physical arousal and cognitive appraisal

Two vital components for maintaining companionate love are ___ and ___.

equity; self-disclosure

Attitude most influences behavior when... (four factors)

external influences are minimal, attitude is stable, attitude is specific to the behavior, attitude is easily recalled

attitude

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

Attitudes ___ behavior.

follow

Aggression is more likely to occur with ___ lobe damage.

frontal

Biology influences aggression at 3 levels

genetic, biochemical, neural

social inequalities

have often developed attitudes that justify the status quo

aversive stimuli that may cause aggression (6)

hot temperatures, physical pain, personal insults, foul odors, cigarette smoke, crowding

social facilitation

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

ingroup vs. outgroup

ingroup: "us" - people with whom we share a common identity. outgroup: "them" - those perceived as different or apart from our ingroup

Stanley Milgram

investigated the effects of punishment on learning; experiments involved commands to shock someone using a 450-volt final level; more than 60% followed orders to the end

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.

Necessary conditions for bystander intervention

notice incident, interpret event as emergency, assume responsibility for helping

conflict

perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas

3 factors in the psychology of attraction

proximity, physical attractiveness, similarity

passionate romantic love

sexual desire + a growing attachment

superodinate goals

shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation

socialization norm

social expectation that prescribes how we should behave

social roots of prejudice

social inequalities, just-world phenomenon, stereotypes

group polarization

strengthening of a group's preexisting attitudes through discussions within the group

Napolitan and colleagues: findings

students attributed behavior of others to personal traits and even when they were told that behavior was part of an experimental situation

Personality psychologists

study personal traits and processes that explain why individuals may act differently in a given situation

Asch's Conformity Experiments

subjects thought it was a test of visual perception but really it was a test of social conformity

groupthink

the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives

Milgram's later research: Obedience was highest when...(four factors)

the person giving orders was close in proximity and perceived as a legitimate authority figure; the authority figure was supported by a well-known institution; the victim was depersonalized or at a distance; no models existed for defiance

mere exposure effect

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

frustration-aggression principle

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

role

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

social loafing

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

foot-in-the-door phenomenon

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

just-world phenomenon

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

ingroup bias

the tendency to favor our own group

other-race effect

the tendency to recall faces of one's own race more accurately than faces of other races

fundamental attribution error

the tendency, when analyzing others' behavior, to overestimate the influence of personal traits and underestimate the effects of the situation. Most likely to occur when a stranger acts badly; has real-life and social consequences; opposite of self-serving bias

scapegoat theory

the theory that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame

cognitive dissonance theory

the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) clash. For example, when we become aware that our attitudes and our actions don't match, we may change our attitudes so that we feel more comfortable.

discrimination

unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members

Social psychologists

use scientific methods to study how we think, influence, and relate to one another

Social psychologists study forces that explain...

why people act differently in different situations