PSY252 Final

broaden-and-build hypothesis

the idea that positive emotions broaden thoughts and actions, helping people build social resources

Mere exposure effect

the idea that repeated exposure to a stimulus, such as an object or a person, leads to greater liking of the stimulus.

source characteristics

characteristics of the person who delivers a persuasive message, such as attractiveness, credibility, and certainty

What two things happen in crowds?

emergent properties and social influence

Synchronization and cooperation behaviors __ group solidarity.

enhance

emotional brain response: amygdala

fear

Solution to expectancy effects

hire experimenters to run the study that don't know the hypothesis pre-register analysis: before analyzing data, write down specific plan on how you want to analyze it

Average is hot, but average of __ is hotter.

hot

causal attribution

linking an event to a cause, such as inferring that a personality trait is responsible for a behavior

Being __ is a predictor of premature death.

lonely

Asomatognosia

loss of recognition or awareness of part of the body; failure to acknowledge/completely neglects limb

moral dumbfounding

maintaining a moral belief despite not being able to construct evidence in support

subjective self-awareness (SSA) - attention from self as subject toward other objects - created by __ or __

tasks; distractions

Eyewitness identifications are wrong about __ of the time. Eyewitness errors have been found to be involved in more than __ the cases of wrongful conviction.

⅓; half

How researchers assess explanatory style

Researchers ask participants to imagine 6 different good event that might happen to them and 6 bad events and to provide a likely cause for each. The participants then say whether each cause (1) is due to something about them or something about other people/circumstances (internal/external), (2) will be present again in the future or not (stable/unstable), and (3) is something that influences other areas of their lives or just this one (global/specific)

Study: (Norenzayan, 1999) How do cultural differences affect the perceived importance of personality?

Researchers asked Korean and American college students a number of questions intended to tap their theories about the causes of behavior. Although Koreans and Americans rated the importance of personality the same, the Koreans reported situations to be more important than did the Americans. The team also asked their participants several questions about their beliefs regarding how fixed or flexible personality is, including whether it is something that can be changed. The Koreans considered personalities to be more changeable than the Americans did.

Experiment understanding what factors people are aware of when making decisions (Nisbett and Wilson, 1977)

Researchers asked customers in a mall to evaluate the quality of 4 pairs of stockings laid out in a row on a table. Customers were 4x as likely to give the highest rating to the last pair of stockings they examined as to give it to the first pair of stocking, yet their response to whether the position of the stockings had influence was complete disagreement theme: unawareness of our conscious workings

scientific jury selection

a statistical approach to jury selection whereby members of different demographic groups in the community are asked their attitudes toward various issues related to a trail, and defense and prosecuting attorneys try to influence the selection of jurors accordingly - Prospective jurors themselves are not questioned; instead, general associations between certain attitudes and demographic categories are established in the community at large. - Research indicates that the practice can be quite successful, enabling lawyers to know with reasonable accuracy, for instance, whether a prospective juror has a relatively pro-business or anti-business attitude.

inclusive fitness

according to evolutionary theory, the fitness of an individual is based on reproductive success and the passing of one's own genes and those of relatives to future generations Stepparents, in contrast, incur the same costs with no enhancement of their inclusive fitness, since they don't share genes with their stepchildren. - Survey results consistently indicate that relationships between stepparents and stepchildren tend to be more distant and conflicted, as well as less committed and satisfying, than between parents and their genetic offspring.

Phases of memory:

actual events > 1. acquisition (info the person perceives) > 2. storage (info the person stores in memory) > 3. retrieval (info the person retrieves at a later time)

natural selection

an evolutionary process that molds animals and plants so that traits that enhance the probability of survival and reproduction are passed on to subsequent generations

minimal group paradigm

an experimental paradigm in which researchers create groups based on arbitrary and seemingly meaningless criteria and then examine how the members of these "minimal groups" are inclined to behave toward one another

Experiment: (Cohn, 2014) social norms and altruism

Background: 128 employees of a large, international bank played a coin toss game in which they knew which side was considered a "win". - Each win was worth $20 and they self reported their wins. - In one condition, their identity as a banker was primed. Results: There was significant cheating with the primed participant.

Student: (Warneken, 2006) evidence of the altruistic tendencies of young children signaling altruism as part of our evolutionary heritage

Background: 18-month-olds encountered adults in need. - In one situation, the toddler saw an adult drop a pen and attempt, unsuccessfully, to pick it up from the floor. - In another situation, the toddler saw an adult try to open the closed doors of a cabinet, again unsuccessfully. - In each situation, the toddler could readily offer assistance. - In the control conditions, the 18-month-olds encountered the same stimuli - a dropped pen or doors that couldn't be opened - but the adult nearby did not express any need for help. Results: Across these types of situations, 40-60% of the children helped the strangers in need, but they did not engage in the helpful actions in the control conditions. Conclusion: Beginning quite early in development, children will respond altruistically to others in need, thus providing still more evidence that we are wired to care and share.

Study: (Rilling, 2002) the cooperative brain

Background: 36 women played an online version of prisoner's dilemma with another person. - Using an fMRI machine, the researchers scanned the brains of the participating women when they cooperated with the online stranger - which was their most common choice. Results: They found that reward-related regions of the brain (the nucleus accumbens, ventral caudate, and ventromedial/orbitofrontal cortex) exhibited increased activation when the women cooperated. Conclusion: Cooperation, it seems, is inherently rewarding.

dehumanization

the attribution of nonhuman characteristics and denial of human qualities to groups other than one's own

Descriptive norm

the behavior exhibited by most people in a given context correspond to what is motive behavior by informing us what is likely effective

Just world hypothesis

the belief that people get what they deserve in life and deserve what they get

Illusory correlation

the belief that two variables are correlated when in fact they are not

sociometer hypothesis

the idea that self-esteem is an internal, subjective index or marker of the extent to which a person is included or looked on favorably by others

2 measures of implicit prejudice and stereotyping

the implicit association test and priming procedures

functional distance

the influence of an architectural layout to encourage or inhibit certain activities, including contact between people

replication

the reproduction of research results by the original investigator or by someone else

At what age do infants pass the Sally-Anne test?

3

Black people use less drugs than white people but are _ times more likely to be stopped and searched for drugs.

6

Impressions from faces are consequential: Based on students' judgments of how competent looking two politicians are, they can predict __% of election outcomes.

70

group

A collection of individuals who have relations to one another that make them interdependent to some significant degree There are degrees of interdependence and therefore degrees of "groupness"

mirror self-recognition test

A method for evaluating an animal's capacity to recognize itself in which researchers determine whether the animal looking at itself in a mirror behaves in a manner indicating its recognition of a mark made on its body; shows basic sense of (bodily) self

attitude

A person's consistently favorable or unfavorable evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or idea

Somatoparaphrenia

A type of delusion where one denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of one's body - may desire to amputate that part of body

Study: (Medvec, 1995) The emotional reactions of Olympic athletes when winning a silver/bronze instead of the gold

An analysis of the smiles and grimaces that athletes exhibited on the medal stand at the 1992 Summer Olympics revealed that second-place silver medalists seemed to be less happy than the third-place bronze medalists they had outperformed Silver medalists are consumed by what they did not receive (the gold medal), whereas bronze medalists focus on what they did receive (a medal). Silver medalists were more focused on how they could have done better "if only" a few things had gone differently, whereas bronze medalists were more inclined to state that "at least" they received a medal. Theme: emotional amplification/coming close

field experiment

An experiment set up in the real world, usually with participants who are not aware that they are in a study of any kind.

Self enhancement (Cross, 1974) with professors

Asked professors "Are you an above average teacher?" and 94% said yes (impossible) BETTER-THAN-AVERAGE EFFECT

Experiment: (Heider, 1944) How do people describe a scene of shapes?

Background: Experimenters create a video of shapes moving around in a box and ask people to describe what happened. Results: People give the entities person-like mental states (goals, desires, fear, personalities) Conclusion: Even though there are no humans, people WANT to describe things in person-terms

Study: (Joel, 2013) investment in a relationship on commitment

Background: One group of participants listed various ways their romantic partners invested in their relationship, including a specific example that was particularly meaningful and important. Results: Participants in this group subsequently reported greater commitment to their relationships relative to control participants, who either listed only the investments they themselves made or didn't list any at all. - Participants in the first group also reported more gratitude. It was this gratitude that accounted for their own subsequent higher commitment to the relationships after thinking about their partners' investments.

Study: (Gangestad, 1998) dating preferences during menstrual cycle

Background: Researchers had women during various phases of their menstrual cycle sniff a number of T-shirts that had earlier been worn by a group of men whose degrees of facial bilateral symmetry varied. Results: As the investigators anticipated, the T-shirts of the facially symmetrical men were judged to have a better aroma than those of less symmetrical men-but only by those women who were close to the ovulation phase of the menstrual cycle and thus the most biologically prepared for reproduction at that time.

Study: (Kunz, 1976) our tendency to reciprocate: Christmas cards

Background: Researchers mailed Christmas cards to numerous strangers. Results: About 20% reciprocated by sending their own Christmas cards back to the senders, whom they had never met.

Study: accountability of stereotyping

Background: Researchers wanted to address military rank increases based on race. - They created an accountability manipulation where whenever people made a decision on who to nominate, they had to write a note explaining why. Results: While this program was in effect, it had major impacts.

Experiment: (Nickerson, 2008) social influence on social network effects; voting

Background: Someone canvassed residents door-to-door and encouraged them to vote. Result: The canvassing influenced not just the person at the door, but other household members as well

Experiment: Your Pain is my Pain (Jackson, 2006)

Background: Took measures and found that there was great neural overlap when experiencing pain versus observing someone else in pain. Evidence for overlap in processing own pain and observing others'. Simulation theory.

Experiment: Effect of Similarity on Dates

Background: pairs went on a date. - In one condition, the two individuals had dissimilar attitudes. In the other condition, they had similar attitudes. Results: Those with more similar attitudes liked each other more.

experiment proving that we tend to highlight what makes us unique or distinctive in a given situation (McGuire and Padawer-Singer 1978)

Background: they asked 6th graders at different schools to describe themselves Result: On average, children wrote 12 statements referring to their recreational activities, attitudes, friends, and school activities. Conclusion: The children defined themselves according to how they differed from their classmates Theme: At least in the Western world, what's most central to identity is what makes a person distinct.

dorsal anterior cingulate cortex

Brain region associated with physical (and social) pain

Why NOT to do interventions?

Ethics - can't produce harmful outcomes - implications of withholding treatment Costs - money and time Feasibility - confounds of daily life

Expectancy effects (experimenter bias)

Expectations about how participants should respond, these expectations can in turn bias the results. May occur whenever the experimenter knows which condition the participants are in. Experimenter might unintentionally treat participants differently in the various conditions of the study. Bias can occur when experimenters record the behaviors of the participants; there may be subtle differences in the way the experimenter interprets and records the behaviors.

the egocentric self

Found in Western industrialized societies, characterizes the self as individualistic, solid, separate, and autonomous

regression to the mean

If the first measurement is extreme, second measurement will be closer to the mean

Emotion as a system of attribution theory/James Theory (William James, 1884)

If you take away all bodily responses, there's no actual emotion. Emotions are our INTERPRETATION of bodily responses. Not: see a bear > feel fear > body responds Yes: see a bear > body responds > our perception of our bodily response causes fear

self-selection

In correlational research, the situation in which the participant, rather than the researcher, determines the participant's level of each variable (for example, whether they are married or not, or how many hours per day they spend playing video games), thereby creating the problem that it could be these unknown other properties that are responsible for the observed relationship.

debriefing

In preliminary versions of an experiment, asking participants directly if they understood the instructions, found the setup to be reasonable, and so on. In later versions, debriefings are used to educate participants about the questions being studied.

Two causes work in concert to produce group polarization:

One involves the persuasiveness of the information brought up during group discussion; the other involves people's tendency to try to claim the "right" position among the various opinions within the group

Expectancy/Hawthorne effects

Participants can be biased by their expectations about the purpose of the experiment and act in a way that confirms them

orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)

People who damage their orbitofrontal cortex lose the ability to rely on their emotions to act in ways that fit their current situation

Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo, 1971)

Philip Zimbardo's study of the effect of roles on behavior. Participants were randomly assigned to play either prisoners or guards in a mock prison. The study was ended early because of the "guards'" role-induced cruelty. (power of the situation)

The appraisal that in involved in emotion

Primary appraisal: initial, automatic, positive/negative evaluation of the event Secondary appraisal: Subsequent evaluation in which people detainee why they feel how they do and consider ways of responding

choice blindness

Refers to ways in which people are blind to their own choices and preferences

Study: (Rand, 2014) the reasons extreme altruists gave for why they risked their lives to save others

Results: Most typically, they explained their life-imperiling acts of altruism by referring to an automatic, emotion-like impulse to help others.

Self-enhancement v self-verification

Self-enhancement: Tell me I'm great Self-verification: Tell me the truth

Study: (Na, 2011) Differences between Asians and Westerners in initial dispositional inferences

Study: Na and Kitayama presented participants with information about a person that could be expected to lead them to make an inference about the person's personality. For example, the statement "She checked twice to see if the fas was on in the stove before she left" might lead a participant to infer that the person was careful. When participants were later shown a picture of the person along with the word reckless, the American participants exhibited a pattern of brain activity associated with surprise, but the Korean participants did not. Thus, Asians are not just more likely to notice situational cues that might correct a dispositional inference; they might also be less likely to make a dispositional inference in the first place.

Study: (Glick, 2001) ambivalent sexism

Summary: Experimenters interviewed 15,000 men and women in 19 nations and found that "benevolent" sexism (a chivalrous ideology marked by protectiveness and affection towards women who embrace conventional roes) often coexists with hostile sexism (dislike of nontraditional women and those viewed as usurping men's power).

Study: (Kalven, 1966) jury decision making - the majority v the minority

Summary: In a landmark study of jury decision making, experimenters interviewed members of 225 juries. - In 215 of them, a majority leaned in one direction or the other at the time of the initial straw vote; in 209 of these cases, the jury ended up handing down a verdict consistent with that initial majority. - Also, in studies using mock juries, the initial majority almost always wins the day. Theme: conformity pressures - Indeed, studies on the nature of jury deliberation have found that the majority view prevails through the very processes of informational and normative social influence.

Study: (Cohen, 2006) loyalty to groups and dehumanization

Summary: In one survey of over 180 groups in developing countries, tribes characterized by powerful ingroup loyalty and a strong sense of "we feeling" were more likely to dehumanize other tribes and act in violent fashion against them.

Study: (Independent Sector, 2002) percentage of income donated based on income level

Summary: The study found that people making less than $25,000 per year gave away an average of 4.2% of their income, whereas those making over $100,000 per year donated only 2.7%

psychological view of beauty

The core idea is that the more fluently an object is processed, the more positive the aesthetic experience is for the viewer.

The "Social Comparison" Interpretation

The desire to distinguish oneself from others by expressing a more extreme opinion in the "right" direction leads predictably to the group polarization effect.

parental investment

The evolutionary principle that costs and benefits are associated with reproduction and the nurturing of offspring. Because these costs and benefits are different for males and females, one gender will normally value and invest more in each child than will the other.

simulation theory

The theory that we come to understand others (their emotions, actions, mental states) by vicariously producing their current state in ourselves

cognition; it's role in attitude

The thoughts that typically reinforce a person's feelings Your attitude about a favorite city, for example, includes knowledge about its history and its most appealing neighborhoods and landmarks, as well as the special times you've spend there

Study by Howard Leventhal and his colleagues on how to motivate people to take advantage of preventative care (1965)

They had Yale students read scary materials and photos of tetanus. In addition, some students were given a map with a circle around the health center and were asked to review their weekly schedule and decide on a time to visit the center and the route they would take to get there; far more of the participants who received the map went than those who did not. Demonstration of channel factors.

Are certain kinds of people more prone to relationship dissatisfaction?

They have learned, first, that personality matters. - Neurotic people, who tend to be anxious, tense, emotionally volatile, and melancholy have less happy romantic relationships and are more likely to divorce. - Similarly, people with low self-esteem and people who are highly sensitive to rejection have greater difficulties in intimate relationships. - Moreover, romantic partners and friends who are sensitive to rejection respond with greater hostility when feeling rejected by intimate others. Certain demographic factors also predict problems in romantic relationships. - Lower SES is apt to introduce into the relationship financial difficulties and the burdens of finding gratifying and stable work, some of the primary reasons that marriages break up. In terms of the age of couples, people who marry at a younger age are more likely to divorce.

Experiment: (Wicker, 2003) Your Disgust is my Disgust

When you compare neural activity for observing others' disgust and personally experiencing it, you activate similar brain structures. Simulation theory.

Central Theory (Cannon-Bard)

You see a bear, this leads to fear and then you respond

death-qualified jury

a jury from which prospective jurors who would never recommend the death penalty have been excluded

personal distress

a motive for helping others in distress that may arise from a need to reduce one's own distress

Approach/inhibition theory

a theory maintaining that high-power individuals are inclined to go after their goals and make quick (and sometimes rash) judgments, whereas low-power individuals are more likely to constrain their behavior and pay careful attention to others

Bottom-up processing

"data-driven" mental processing, in which an individual forms conclusions based on the stimuli encountered in the environment

Bystander intervention

assistance given by a witness to someone in need

Efficient impressions: - __ milliseconds of exposure is sufficient to read demographic attributes, emotional states, cognitive states, and focus of attention - even though the signals could be very __

100; subtle

We don't need more than __ ms to become more confident in our impressions. It only take __ seconds for our brain to process the face

167; .5

5 factors that make the tit-for-tat strategy compelling:

(1) It's cooperative and thus encourages mutually supportive actions toward a shared goal. (2) It's not envious; a partner using this strategy can do extremely well without resorting to competitive behavior. (3) It's not exploitable, meaning it's not easily taken advantage of; if you defect on the tit-for-tat, it will defect on you. (4) It's forgiving; that is, it's willing to cooperate at the first cooperative action of the partner, even after long runs of defection and competition. (5) It's easy to read; it shouldn't take long for others to know that the tit-for-tat strategy is being played.

So how do you improve the chances of getting help when you need it?

(1) make your need clear; and (2) select a specific person.

Researchers broke down persuasion into three elements, or three W's of persuasion:

(1) the "who," or source of the message; (2) the "what," or content of the message itself; and (3) the "to whom," or intended audience of the message

What did we learn about interventions? What: Why + When: Whom + How:

- ecologically valid experiment to improve individual/social wellbeing - to test a working theory in a real-world context - depends on the nature of the problem and feasible points of entry

Caveats to the 6 basic emotion theory

1. there are more than 6 emotions 2. not all emotion expressions are universal

Experiment: (Quoidbach, 2010) wealth impoverishes savoring

Background: Participants were primed with either money or a control and then ate chocolate. Results: The wealth prime decreases their savoring.

Experiment (Yamaguchi, 2007) showing the cultural differences in the kind of egoism that is prevalent

Background: Yamaguchi used an implicit association test on the participants, seeing how quickly they could associate "I" with good things (showing how tightly linked you are with positive things in your mind). The experimenters then compared reaction times between pairing self and positive things with pairing a friend to positive things. Results: Each culture had a positive self-esteem and were able to pair themselves with positive things faster than pairing their friends with positive things.

Stocking Experiment

Background: participants viewing a mall display table of identical stockings preferred the rightmost > leftmost pair of stockings 4-1 In Action: In explaining preferences, none mentioned its position and nearly all denied that position could have influenced them Theme: Choice blindness! People really believe their reasoning was true and did not believe the true causes for their behaviors.

dispositions

Internal factors such as beliefs, values, personality traits, or abilities that guide a person's behavior

Oxytocin

a chemical that fosters commitment in long-term relationships

self-schema

a cognitive structure, derived from past experience, that represents a person's beliefs and feelings about the self in general and in specific situations

control condition

a condition comparable to the experimental condition in every way except that it lacks the one ingredient hypothesized to produce the expected effect on the dependent variable

confirmatory research

a priori hypothesis: formulated based on prior literature, before collecting any new data generates evidence to SUPPORT or REFUTE an EXISTING hypothesis

design confound

a second variable that unintentionally varies systematically with the independent variable

Consistency

a type of covariation information, whether an individual behaves the same way or differently in a given situation on different occasions - The more an individual's reaction varies across occasions (when consistency is low), the harder it is to make a definite attribution either to the person or to the situation

Why do interventions?

allows researchers to test efficacy of an experiment and apply things to the real world

Focal emotions

an emotion that is especially common within a particular culture

4 aspects of compliance

conformity, consistency, reciprocity, commitment

Our self-understanding is largely a product of __ processes, our making sense of our experiences, preferences, and so on

construal

medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)

contributes to self-awareness and thinking about the self

Tips for Reducing Stress: 1. Focus on an adaptive __ approach. - Devise specific strategies for responding to your sources of stress, one step at a time, with concrete actions. 2. Exercise (the more, the better). - Almost any kind of exercise tends to lower stress levels. 3. Seek out positive __. - Several studies suggest that the more you experience positive emotions, the less stress you'll have. People who experience positive emotions, such as gratitude, love, contentment, and awe, have lower mortality rates. 4. Meditate. - An expanding body of scientific literature shows that meditation reduces levels of cortisol and stress.

coping; emotions

Under what 4 conditions are crowds "smart"? And which of these conditions is not met in a real, physical crowd?

diverse information, independent opinions, no systematic bias, many people; conditions 1-3 are not met in real crowds

Local rule of humans in crowds:

do what you see others doing

When you're objectively self aware and are not meeting your internal standards, you try to __ OSA.

escape

emergent properties

everyone has their own individual psychology, but when the individual psychologies get together, it starts to interact so that there's a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts

Social influence in juries:

informative social influence (unsure) + normative social influence (agreeing for the sake of cohesion) = group polarization

Studies find that people are __ likely to help when other people are around.

less

solution to evaluation apprehension

make participants feel as comfortable/natural as possible

The source of first impressions are... - grounded in __ mental states - grounded in __ - heavily dependent on the specific image/situation __

momentary; stereotypes; variation

self-identification - rubber hand illusion

non-brain damaged people can also misidentify body parts - one of subject's hands is hidden and a rubber hand is put in place where real hand would be - subject quickly maps physiological experience to the rubber hand in a short amount of time - physical self-awareness is more malleable than we think

What are the types of controlled conformity?

normative and informational

Steps to helping

notice something happening, interpret a meaning, take responsibility, know how to help, provide help

participant observation

observing some phenomenon at close range (experimenter spends lots of time with subjects)

construal

one's interpretation of or inference about the stimuli or situations that one confronts example: whether we regard people as freedom fighters v terrorists affects our perceptions of their actions, which will drive our behavior toward them

Why are we biased?

realistic group conflict social categorization processes - stereotyping - social identity theory implicit/explicit attitudes

superordinate goals

shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation

temporal self-comparison

the idea that we think we are getting better all the time

Outgroup homogeneity effect

the tendency to view outgroup members as less varied than ingroup members

Cognitive dissonance theory

the theory that inconsistency between a person's thoughts, sentiments, and actions creates an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency

after-the-fact insight

the vast majority of people believe, even after hearing the basic results and all the study variations, that they themselves would never deliver very high levels of shock.

"__" cultures have strong norms regarding how people should behave and don't tolerate departure from those norms. "__" cultures have norms that aren't as strong and their members tolerate more deviance.

tight; loose

A few other things to keep in mind when trying to predict behavior The typical correlation between... - a validated personality measure and behavior is about __ - a general attitude and behavior is about __ - two behaviors mapping onto the same trait is about _

.30; .20; .20

Three factors shape a person's sense of procedural justice:

1. Assessments of the neutrality of the authority figure. - When figure-skating judges give substantially higher scores to skaters from their own country, their neutrality is clearly in question, and the sense of procedural justice is undermined. - With respect to punishment, a citizen's sense of procedural justice will depend critically on whether the legal system is seen as evenhanded. 2. There must be trust in the system. - The individual must have confidence that authority figures will be fair, that they will treat everyone according to consistent principles and standards. 3. The individual must feel that everyone is treated with respect. - Do authority figures meting out justices treat those they are punishing politely? - Respect on the part of the authority figures gives people a sense that the legal system is fair.

Experiment: (Hamlin, 2007) helpful babies - testing young children's sensitivity and preferences for helping behaviors

Background: 6- and 10-month old infants watch a video of shapes. - In one condition, the shape is helpful and in the other condition the shape is hindering. - The babies were then given time to play with the shapes. Results: 26/28 infants chose the helpful shape. They also prefer neutral to hindering shapes. - Doesn't work if the shapes have no googly eyes. Conclusion: Infants are very sensitive and prefer helpful behaviors.

Study: (Ceci, 1995) "implanted" memories in preschoolers

Background: Experimenters asked preschoolers to remember as much as they could, in weekly sessions for ten weeks, about the time they went "to the hospital with a mousetrap on your finger." Results: When they were interviewed later by another adult, 58% were able to tell detailed stories about the non-event. - One boy remembered that "we went to the hospital, and my mommy, daddy, and Colin drove me there, to the hospital in our van, because it was far away. And the doctor put a bandage on this finger".

Study: (Martin, 1982) personal distress response in early life

Background: Newborn infants heard a tape recording of their own crying, the crying of another day-old, or the crying of an 11-month-old. Results: The newborns cried the most in response to the cries of another newborn.

Study: (Efran) Defendant Characteristics - Attractiveness

Background: Participants were given a case description and the defendant's photo. - For half, the defendant was attractive and for the other half, they were not attractive. Results: Attractive defendants were judged more leniently. - They were less likely to be judged as guilty and received less punishment. Continuation: In real life data, coders rated attractiveness of real defendants and they examined punishments given by real judges. They found that judges set higher bails and fines for less attractive defendants.

Experiment: Reciprocity - Door in the face

Background: Ps were approached with a large request and small request. In one condition, they were just asked the small request. In the other condition, they were first asked a large request that they refused and then the small request. Results: Ps were more likely to say yes to the small request when it followed the large request.

Experiment: (Cialdini, 1978) commitment: low ball

Background: Ps were either asked "Would you participate in an experiment at 7am?" or "Would you participate?" and then after agreeing saying, "Okay, it's at 7." Results: Compliance doubled when they were told the time after agreeing.

Experiment: (Harris, 1975) bad moods on compliance

Background: Researchers asked Catholics to donate to a charity when they were either on their way into church for confession or on their way out. - The presumption was that those on their way in were rehearsing their sins and thus feeling guilty; those on their way out had done penance for their sins and were no longer plagued by guilt. Results: As predicted, those solicited on the way into church gave more money than those solicited on the way out.

Experiment: (Susskind, 2008) Functions of emotions

Background: Researchers induce people to make a particular expression, and then recorded what their eyes and nose did. Findings: Our facial expressions serve a purpose; fear expressions cause larger eyes, which allow one to take in more visual information. Fear expressions also open the nose, allowing more air to come in, while disgust expressions closed off airways.

Experiment: (Iyengar, 1987) agenda control

Background: Viewers in one condition saw three news stories dealing with US dependence on foreign energy sources; in another condition, six such stories; and in a final condition, no stories like this. Results: When exposed to no news about dependence on forieng energy, 24% of the viewers cited energy as one of the three most important problems facing the country. - This percentage rose to 50% for the participants who saw three stories on the subject and 65% for those who saw six stories.

Evidence that we all lack some insight into our explanations

People agreeing that the losing team won the Super Bowl and coming up with fake experiences that justify it

Study: (Alterovitz, 2009) asymmetry in mate selection on online dating sites

Summary: Experiments systematically examined personal ads and online dating sites in various countries. - These studies reveal an overwhelming tendency for men to seek youth and beauty and to offer material resources and for women to seek resources and accomplishment and to offer youth and beauty. - It's noteworthy that similar patterns are observed in the ads of gay men, who out more emphasis on ppStudy: (Buss, 1989) asymmetry in mate selection in a surveyysical attractiveness as a quality they seek in a potential partner than lesbians do.

Study: (Mathus, 2010) empathy and similarities to the victim

Summary: In a study by Joan Chiao and her colleagues, African-Americans responded with greater empathy and more altruistic inclinations when viewing the suffering of African-Americans as opposed to European-Americans. - Only the suffering of participants' own group members activated a brain region (the medial prefrontal cortex) that's involved in empathic response. Continuation: In keeping with this theme, studies of charitable contributions find that the wealthy tend to systematically direct their acts of philanthropy to institutions and organizations that largely benefit people like themselves.

trait self-esteem

a person's enduring level of self-regard across time

diffusion of responsibility

a reduction of the sense of urgency to help someone in an emergency or dangerous situation, based on the assumption that others who are present will help

focalism

a tendency to focus too much on a central aspect of an event while neglecting the possible impact of associated factors or other events

Dissonance can be reduced by...

altering one's conditions

emotions

brief, specific psychological and physiological responses that help humans meet goals, many of which are social

emotional brain response: insula

disgust

experimental research

enables investigators to make strong inferences about why a relationship exists or how different situations affect people's behavior

__ research is the best way to be sure about causality.

experimental

More vasopressin leads to (more/less) commitment.

more

sensory deprivation experiment (Hebb, 1951)

researchers at McGill University paid male undergrads to stay in small chambers with only a bed and complete sensory deprivation. The plan was to observe for 6 weeks, but no one lasted 7 days. Proves how crucial socialization is.

height bias

taller and average people are evaluated more favorably than shorter individuals

Lake Wobegon Effect

tendency to think we are better than the average person on various characteristics

self-presentation

presenting the person we would like others to believe we are

prevention focus

self-regulation of behavior with respect to ought self standards, or a focus on avoiding negative outcomes and avoidance-related behaviors

subjectivist view of beauty

beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Confirmation bias

the tendency to test a proposition by searching for evidence that would support it

audience characteristics

characteristics of those who receive a persuasive message, including need for cognition, mood, age, and audience size and diversity

Reliability and Validity

consistency; accuracy

Much of what psychologists know about how people understand the behavior of others is undoubtedly universal, but there are also some basic __ in how people from different cultures understand the causes of behavior.

differences

Magnitude of dissonance = __ x __ / __ x __

discrepancy; importance; consonance; importance

Belief in perceived control and optimism benefit health in several ways. - With an increased sense of control, people generally respond to stress more __. - Moreover, people with a heightened sense of control and an optimistic outlook tend to engage in better __ practices.

effectively; health

Groupthink is the compromised decision making of a group, fueled by a shallow __ of information, a narrow consideration of __, and a sense of __ or moral superiority

examination; alternatives; invulnerability

Minorities have their effect primarily through __ social influence rather than through __ social influence.

informational; normative

Research suggests that our responses to stimuli are guided by two systems of thought analogous to __ and __.

intuition; reason

two motives that govern preferences for different kinds of punishment

just desserts motive and deterrence

Two accounts for altruistic behavior:

kind selection and reciprocity

How to do interventions: - activity/training: people don't __ how to do something - norms: people have a __ about what other people do - information/feedback: people have have __ information - choice architecture: people have __ much information - resources: not __ resources - motivation: not __ motivation

know; misunderstanding; enough; too; enough; enough

Stimulation hypothesis

online interactions strengthen existing relationships and help fend off loneliness

"Commitment problem"

our long-term relationships require that we sacrifice for others even when we are tempted to do otherwise

Group justification motives

our need to think well of the groups to which we belong

task demand

participants want to give the results they think you expect the good subject (+ hypothesis) the bad subject (- hypothesis)

Robust research methods protect the __ of science.

quality

emotional brain response: ventral striatum

reward

applied science

science or research concerned with solving important real-world problems example: how to make preteens less susceptible to cigarette advertising

In general, people are more likely to generalize behaviors and traits they already __ may be typical of the group's members.

suspect

naturalistic fallacy

the claim that the way things are is the way they should be

reputation

the collective beliefs, evaluations, and impressions people hold about an individual within a social network

transactive memory

the combined memory of a group that is more efficient than the memory of the individual members

stereotype threat

the fear of confirming the stereotypes that others have about one's group

Zajonc's theory of mere presence

the presence of others, indeed the mere presence of others, tends to facilitate performance on simple of well-learned tasks, but it hinders performance on difficult or novel tasks

6 basic emotions theory (Eckman, 1984)

there are only 6 basic emotions, and they are happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear

(valid/reliable) All __ measurement are __, but __ measurements are not always __

valid; reliable; reliable; valid

The presence of an ally __ both informational social influence ("Maybe I'm not crazy after all") and normative social influence ("At least I've got someone to stand by me").

weakens The other person who breaks the group's unanimity doesn't need to offer the correct answer - just something that departs from the group's answer.

2 ways in which we can fail at the acquisition phase:

weapon-focus effect - tendency for the presence of a weapon to draw attention and impair a person's ability to identify the culprit cross-race identification bias - tendency for people to have difficulty identifying members of a race other than their own

Conducting ethical research

Institutional Review Board Cost/Benefit Ratio Informed Consent Debriefing

Study: (McClintock, 2014) are romantic pairings due to evolutionary effects or other impacts?

Background: Experimenters gathered ratings of attractiveness and status from individuals in 500 dating, 500 cohabiting, and 500 married couples. Results: More attractive women and men did indeed personally enjoy greater socioeconomic status (a benefit of attractiveness) and that attractive and high-status women and men paired off with more attractive and high-status partners (a similarity effect). - Once these benefits of attractiveness and similarity effects were controlled for, there was no evidence for the claim that attractive women pair off with high-status men for the resources they provide.

How to do interventions: Motivation (Hershfield, 2011) Real-world problem: many people don't save enough for retirement Psychological theory: - future discounting (present bias) > insufficient planning/saving for retirement - no immediate reward when saving money - people might exhibit future discounting because they do not identify with their future selves Solution: show participants age-processed images of themselves to motivate them to save more for the future

Background: Experimenters showed participants either their current or future self. Results: Those who saw their future selves saved more.

Study: (Langlois, 2000) attractiveness and social encounters over the phone

Background: Male participants had a get-acquainted phone conversation with a woman whom they were led to believe, through viewing a photo provided by the experimenter, was attractive or unattractive. The females in the chosen photos were quite attractive for half the participants and unattractive for the others. Results: When only the woman's recorded comments from the conversations were played to other participants who weren't shown the woman's photo, and thus had no preconceptions about her appearance, a rather stunning result emerged. - They rated the woman who had talked to a man who thought she was attractive as being warmer and more socially posed than the woman who had talked to a man who thought she was unattractive. Conclusion: Being attractive leads to easier, rewarding social encounters, which in turn instill in good-looking people the confidence and social skills that bring about more rewarding interactions in the future.

Study: (Newcomb, 1956) similarity and attraction when people spend extended time together

Background: Newcomb recruited male college transfer students, who did not know each other beforehand, to live for a year, rent free, in a large house in exchange for filling out surveys a few hours each week. - In response to one of the survey questions, the students indicated how much they liked each of their housemates. Results: To an increasing degree over the course of the 15-week study, as students got to know one another better and better, their liking for other students was predictable based on how similar they were.

Study: (Grant, 2010) expressions of gratitude and reciprocity of altruism

Background: Participants helped an experimenter edit a letter online. - In the gratitude condition, participants were thanked via email. - In the control condition, participants received a polite message of equal length, but without a note of thanks. Results: When asked if they would help the experimenter edit a second letter, those who were thanked responded affirmatively 66% of the time compared with 32% in the control condition.

Experiment: (Krosnic, 1992) subliminal stimuli (on people)

Background: Participants saw pictures of a target person immediately after being subliminally presented with a pleasant image (such as a child playing with a doll) or an unpleasant one (such as a bloody shark). Results: Upon later evaluation of the target person, those who were subliminally exposed to positive images provided more favorable evaluations than those exposed to negative images. Conclusion: Subliminal stimuli can activate certain concepts and even shape everyday thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Experiment: (Kleck, 1980) Someone's watching - perception of other's perception of you

Background: Participants were brought in as "research assistants" administering a study, and they are told that the purpose of the study is to see how people respond to someone with various physical conditions. Half the subjects had a make-up "scar" on their face and saw it in the mirror, but before they went out, the experimenters secretly rubbed it off, so there was no actual deformity that the person they were interacting with could see. The subject then interacted with a partner and rated how that partner acted during the interaction. Results: When the "research assistant" thought that the partner was noticing a scar on their face, they picked up on a lot more tenseness/patronizing behavior

Experiment: (Carter, 2010) Happiness from experiences vs. things

Background: People spent money on an experience or a material item. Results: Experiences made people happier than material items.

The approach/inhibition theory makes two core predictions:

The first concerns the influence of power on how people perceive others - High-power individuals inclined to go after their own goals, are predicted to be less careful and systematic in how they assess others The second core element of the theory is the prediction that power should make people behave in less constrained and sometimes more inappropriate ways

Experiment: (Bolkan, 2009) the pre-suasion technique

Background: They got people to think of themselves as "adventurous" simply by asking them if they saw themselves as "somebody who is adventurous and likes to try new things" (almost 100% of those asked responded affirmatively) right before asking them for their email address so they could be sent instructions on how to get their free sample of the new drink. Results: This led to an over two-fold increase in the percentage of people who gave their emails (76%) compared with when the simple "how adventurous are you?" questions was not asked (33%)

Experiment: (Tracy, 2004) Studies of blind people showing expressions of emotion

Background: Tracy and Matsumoto analyzed the emotional expressions of sighted and blind Olympic athletes from 37 countries just after they had either won or lost a judo competition Congenitally blind athletes, who made up part of the sample, had received no visual input from their culture about how to express emotion nonverbally In Action: After victory, both sighted and blind athletes, including those blind from birth, expressed pride with smiles and by tilting their head back, expanding their chest, and raising their arms in the air. After losing, both groups of athletes lowered their heads and slumped their shoulders in shame Conclusion: blind individuals have remarkably similar expressions of emotion as sighted individuals Brings together Darwin's ideas about cross-species similarities, universality, and the expressions of emotion by those born without eyesight

Equity theory

The idea that people are motivated to pursue fairness, or equity, in their relationships. A relationship is considered equitable when the benefits are proportionate to the effort both people put into it

Study: (Kamarck, 1990) physiological stress around other people.

Summary: Women performed stressful, challenging tasks either in the presence of a friend or alone. Those accompanied by a friend showed a milder stress-related cardiovascular response to the challenging tasks.

Central route

a route to persuasion wherein people think carefully and deliberately about the content of a persuasive message, attending to its logic and the strength of its arguments, as well as to related evidence and principles

moral foundations theory

a theory proposing that there are five evolved, universal moral domains in which specific emotions guide moral judgments (care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, purity/degradation)

reflected self-appraisals

beliefs about what others think of our social selves - We internalize how we think others perceive us, not necessarily how they actually see us

In one implicit association task, seeing black faces __ detection of the crime object while white faces __ it.

facilitated; inhibited

economic perspective of prejudice

identifies the roots of intergroup hostility in competing interests that can set groups apart from one another

A given inconsistency will arouse dissonance if...

it implicates our core sense of self we ought to experience dissonance whenever we act in ways that are inconsistent with our core values and beliefs and (1) the behavior was freely chosen, (2) the behavior wasn't sufficiently justified, (3) the behavior had negative consequences, and (4) the negative consequences were foreseeable

deception research

research in which the participants are misled about the purpose of the research or the meaning of something that is done to them (informed consent does not work here)

Experiment: (Sakai, 1981) when do Japanese participants feel dissonance effects

researchers in another study persuaded participants to do something they didn't want to do and found dissonance effects for Japanese participants - IF they were led to think that other study were observing their behavior

local rules that facilitate human herding

state of uncertainty = move towards anyone who seems like they're moving towards where we want to go - when we all follow this = mobbing

Study examining the social comparison theory within 9th graders (Blanton, 1999)

students usually chose to compare their grades with those of someone who had slightly better grades than they did, presumably with the hope that one day they might get higher grades themselves

Ideomotor mimicry

subconsciously imitating other people's body language

2 types of self-awareness

subjective and objective

exceptionalist thesis

such crimes are perpetrated only by "exceptional" people - that is, exceptionally sadistic, desperate, or ethnocentric people.

intentional object

the focus of an emotional experience

Experiment: (Niedenthal, 1994) Exploring the idea that we perceive events in accordance with our current feelings

Background: Experimenters had participants listen to uplifting music by Mozart or melancholy music by Mahler. Feeling either happy or sad, participants then completed a lexical decision tasks, judging whether strings of letters were words or nonwords. In Action: When feeling happy, participants were quicker to identify happy words than sad words or positive words unrelated to happiness. When feeling sad, participants were quicker to identify the sad words than the happy words or the negative words unrelated to sadness.

Experiment: (Willis, 2006) An empirical demonstration of how quickly we make judgments about others

Background: Experimenters showed participants a large number of faces and had them rate how trustworthy, competent, likable, aggressive, or attractive each person seemed. Some participants were given as much time as they wanted to make each rating. Their trait judgments were used as the "gold standard" of comparison (the most telling impressions an individual could form based solely on photographs). Other participants were also asked to rate the photos, but after seeing each face for only a second, half a second, or a tenth of a second. Results: Hurried trait judgments corresponded remarkably well with the more reflective assessments Conclusion: A great deal of what we conclude about people based on their faces is determined almost instantaneously. In fact, the correlation between judgments made at leisure and those made in a tenth of a second was almost as high as the correlation between judgments made at leisure and those made in a full second. Theme: We infer based on minimal information.

Study: (Milgram, 1969) coordination of attention

Background: Experimenters stand up on the sidewalk and look up. - they increase the number of experimenters that are in the group looking up Results: When only 1 person is looking up, 40% of passerby's also look up. The more people that look up, the more passerby's also look up. Conclusion: local rule of humans = do what you see other people doing

Gestalt Psychology

Based on the German word gestalt, meaning "form" or "figure," this approach stresses the fact that people perceive objects not by means of some automatic registering device but by active, usually unconscious interpretation of what the object represents as a whole. Example: the participants in Milgram's study weren't perceiving the situation for what it was, but rather by what they were told/expected

Bob Rosenthal experiment: expectancy/Hawthorne effects

Gave two groups of students the same rats for a study. Told one group the rats were genius, told the other group the rats were dumb. The group with the "genius rats" reported that they learned better than the group with the "stupid rats." Theme: Expectations as a researcher can bias your results

affect; it's role in attitude

How much someone likes or dislikes an object Nearly every object reifies some degree of positive or negative emotion, which constitutes the affective component of the attitude somebody has toward it

Experiment on cultures of honor in the US North v US South (Nisbett)

Nisbett and his colleagues studied FBI reports of homicide as well as the circumstances of the homicides (murders committed in the context of another felony such as robbery v murders that were crimes of passion). They found that homicides were more common in the South and the most common kinds of homicide in the South involved some type of insult; but overall, other kinds of homicide not involving personal honor are actually less common in the south. Research strategy: Archival Research!!!

Study: (Reifman, 1991) heat, aggression, and baseball

Summary: As the weather gets hotter, major league baseball pitchers are more likely to hit batters with a pitch. This is especially true when the pitcher's teammates have been hit by the opposing pitcher earlier in the game.

Study: (Sherif, 1961) the robbers cave experiment

Summary: 22 fifth-grade boys were taken to Robbers Cave State Park in southeastern Oklahoma. The boys had signed up for a 2.5 week summer camp experience that, unbeknownst to them, was also a study of intergroup relationships. The research team spent over 300 hours screening boys from the Oklahoma City area to find 22 who were not unusual in any way: noeno had problems in school, all were from intact, middle-class families, and there were no notable ethnic group differences among them. The boys, none of whom knew each other beforehand, were divided into two groups of 11 and taken to separate areas of the park. Neither group even knew of the other's existence. - In the first phase of the experiment, the two groups independently engaged in activities designed to foster group unity (pitching tenets, preparing meals) and took part in such common camp activities as playing baseball, swimming, and putting on skits. Cohesion developed within each group, and one group of boys named themselves the Eagles and the other named themselves the Rattlers. - In the second phase, the Eagles and Rattlers were brought together for a tournament. Each member of the winning team would receive a medal and a highly coveted pocket knife. Members of the losing team would get nothing. The tournament lasted 5 days and consisted of such activities as baseball, touch football, tug-of-war, cabin inspections, and a treasure hunt. The competitive nature of the tournament was designed to encourage each group to see the other as an obstacle to obtaining the reward and hence as a foe. This is exactly what happened. From the very first competitive encounter, and with increasing frequency throughout the tournament, the two groups hurled insults at each other, which differed markedly from the self-glorifying and congratulatory comments the boys made about members of their own group. Expressions of intergroup hostility, moreover, weren't limited to words. The Eagles captured and burned the Rattlers' flag, which naturally led to a retaliatory theft of the Eagles' flag. - The third and final part of the experiment is in many ways the most important, because it dealt with how to reduce the conflict between the two groups. On seven occasions over the next two days after the competition was over, the two groups were simply brought together in various noncompetitive settings to see whether their hostility would dissipate. It didn't. Simple contact between the two groups just led to more hostility. Given that simple noncompetitive contact failed to reduce hostility between the two groups, the investigators next tried confronting the boys with a number of crises that could be resolved only through the cooperative efforts of both groups. Results: Relations between the two groups quickly showed the effects of superordinate goals. Name-calling abruptly dropped off and friendships between members of the two groups developed. The hostility produced by 5 days of competition was erased by the going pursuit of common goals (superordinate goals). Conclusion: The Robbers Cave experiment offers several important lessons. - One is that neither differences in background nor differences in appearance nor a prior history of conflict are necessary for intergroup hostility to develop. All that's required is that two groups enter into competition over rewards that only one can attain. - Another lesson is that competition against outsiders often increases group cohesion. This tendency is often exploited by political demagogues who invoke the threat of outside enemies to try to stamp out dissension or deflect attention from problems or conflict within the group itself. - The final lesson points to how intergroup conflict can be diminished. To reduce the hostility between certain groups, policy makers should think of ways to get them to work together to fulfill common goals. Simply putting adversaries together "to get to know one another better" is usually not enough. It's the pursuit of bigger, shared, superordinate goals that keeps everyone's eyes on the prize and away from troublesome subgroup distinctions.

Study: (Gable, 2006) Are there healthy patterns of conversation that foster more satisfying bonds?

Summary: In their research, these investigators found that individuals reported greater relationship satisfaction if they tended to receive active, constructive "capitalization" from their significant others—when their partners responded to their good news with engaged enthusiasm. Conclusion: It's important to capitalize on the good: to share what's good in your life with your partner and to engage with the other's good news.

Stereotypes

a belief that certain attributes are characteristic of members of a particular group - It involves thinking about a person not as an individual, but as a member of a group, and projecting your beliefs about the group onto that person.

social reward

a benefit, such as praise, positive attention, something tangible, or gratitude, that may be gained from helping others, and serves a motive for altruistic behavior

corpus callosum; what happens in epileptic seizures; what is the solution

a broad band of nerve fibers joining the two hemispheres of the brain; there's a positive feedback loop between the hemisphered in which activity in one hemisphere leads to enhanced activity in the other hemisphere, and so on and so forth; solution to seizures is to separate the lobes, making them independent

Avoidance dimension of attachment

a facet of attachment that captures the degree to which a person is comfortable with intimacy and dependence on relationship partners

Spin framing

a less straightforward form of framing that varies the context, not just the order, of what is presented A company whose produce is of higher quality than competing products will introduce information that frames the consumer's choice as one of quality. Another company whose product has a lower price will feature information that frames the consumer's choice as one of savings.

Investment model of commitment

a model of interpersonal relationships maintaining that three determinants make partners more committed to each other: relationship satisfaction, few alternative partners, and investments in the relationship

Elaboration likelihood model (ELM)

a model of persuasion maintaining that there are two different routes to persuasion: the central route and the peripheral route - The core idea is that people in certain contexts process persuasive messages rather mindlessly and effortlessly and on other occasions deeply and attentively - This notion of dual processes is analogous to automatic and controlled processing

natural experiment

a naturally occurring event or phenomenon having somewhat different conditions that can be compared with almost as much rigor as in experiments where the investigator manipulates the conditions example: We might measure people's happiness before and after getting married, and it turns out people are happier after marriage. This strongly suggests that married people are happier because they are married, not that they are married because they are cheerful

Norm of reciprocity

a norm dictating that people should provide benefits to those who benefit them When someone does you a favor, you have a tacit obligation to agree to any reasonable request that person might make in turn - To fail to respond is to violate a powerful social norm and run the risk of social condemnation

Likert scale

a numerical scale used to assess people's attitudes; a scale that includes a set of possible answers with labeled anchors on each extreme

explanatory style

a person's habitual way of explaining events, typically assessed along three dimensions: internal/external, stable/unstable, and global/specific

informed consent

a person's signed agreement to participate in a procedure or research study after learning all the relevant aspects

contingencies of self-worth

a perspective maintaining that self-esteem is contingent on successes and failures in domains on which a person has based his or her self-worth

Deindividuation

a reduced sense of individual identity accompanied by diminished self-regulation that can come over people when they are in a large group. People get caught up in the moment, with a diminished sense of responsibility for their actions.

peripheral route

a route to persuasion wherein people attend to relatively easy-to-process, superficial cues related to a persuasive message, such as its length or the expertise or attractiveness of the source of the message

interdependent self-construal

a self-concept that emphasizes what connects the self to other people and groups

independent self-construal

a self-concept that emphasizes what makes the self different and sets it apart from others

theory

a set of related propositions intended to describe some phenomenon or aspect of the world

Distinctiveness

a type of covariation information, whether a behavior is unique to a particular situation or occurs in many or all situations - The more someone's reaction is confined to a particular situation (when distinctiveness is high), the less it says about that individual and the more it says about the specific situation

Consensus

a type of covariation information, whether most people would behave the same way or differently in a given situation - All else being equal, the more an individual's reaction is shared by others (when consensus is high), the less it says about that individual and the more it says about the situation

Overgeneralization from momentary mental states... - the inference "not very smart" when sleep deprived is __ because we are all prone to making errors when cognitively and mentally exhausted, but it is not warranted as an __ about the intelligence of the person

accurate; inference

examples of implicit measures:

affective timing, implicit association test, degree of physical closeness, physiological indicators

After receiving sensory information about a stimulus from the thalamus, the __ then provides information about the positive or negative valence, or value, of the object. This evaluation occurs, remarkably, before the mind has categorized the object in question. Even before we fully know what an object is, we have a gut feeling about it. When the amygdala is damaged, animals no longer have appropriate __ of objects: they eat feces, attempt to copulate with members of other species, and show no fear of threatening stimuli such as snakes or dominant animals.

amygdala; evaluations

Implementation intention

an "if-then" plan to engage in a goal-directed behavior ("then") whenever a particular cue ("if") is encountered

prejudice

an attitude or affective response (positive or negative) toward a group and its individual members - Prejudice involves prejudging others because they belong to a specific category.

Emotional amplification

an increase in an emotional reaction to an event that is proportional to how easy it is to imagine the event not happening

Zimbardo (1970) proposed a theoretical model of deindividuation that specifies how certain conditions create the kind of psychological state that promotes the impulsive and often destructive behaviors observes in mobs. The most important of these conditions are the __ individuals enjoy by blending in with a large group and the diffusion of responsibility that occurs when there are many people to share the blame. These conditions, along with the __, heightened activity, and sensory overload that often accompany being immersed in a large group, lead to the internal state of __.

anonymity; arousal; deindividuation

volunteerism

assistance a person regularly provides to another person or group with no expectation of compensation

emotional well-being

balance of positive and negative emotions at any moment in time over a given length of time

objectivist view of beauty

beauty is inherent in the properties of objects that produce pleasant sensations in the perceiver

What makes a face look more trustworthy?

becomes more feminine, younger, happier, and attractive

hostile aggression

behavior intended to harm another, either physically or psychologically, and motivated by feelings of anger and hostility

impulsive behavior

behavior that because of its very impulsivity often turns violent

automatic conformity

behavioral mimicry (similar to simulation theory) - ex: contagious yawning

Emergent properties of groups

behaviors that emerge only when people are in groups The behavior of large groups of people is more than the sum of the behavioral tendencies of its individual members

Studies have shown that highly specific attitudes typically do a better job of predicting specific __, and general attitudes typically do a better job of predicting how a person __ in general.

behaviors; behaves

The complete __ is necessary to determine an accurate inference of a facial expression.

body

What happens when you aren't meeting standards and you cannot escape OSA?

change behavior to meet standards

Self-perception theory began as an alternative account of all of the __ __ findings, but it has important implications for self-understanding more generally, and it offers novel explanations for many real-life choices and behaviors.

cognitive dissonance

Just desserts motive

commonly referred to as eye-for-an-eye justice; the goal is to avenge a prior evil deed rather than prevent future ones - Such punishments are calibrated to the moral offensiveness of the crime. - Empirical studies of US college students find that their recommended punishments closely track their feelings of moral outrage; people prefer punishments that match the perceived severity of the harm caused by the alleged crime.

How do we evaluate the rewards and costs of different relationships?

comparison level and comparison level for alternatives

How to avoid biases in analysis: avoid false positives - no selective reporting (only reporting conditions that __ the hypothesis) - to do this, avoid arbitrary __ rules and __ your data

confirm; stopping; preregister

One construal process that seems to benefit a person's overall health is developing a sense of __ - a feeling of mastery, autonomy, and efficacy in influencing important life outcomes.

control

Peripheral cues: Features of the message source: __/__ __ (attractiveness/fame/similarity) Features of the message: - __ of messages/arguments - __ it evokes Features of the audience: - __

credibility/expertise; likeability; number; emotions; mood

The seekers feeling like they saved the world (increased/decreased) dissonance by increasing __ x __.

decreased; consonance; importance

Explicit attitudes predict... Implicit attitudes predict...

deliberate behavior (verbal); unobtrusive behavior (nonverbal)

Image variation - can generate radically __ impressions of the same person - we are oblivious to this face because image variation is relatively unimportant for __ faces - but first impressions are about __ faces

different; familiar; unfamiliar

Gay and straight faces might be morphologically different beached on

differential hormone exposure

derogate the victim

disparage the character of those who suffer unfortunate experiences that are completely beyond their personal control

Anonymity __ normative social influence and therefore substantially reduces conformity.

eliminates - This effect highlights an important distinction between the impact of informational and normative social influence. - Informational social influence, by guiding how we come to see the issues or stimuli before us, leads to internalization. - We don't just mimc a particular response, we adopt the group's perspective. - Normative social influence often has a greater impact on public compliance and on private acceptance. - To avoid disapproval, we sometimes do or say one thing but continue to believe another

motivational perspective of prejudice

emphasizes the psychological needs that lead to intergroup conflict

Comparison level for alternatives

expectations people have about what they can get out of available, alternative relationships - If you have plenty of attractive suitors knocking at your door, you're likely to have a pretty high comparison level for alternatives

Groupthink

faulty thinking by members of highly cohesive groups in which the critical scrutiny that should be devoted to the issues at hand is subverted by social pressures to reach consensus

Compliance

getting people to comply with something you want

duration neglect

giving relative unimportance to the length of an emotional experience, whether pleasurable or unpleasant, in judging and remembering the overall experience

Ethnocentrism

glorifying one's own group while vilifying other groups

One of the most important determinants of leadership is skillful expertise relevant to the __ of the group; there is simply no substitute for having specific talents that enable the group to achieve its goals

goals

Groups quickly evolve into hierarchies because having leaders helps solve some of the problems inherent in __ living.

group

Surprising impressions: - information from the face could even reveal underlying __ in the case of the elderly (how old one looks relative to their biological age) - after age __, the best predictor of health is appearance the face is part of the body, what makes one look younger/older: - genetic luck - socioeconomic status and access to healthcare - chronic conditions - chronic sun exposure - smoking accumulated __ and __ in life

health; 70; advantages; disadvantages

mental states

hidden causes of behavior (personalities, goals, desires, beliefs, emotions, and sensations)

Central route to persuasion: Message > Audience Factor: __ motivation and ability > Processing approach: __ route (focus on __ of the message) > persuasion outcome: __ change

high; central; quality; lasting

So, are self-enhancing tendencies adaptive or not? Do they benefit the individual? It depends. Finding: (Robins, 2001) showed that students who entered college with self-enhancing beliefs about their academic ability reported __ average levels of self-esteem and well-being over a four-year period relative to their non-enhancing peers However, self-enhancement tendencies were associated with a __ trajectory over the four-year period for both self-esteem and well-being Although self-enhancement was linked to greater self-esteem and well-being in the short-term, the advantages linked to self-enhancement eroded over __

high; downward; time

Accessibility of the attitude

how often one thinks about it and how quickly it comes to mind

impression management

how we attempt to control the particular impressions other people form about us

human herding: "banding"

humans natural form lines (or bands) of people when we are all in one spot

empathic concern

identifying with someone in need, including feeling and understanding what that person is experiencing, accompanied by the intention to help the person

two reasons why we mindlessly copy the behaviors of other people

ideomotor action and to facility smooth, gratifying interaction to foster social connection

Dominant response

in a person's hierarchy of possible responses in any context, the response that person is most likely to make

double curse of incompetence

incompetent people (those who tend to perform well below their peers in a given domain) are deficient not only in the skills needed to perform better, but also in the very knowledge necessary for accurately recognizing their incompetence

Whom to target in interventions?

individual: improving individual well-being (behavior and psychology) - ex: increasing URM students' sense of belonging in college social interactions: improving dyadic interactions (how 2 people relate to each other) - ex: encouraging teacher empathy to increase trust between students and teachers groups/communities: improving dynamics/cohesion within a bounded group - ex: school network anti conflict intervention

Researchers have established that memories, like perceptions and judgments, should be considered __ rather than direct readouts of reality.

inferences

self-misidentification reasons often caused by brain damage to __

mirror agnosia, face misidentification, asomatognosia, somatoparaphrenia often caused by brain damage to parietal lobe

Pluralistic ignorance

misperception of a group norm that results from observing people who are acting at variance with their private beliefs out of concern for the social consequences; those actions reinforce the erroneous group norm

Paying attention/being present makes one (more/less) happy.

more

People from interdependent cultures might be expected to conform __ than those from independent cultures.

more

normalist thesis

most people are capable of such destructive obedience, and given the right circumstances, almost anyone would commit such acts. (Milgram's experiment)

Overgeneralization from stereotypes... - Babyfaced individuals are perceived as __ and not __ - Individuals with feminine faces are perceived as more __ - individuals with masculine faces are perceived as more __

naive; tough; trustworthy; competent

emotional brain response: mid-cingulate

pain (both physical and social)

"Tend-and-befriend" approach to stress:

paying attention to the needs of others engages physiological processes in our own body that reduce stress-related HPA axis activation, thus paving the way for better health. - A central player in this branch of the nervous system is the chemical oxytocin.

dissonance theory

people like their thoughts to be consistent with one another, and will do substantial mental work to achieve such cognitive consistency example: when people work hard to acquire something (a product, new job, admission to something exclusive) and it turns out to be disappointing, they will be motivated to find hidden benefits in what they got

Contagious yawning

people who are more empathetic and who do better on theory of mind tasks are more susceptible to contagious yawning children with autism are not susceptible to contagious yawning contagious yawning is a social phenomenon

A tendency to explain negative events in terms of internal, stable, and global causes is considered a __ explanatory style.

pessamistic

exploratory research

post hoc hypothesis: formulated based on insights from data analysis generates a new hypothesis to test in confirmatory research

Why is the physiognomist promise so appealing?

promise an easy solution to a complex problem: how to figure out the intentions and capabilities of others people agrees with our intuitions: rapid, efficient impressions that seem to be shared with people like us

The observer is inclined to attribute actions to __ of the actor. The actor is more inclined to attribute the same action to __ factors.

properties; situational

principle of serviceable associated habits

proposed by Darwin, the idea that the expressions of human emotion we observe today derive from actions that proved useful in our evolutionary past

Kinds of facial impressions have long been a source of historic fascination. The physiognomist promise:

reading others' character from their appearance

social me

refers to the parts of self-knowledge that are derived from social relationships reflects that the self is not something to be distinguished from the social world but rather is a social entity through and through

cognitions

representations in our minds of internal or external events

compliance

responding favorably to an explicit request by another person - Compliance attempts can come from people with some power over you, as when your boss asks you to run an errand, or they can come from peers, as when a classmate asks to borrow your notes. - Compliance attempts from powerful people often aren't as nuanced and sophisticated as those from peers because they don't have to be.

the research process

scientific literature > (literature search) > hypothesis > (operationalize hypothesis) > experimental design > (collect data) > data > (analyze) > results > (interpret) > conclusion (publish) > scientific literature

Metacognition

secondary thoughts that are reflections on primary cognitions

A __ attachment style predicts more positive life outcomes.

secure

The individual who scores low on both the anxiety and avoidance dimensions are, in the language of attachment types, the prototypical __ __ person - someone who isn't anxious about rejection or abandonment, who is comfortable with intimacy, and who seeks closeness to and support from relationship partners.

securely attached

Common treats to internal validity

selection bias, differential attrition, regression to the mean, experimenter/rater bass, expectancy/hawthorne effects

But our minds sometimes respond selectively to information in a way that maintains our initial point of view. This happens through two ways:

selective attention and selective evaluation

promotion focus occurs with respect to __ self standards

self-regulation of behavior with respect to ideal self standards, or a focus on attaining positive outcomes and approach-related behaviors

Objective Self-Awareness (OSA) - attention to __ as object - created by mirrors, cameras, audiences, or other __-focusing stimuli - increases salience of discrepancy between real self and self __

self; self; standard

channel factors

situational circumstances that appear unimportant on the surface but that can have great consequences for behavior - facilitating it, blocking it, or guiding it in a particular direction

Displacement hypothesis

social media uses and replaced offline, face-to-face interactions, thus increasing loneliness

To explicitly examine the relationship between social connection and health, researchers have measured the strength of __ support. - This scale captures the extent to twitch we can count on friends and family for support and __. - With measures like these, researchers have documented that social connections are vital to our physical, mental, and emotional __.

social; care; health - In one study, people who had fewer meaningful connections to others were 1.9-3.1x more likely to have died nine years later. - People who report having strong ties to others live longer. - People who report being lonely show higher levels of cortisol, suggesting that strong social connections calm HPA axis activation.

Subjective self awareness: Flow Causes: - skills __ but not __ - clear goals and __ Consequences: - intense focused __ - merging of action and awareness - loss of self-consciousnes - loss of time - experience of __ reward

stretched; exceeded; concentration; intrinsic

halo effect

the common belief (accurate or not) that attractive individuals possess a host of positive qualities beyond their physical appearance

need for cognition

the degree to which someone likes to think deeply about things

Naïve realism

the disbelief in (or non-appreciation of) subjective construal and multiple perspectives as the fundamental nature of experiencing

generalizability

the extent to which we can claim our findings inform us about a group larger than the one we studied

Attachment theory

the idea that early attachments with parents and other caregivers can shape relationships for a person's whole life

Communal relationships

the individuals feel a special responsibility for one another and often expect their relationship to be long term - They are based on a sense of "oneness" and a family-like sharing of common identity. - Individuals give and receive according to the principle of need - that is, according to which person in the relationship has the most pressing need at any given time. - Prototypical examples of communal relationships are ones between family members and between close friends - the kinds of relationships that are the social fabric of communal life in small villages.

self-esteem

the overall positive or negative evaluation an individual has of himself or herself

relationship satisfaction aspect

the partners' evaluation of the rewards and costs associated with their relationship - One of the strongest indicators of romantic satisfaction in long-term relationships is how much partners feel they get out of the relationship. - Recent work suggests that people base their commitment to a relationship more on their expected future satisfaction in the relationship than their current satisfaction.

ideal self

the self that embodies people's wishes and aspirations

ought self

the self that is concerned with the duties, obligations, and external demands people feel they are compelled to honor

identifiable victim effect

the tendency to be more moved by the vivid plight of a single individual than by a more abstract number of people

self-verification theory

the theory that people strive for stable, subjectively accurate beliefs about the self because such self-views give a sense of coherence and predictability

Prescriptive norm

the way a person is supposed to behave in a given context; also called injunctive norm - correspond to what ought to be motivate behavior through informal social sanctions

subjective construal

the way each of us as an individual interprets what we see around us in the world

socialization agents

those who pass on social expectations - This happens directly (parents insisting that their children share) and indirectly (teachers modeling appropriate behaviors) -By encouraging certain behaviors and providing opportunities for particular activities, socialization agents influence the personality traits, abilities, and preferences we come to think of as our own

A very important implication of non conscious processing is that research on human behavior should not normally depend on people's __ reports about why they believe something or why they are engaged in a particular behavior.

verbal

Social connections makes us happy. Being around others enhances individual __. Spending time in social settings enhances levels of well-being among both introverted and extroverted.

wellbeing

People are accurate in reporting __ they are feeling, but not __.

what; why

Implicit biases in trial judges findings based of results of IAT testing: - strong __ preference among white judges - __ real preference among black judges - black judges __ IAT scores as Blacks on the internet - white judges statistically __ white preference than Whites on the internet

white; no; comparable; stronger

Among other results, researchers have found that both young and older individuals show a pronounced prejudice in favor of the (young/old) over the (young/old), and about ⅔ of white respondents show a strong or moderate prejudice for white over black. About ½ of all __ respondents also show some prejudice in favor of white faces.

young; old; black

gossip

a communicative act in which one person comments on the reputation of another who is not present - One of the primary reasons we gossip is to figure out the reputations of other people; through gossip, we investigate whether other group members are inclined to act in ways that strengthen the group or in ways that might create friction and ill will.

Display rules

a culturally specific rule that governs how, when and to whom people express emotion (de-intensifying, intensifying)

hypothesis

a prediction about what will happen under particular circumstances

internal validity

confidence that only the manipulated variable could have produced the results; i.e., no third variable - requires that the experimental setup seem realistic and plausible to the participants

What are the three types of social influence?

conformity, compliance, persuasion

Agenda control

efforts of the media to select certain events and topics to emphasize, thereby shaping which issues and events people think are important

The mind processes information in two different ways in a social situation. Automatic processing is often based on ________, whereas controlled processing is often based on ________.

emotions; rationality

Averageness of a face is a predictor of attractiveness because it signals biological __.

normalcy

authority

power that derives from institutionalized role or arrangements

internalization

private acceptance of a proposition, orientation, or ideology

Despite the degree to which we're immersed in media of different kinds on a daily basis, several reviews suggest that the media have only a __ effect on what we buy, whom we vote for, and whether or not we adopt healthier habits.

small Why? Part of the answer lies in the fact that many of the important principles of social psychology - influence of perceptual biases, previous commitments, prior knowledge - serve as sources of independent thought and significant forces of resistance in the face of persuasive attempts.

familialism

social value defined by interpersonal warmth, closeness, and support

Basking in reflected glory

taking pride in the accomplishments of other people in one's group, such as when sports fans identify with a winning team

stereotypes

the belief that certain attributes are characteristic of members of a particular group schemas that describe different types of people

Fluency

the feeling of ease (or difficulty) associated with processing information

Covariation principle

the idea that behavior should be attributed to potential causes that occur along with the observed behavior

paired distinctiveness

the pairing of two distinctive events that stand out even more because they occur together

face

the public image of ourself that we want others to believe

actual self

the self that people believe they are

Ways to prevent group think:

- group leaders refrain from making their opinions known - making sure the group isn't cut off from outside input - designate one person to play devil's advocate

The processes involved in a court case can be separated into three distinct phases:

1. Pretrial events, including, in the case of criminal trials, eyewitness identification, attempts to elicit confessions, and efforts to distinguish lies from sincere efforts to tell the truth 2. Issues related to the trial itself, including jury selection, jury deliberation, and jury size 3. Post-trial events, such as the administration of punishment

operationalization

1. measurement (dependent variable) 2. experimental design (independent variable)

Top-down processing

"theory-driven" mental processing, in which an individual filters and interprets new information in light of preexisting knowledge and expectations

Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962

- 3 girls heard a joke and couldn't stop laughing - the laughter spread to the class, school, etc. and once they were all sent home, the laughter spread through towns - over 1000 people were affected by the "laughing epidemic" takeaway: crowds are weird

Experiment: Deindividuation in the Dark

- Brought people into a room and left them there for an hour - one condition lights were on, other one lights were off - in the condition with lights off ALL behaviors (touching accidentally, touching purposefully, hugging, sexual arousal, moving seat) increased - reduced objective self awareness allows you to act more how you want (the dark reduced OSA)

mimicking people to facilitate smooth, gratifying interaction and, in so doing, to foster social connection

- People tend to like those who mimic them more than those who don't, even when they're unaware of being mimicked. - People who have been mimicked tend to engage in more prosocial behavior (behavior intended to help others) immediately afterward, such as donating money to a good cause. - Studies have shown that our tendency to mimic others is particularly strong when we feel a need to affiliate with others and when the others in question are well liked.

Experiment (Markus, 1991) about cross-cultural positive illusions and the effect on well-being

- This work demonstrates that East Asians are less likely than Westerners to approve of positive illusions about the self In one study, Japanese college students were less likely than American students to assume they were better than average in important abilities, such as academic talent - Such cross-cultural evidence suggests that positive illusions do not automatically enhance well-being - They often do so for Westerners because a positive view of the self is a cherished cultural value in the West - In contrast, personal well-being for East Asians appears to be more closely tied to interdependent values, such as fulfilling social roles and expectations

Experiment: Trick or Treat

- bowl of candy left outside of house - half the time there's a mirror behind the bowl, other half no mirror - the percentage of kids under 12 and kids 13+ both PLUMMETED when the mirror was there - increased OSA makes you change behavior to meet internal standards

Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

-40 Year Experiment in which Black men were tricked into believing they were being medically treated. -Racist theory that blacks responded differently to this disease -Black subjects were never given treatment and suffered horribly 1930s to the 1970s

local rules of loci that change their behavior in groups:

1. if craving salt/protein, eat another locust 2. if being eaten, run away these naturally form a group/swarming

reciprocity as a benefit of helping

1. individuals must associate for long enough periods of time to develop reciprocal interactions 2. the likelihood of one individual performing some social exchange with another is predicted on the basis of their past interactions 3. the roles of giver and receiver should reverse at least once 4. the short-term benefits to the recipient are greater than the hosts to the donor 5. givers should be able to recognize and expel cheaters from the system

Actor-observer difference

A difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment: the actor (who is relatively inclined to make situational attributions) or the observer (who is relatively inclined to make dispositional attributions)

Nuremberg Trials

A series of court proceedings held in Nuremberg, Germany, after World War II, in which Nazi leaders were tried for aggression, violations of the rules of war, and crimes against humanity (showed unethical research problems)

the milgram experiment (1961)

A series of psychological experiments which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience; demonstration of the power of the situation

Construal level theory

A theory about the relationship between temporal distance (and other kinds of distance) and abstract or concrete thinking: psychologically distant actions and events are thought about in abstract terms; actions and events that are close at hand are thought about in concrete terms

self-discrepancy theory

A theory that behavior is motivated by standards reflecting ideal and ought selves. Falling short of these standards produces specific emotions: dejection-related emotions in the case of actual-ideal discrepancies and agitation-related emotions in the case of actual-ought discrepancies

Experiment: (Woodward, 1998) How babies interpret goal attribution (reaching for ball)

Background: 7-month olds were habituated to a scene in which an arm reached to the left for a ball. Then, the display was changed to either show a different path with the same goal or the same path with a different goal. Result: Babies notice the goal.

Study: (Anderson, 1987) heat and anger

Background: Anderson examined the crime rates of 260 US cities during the year 1980. - For each city, he identified the number of days when the temperature exceeded 90 degrees fahrenheit. Results: The number of hot days (above 90 degrees) was a strong predictor of elevated violent crime rates but not nonviolent crime rates, even when controlling for the city's level of unemployment, per capita income, and average age of its citizens.

Experiment: "Who Am I?" exercise to see if Westerners are self-contained by asking them to describe themselves. (Ma and Schoeneman, 1997)

Background: Ma and Schoeneman gave the test to American university students and to 4 different groups living in Kenya: university students (more exposed to Western culture), workers in the capital city (somewhat exposed), and traditional Maasai and Samburu herding peoples (not exposed). In Action: Traditional Maasai and Samburu define themselves in terms of their family, property, and position in the community. Kenyan students, on the other hand, are far more likely to mention personal characteristics. Kenyan students differ only slightly from American students. Workers are in between the tribespeople and the students. Conclusion: Different self-construals can emerge even among those who ostensibly live within the same "culture"

Experiment: (Berglas, 1978) testing self-handicapping

Background: Male participants were led to believe that they were either going to succeed or going to have difficulty on a test they were scheduled to take. Participants were given the chance to inject one of two drugs: the first would enhance their test performance, and the second would impair it. Results: Participants who felt they were likely to fail the test preferred the performance-inhibiting drug, even though it was likely to diminish their chances of success. Conclusion: People would sometimes rather fail and have a ready excuse for it than go for success and have no excuse for failure

Experiment: (Wilson, 2005) affective forecasting

Background: Participants rated their happiness after being placed into a dorm. - The dorm was either higher desirable or undesirable. Results: People are not good at predicting future happiness.

Self-Reference Effect experiment (Rogers, 1977)

Background: Participants read a word and were asked to analyze the word in 1 of 4 ways: structurally, phonemically, semantically, and self-relevantly. The participants were then given a surprise recall. Results: Words in which they analyzed self-relevantly were remembered much more than the others.

Experiment: (Isen, 1976) the impact of good mood on favors

Background: Participants received a phone call from someone who claimed to have spent her last dime on this very ("misdialed") vall; she asked if they would dial a specified number and relay a message. - In one condition, shortly before receiving the call, participants were given a free sample of stationary to put them in a positive mood. - In another condition, participants did not receive a free sample before the call. Results: When the request was made of those without the free sample, only 10% complied. - But the compliance rate shot up dramatically among participants who received the request a few minutes after receiving the gift. - The compliance rate then declined gradually as the delay between receiving the gift and hearing the request increased.

Experiment: (Simons, 1999) demonstrating the extent to which our schemas and expectations guide our attention

Background: Participants watched a videotape of two teams of three people, each passing a basketball back and forth. The members of one team wore white shirts, and the members of the other team wore black shirts. The researchers asked each participant to count the number of passes the members of one of the teams made. 45 seconds into the action, a person wearing a gorilla costume strolled into the middle of the action. Results: Only ½ the participants noticed the gorilla. Conclusion: The participants' schemas about what is likely to happen in a game of catch directed their attention so intently to some parts of the video that they failed to see a rather dramatic stimulus they weren't expecting.

Experiment: (Gilbert, 1989) Demonstrating how when we are tired, unmotivated, or distracted, we are more likely to commit the fundamental attribution error because the adjustment process that considers the situational context is shortened/skipped

Background: Participants watched a videotape, without the sound, of a young woman engaged in a conversation with another person. The woman appeared anxious throughout (bit her nails, twirled her hair, tapped fingers, etc). Gilbert told half the participants that the woman was responding to a number of anxiety-inducing questions (sexual fantasies, personal failures, etc). He told the other participants that she was responding to questions about innocuous topics (world travel, great books, etc). Gilbert predicted that all participants, regardless of what they were told about the content of the discussion, would immediately and automatically assume that she was an anxious person. Those told she was discussing anxiety-producing topics, however, would take that into account and adjust their initial characterization, concluding that maybe she was not such an anxious person after all. Those told she was discussing a series of bland topics would not make such an adjustment and would conclude that she was an anxious person. But Gilbert added a twist. He gave another two groups of participants the same information he gave the first two, but he had these groups memorize a list of words while watching the videotape. Gilbert reasoned that this extra demand on their attention would make them less able to carry out the deliberative stage of the attribution process in which they would (ordinarily) adjust their initial characterization of the person to account for situational constraints. If so, then those who thought the woman was discussing anxiety-provoking topics should nevertheless rate her as being just as anxious as those who were told she was discussing innocuous topics. Results: The predictions were realized. When participants were busy memorizing a list of words, they didn't have the cognitive resources needed to adjust their initial impression, so they rated the woman as being just as anxious when they thought she was discussing anxiety-provoking topics as when discussing innocuous topics. Commentary: This demonstration is important because many things in life may rob us of the cognitive resources needed to carry out the correction phase of attributional analysis in which we take into account situational constraints.

Experiment: (Swann, 1989) Self-Enhancement vs Self-Verification

Background: Participants were asked to list 5 qualities of themselves and rate how positive their self-views were on each. In Action: When asked how much they would enjoy getting feedback on their highest and lowest rated quality, participants preferred to get feedback on their best quality. - When asked if they HAD to hear about both their highest and lowest rated quality, how much they'd want to hear favorable or unfavorable feedback, people wanted to hear unfavorable feedback for their worst quality. Conclusion: People want feedback that aligns with that they already think about themselves, - Self-enhancement: If we get to choose, we want to hear about our good qualities and feel better when we do - Self-verification: If we have to hear about a trait, we want to heat what we believe is true, but will feel bad if that truth is negative

Study: (Kraus, 2013) how class-related differences in attribution extend to how people from different class background explain why some people are rich and some are poor

Background: Participants were asked to offer explanations for why some people rise in society and others remain in the lower rungs. Results: Wealthy participants were likely to endorse the belief that a person's standing in society is determined by genetic factors and a person's temperamental inclination to succeed/fail. Working-class individuals are more likely to cite situational factors. Commentary: Another study in this investigation found that upper-class individuals' tendency to attribute a person's lot in life to genetically based, biological factors led them to advocate for harsher punishments for students who have been found cheating and for citizens who have violated the law.

Experiment: Can a person gain accurate self knowledge? (Vazire and Mehl)

Background: Participants were asked to rate how accurate they think people are at assessing how much they themselves perform 25 different behaviors (reading, singing, watching TV, etc). They also asked participants how accurate they think people are at predicting how often OTHER people they know well perform these behaviors. In a subsequent study, the same researchers again had participants report on their enactment of the 25 behaviors. They also recruited "informants" (close people to the participants) to report on the participants' enactment of the behaviors. Then, over a 4-day period, with participants wearing a device that records the ambient sounds of their daily lives, Vazire and Mehl measured the actual frequency of participants' behaviors. In Action: For every single behavior, the participants rated the accuracy of self-predictions to be greater than the accuracy of predictions about others (each of us is our own best expert) Contrary to the assumption that we know ourselves the best, they found that the reports of close others are as accurate as our own in anticipating our actual behavior Results: Ratings made by the self and ratings made by close others independently predicted the self's behavior; that is, both the self and others have at least some accurate insight into who one is But a closer inspection of the findings showed that there are certain aspects of a person that are uniquely known to the self and certain aspects that are uniquely known to others Because we have greater information than others do about our inner states (thoughts and feelings), we are better judges of our internal traits (optimistic/pessimistic). Other people have better information for judging our external traits by observing our overt behavior (boisterous/outspoken) Commentary: Motivation forces might be at play as well; most people want to think highly of themselves, so when it comes to traits to which we attach a lot of value, such as creativity, other people tend to know us better than we know ourselves because their judgments are less likely to be tainted by the desire to arrive at favorable assessments of the self

Experiment: (Jones, 1967) The Fundamental Attribution Error (essays)

Background: Participants were given essays written by another student. The essay was either pro or anti Castro. The participants were also told if the essay was either written by force or was chosen. They were then ask to rate how Pro-Castro the writer was. Results: When the participants knew the essay was chosen freely, they rated the writer as Pro-Castro. But even when they knew the essay was forced, they still made assumptions about the writer's stance, even though the writer didn't choose the stance. Conclusion: People ignore situational causes and over-apply personal causation.

Study: (Norenzayan, 2008) does exposure to religious concepts make people more prosocial?

Background: Participants were shown sequences of given words, randomly arranged, and asked to generate sentences using four of those five words. - In a religious prime condition, the five words always included at least one word with religious meaning. - In a neutral prime condition, participants did the same task of unscrambling sentences, but none of the words had religious meaning. - After this task, participants in both conditions then received $10 and were asked to give some amount away to a stranger. Results: Participants in the neutral prime condition were more than twice as likely to give nothing to a stranger, compared with those in the religion prime condition (36% versus 16%). - By contrast, people who were primed with religious concepts were more than 4x as likely to treat a stranger as an equal by giving half of the money to the stranger (52% versus 12%) - Subsequent studies inspired by this work have shown that different kinds of religious priming - reporting on personal religious beliefs, even stranding near religious buildings - also increase prosocial behaviors of different kinds.

Experiment: (Strahan, 2002) subliminal stimuli (on thirst)

Background: Participants were told not to drink anything for 3 hours before coming to the experiment. - Upon arrival, half the participants were allowed to quench their thirst and half were kept thirsty. - All of them were then subliminally primed, some with words related to this and some with neutral words. - They were then allowed to drink as much as they wanted of each of two beverages. Results: Thirsty participants who were primed with thirst-related words drank significantly more than thirsty participants primed with neutral words. - As expected, the primes had no influence on those who weren't thirsty.

Study: (Tyler, 1994) procedural justice and outcomes in determining fairness

Background: Participants who had recently received punishments for crimes they'd committed indicated what punishment they'd received. They also indicated the extent to which they thought the authority figure had been neutral and trustworthy. Results: The magnitude of the punishment participants received in their recent experience with the criminal justice system was not correlated with their sense of procedural justice. - This is an important finding because it suggests that people separate how the punishment is derived from the punishment itself. - Their ratings of neutrality, trust, and respect were stronger determinants of their belief in the fairness of the criminal justice system than the actual punishment they received. Conclusion: People's sense of justice thus revolves around more than personal gains or losses. - People care profoundly about the neutrality of authority figures, the trustworthiness of the system, and the respect their receive from others.

Study: (Murray, 1999) how people idealize their romantic partners

Background: People were asked to write about their partners' greatest faults. Results: Satisfied partners were more likely to engage in two forms of idealization. - First, they were more apt to see virtue in their partners' faults. - Second, satisfied partners were more likely to offer "yes, but" refutations of the fault.

Study: (Loftus, 1995) "implanted" memories in university students

Background: Researchers "implanted" memories in 24 university students. - The researchers persuaded the students' relatives to tell the students stories about several events that occurred around the time the student in question was 5 years old. - They were also asked to generate a plausible story about that child (the student) having been lost—although the event had not occurred. Results: Six of the participants eventually "recalled" the made-up event, sometimes providing substantial detail over the course of a series of interviews. - Thus, 25% of randomly selected undergraduates were readily persuaded of the existence of a non-events-and could even provide details about it. - Upon being told that one of the episodes never occurred, most of those students could not identify which one it was.

Experiment: (Peng, 2003) Cultural priming in dispositions versus contextual understanding for North Americans of Asian descent

Background: Researchers asked Asian-American participants to recall either an experience that made their identity as an American apparent to them or an experience that made their identity as an Asian apparent to them. They then showed the participants a group of highly abstract cartoon vignetted suggesting physical movements, such as an object falling to the bottom of a container of liquid, and had them rate how much they thought the object's movement was due to dispositional factors (shape, weight) versus contextual factors (gravity, friction). Results: Participants who had their American identity primed rated causes internal to the objects as being more important, compared with participants who had their Asian identity primed.

Experiment: (Cialdini, 1976) Basking in reflected glory

Background: Researchers documented school pride on the Monday after the school football team played. Result: Students wore more school gear when the team won. They also say things like "we" won, but "they" lost Conclusion: We want our friends to do well when it benefits us

Study: (Critcher, 2013) the cognitive toll of concealment of identity

Background: Researchers instructed half the participants to conceal their sexual orientation during a mock interview while the control participants were free to say whatever they wanted. The investigators predicted that the act of concealment would be mentally taxing, making them less able to perform well on subsequent tasks. Results: Indeed, across several experiments, they found that those asked to conceal their sexual orientation did less well on tests of spatial ability, self-control, and physical stamina. Conclusion: Concealing an important part of oneself is demanding, and meeting those demands can have unfortunate consequences down the road.

Study: (Henrich, 2001) how do cultural factors influence the inclination to either cooperate or defect?

Background: Researchers recruited individuals from 15 small societies around the world to play the ultimatum game, a close relative of the prisoner's dilemma game. - In the original version of the ultimatum game, one player, the allocator, is given a certain amount of money (say, $10) and chooses to keep a certain amount of that $10 and allocate the rest to a second participant, the responder. The responder can then choose to either accept or reject the allocator's offer. - If the responder accepts the offer, the responder receives what was offered and the allocator keeps the balance. - If the responder rejects the offer, neither player receives anything. The experimenter conducted a cross-cultural version of the ultimatum game, recruiting participants who were foragers, slash-and-burn farmers, nomadic herders, and individuals in settled, agriculturalist societies in Africa, South America, and Indonesia. - What the participants were allowed to offer an anonymous stranger differed. In some cultures it was money, in others a cherished good such as tobacco. - In all cases, the researchers attempted to make rewards equal to approximately the same fraction of a daily wage of each culture. Results: The first finding of note was that in the 15 cultures, allocators offered, on average 39% of the goods to anonymous strangers. (In other research across Western cultures, 71% of the allocated offered the responded 40-50% of the money.) - It is important to bear in mind that there are strategic reasons for participants making such generous offers that have nothing to do with altruistic tendencies. Most notably, they probably anticipated that the respondent would reject unfair, trivial offers. Conclusion: These results suggest that people are more cooperative and willing to share than one might expect. Continuation: Researchers then looked closely at the 15 cultures to determine what cultural factors predict the likelihood of cooperative generosity in the ultimatum game. - One factor stood out: how much the individuals in a culture depend on one another to survive. The more the members of a culture dependent on one another to gather foot and meet other needs, the more they offered to a stranger when they were allocators in the ultimatum game.

Experiment: Your Actions are my Actions

Background: Researchers were running experiments trying to understand how the motor cortex in monkeys allowed them to grab objects. They put electrodes into the monkey's motor cortex and measured activity as the monkey reached for something. But the motor neurons also fired when the experimenter reached and when the monkeys couldn't SEE the experimenter reach but could infer that it happened. Conclusion: One of the ways you process others' behavior is by activating a similar neural pattern in your own (simulation theory)

Study: (Kleinhesselink, 1975) selective attention

Background: Students who either supported or opposed the legalization of marijuana listened to a message that advocated legalization. The message contained 14 arguments: 7 were strong and difficult to refute (and thus clearly appealing to the pro-legalization students), and 7 were silly and easy to refute (and thus very attractive to the anti-legalization students). - The students heard the message through earphones accompanied by a continual static buzz. To combat this problem, students could press a button to eliminate the buzz for 5 seconds. Results: The pro-legalization students pushed the button more often when the speaker was delivering the strong arguments in favor of legalization. They wanted to hear the information that would reinforce their own viewpoint. - The anti-legalization students, in contrast, were more likely to push the button while the speaker was offering up the easy-to-refute arguments in favor of legalization. They wanted to hear the weakness of the pro arguments, thereby reinforcing their anti-legalization position.

Study: (Eberhardt, 2006) Facial features and the death penalty

Background: Subjects examined faces of 44 black men convicted of killing a white person and 118 black men who killed a black person. - Subjects rated faces for their having stereotypically black features. Results: Men with more stereotypically black features were 2x as likely to have been given the death penalty. - There was no effect for blacks convicted of killing blacks.

Experiment: (Langer, 1978) mindless persuasion at the copier machine

Background: The goal was to cut in line to use the copier. - Confederates either asked a big or small request (5 v 20 pages) - Confederates had 3 different forms of request: the nice ask = "may I use", a reason = "I'm in a rush", reason-less = "I need copies" Results: People are more likely to ply with the smaller request. - People are more likely to comply if you give them some reason. - Even the nonsense reason in the form of a request was pretty effective. Conclusion: People don't always use the central route to persuasion.

Experiment: (Goldstein, 2008) conformity - social norms (in hotels)

Background: The goal was to reduce the quantity of hotel laundry. - the standard hotel message was a door hanger saying "Help save the environment. You can show your respect by reusing." - the descriptive norm message said: "Join your fellow guests in helping save the environment. Almost 75% of guests reuse." Results: Normative messages worked the best - if you tell people what the norm is, they're likely to abide by it

Study: (Festinger, 1950) effect of proximity on friendships

Background: The study was conducted at MIT in the 1940s in a married students housing project known as Westgate West, built for returning American servicemen and their families after WWII. The housing project consisted of 17 ten-unit apartment buildings that were isolated from other residential areas of the city. The incoming students were randomly assigned to their residences, and few of them knew one another beforehand. The investigators asked each resident to name the 3 people in the housing project with whom they socialized most often. Results: The effect of proximity was striking: ⅔ of those the respondent listed as friends lived in the same building as the respondent, even though only 5% of the residents of Westgate West lived in the respondent's building. - Even though the physical distance between apartments was quite small, 41% of those living in adjacent apartments listed each other as friends, compared to only 10% of those living at opposite ends of the hallway.

Experiment: (Cohen, 2003) political conformity - party over policy

Background: The task was to evaluate welfare policies for families with dependent children. - Half the participants were shown a very generous policy, and the other half were shown a very stringent policy. - The participants were told which party favors which policy. Results: Liberals favored stringent policy when they thought democrats supported it and vice versa with republicans. - example of informational conformity: not an expert, know that you favor a certain party, go with that party

Theory: (Schacter) On emotion as bodily arousal and cognitive appraisal

Basic idea: Emotions require both automatic bodily responses AND a cognitive appraisal of the situation to figure out what that bodily response means. - perceive error > automatic bodily response + cognition to figure out why that bodily response occurred Difference between this and James's theory: - James: If you dropped into someone else's body and that body was experiencing the bodily response associated with fear, you'd immediately identify the emotion because it feels like that emotion - Schacter: You would need both the bodily response and perception of the situation to understand why that bodily response would be present in order to identify the emotion

Experiment: (Boehm, 2011) practicing gratitude on happiness

Experiment: participants were randomly assigned to either write about an experience in the past or write a letter of gratitude to someone close to them. At a one-month follow-up, participants who had written a letter of gratitude were happier than those in the control condition

Experiment finding in which people with expressed vs not expressed prejudice subconsciously reveals feelings toward an outgroup (Devine 1989)

Experimenters asked white participants to read words stereotypically associated with African-Americans and then read a brief description of someone whose race was not specified. Those participants were more likely to report that the individual was hostile than were participants who hadn't read such words. This was true whether or not they expressed anti-black attitudes in the questionnaire. (demonstration of automatic v controlled processing)

Does diversity training work?

Hard to tell -- most aren't tested. Maybe no. Maybe yes, sometimes/some ways - the outcome - how long was training - context of the training - how long after training - who is being trained

Study: Defendant Characteristics - Similarity

If evidence is weak/ambiguous, the decision-maker has more sympathy if the defendant has similar attitudes, religion, race, or gender.

experimenter/rater bias

If the dependent measure has an element of subjectivity and the rater knows the hypothesis or what condition the subject or object of judgment was in, the rater may make biased judgments. The most common solution is to make the rater "blind."

Study: (Strack, 2002) How does the order of questions affect your answers?

In Action: When survey respondents were asked "How happy are you with your life in general?" and then "How many dates have you been on in the past month?" the correlation between their responses was only .32. When another group was asked the two questions in the opposite order, the correlation between their responses was twice as strong: .67. Asking about their recent dating history first made them very aware of how that part of their life was going, which then had a notable impact on their assessment of their happiness generally.

The Seminarians as Samaritans Experiment (Darley and Batson 1973)

In this study, students were asked about their religious orientation. After determining the basis of their religious concerns, the students were asked to go to another building to deliver a short sermon. Some were told that they had plenty of time to get there and some were told that they were late and should hurry. On the way, each student passed a man who needed help. The study found religious orientation did not predict whether the students would offer assistance, however, whether they were in a hurry or not was a very powerful predictor. Demonstration of the power of the situation.

Self-enhancement (Kruger) with students experiment

Kruger asked each of his students "What percentage of you will score above average on the midterm?" And EVERY student said they would. BETTER-THAN-AVERAGE EFFECT

Berkowitz offers an account of the role of construal in the relationship between anger and aggression: he argues that any unpleasant stimulus can trigger a fight-or-flight response of anger.

Once angry, people are more likely to think things are unfair, to perceive others as having more combative intentions, and to imagine ways of inflicting harm. This line of thinking helps clarify when aspects of a situation will lead to anger and aggression. - For example, sometimes hot weather doesn't trigger anger (could lead to relaxation in a hammock) and thus won't lead to aggressive behavior, but other times the discomfort of extreme heat will stimulate anger, thereby making people more prone to acting aggressively.

Why does mere repeated exposure lead to liking?

One explanation is that people find it easier to perceive and cognitively process familiar stimuli: the processing of familiar stimuli is more "fluent." - Because people find the experience of fluence inherently pleasurable, those positive feelings make the stimuli more appealing. Zajonc offered a second interpretation: upon repeated exposure to a stimulus without any negative consequences resulting from the encounter, we learn to associate the stimulus with the absence of anything negative and thus form a comfortable, pleasant attachment to it.

evaluation apprehension

Participants' behaviour is distorted as they fear being judged by observers

Bias Blindspot experiment (Pronin, 2002)

People are asked to rate other people's biases and then their own. They can perceive the bias in other people, but don't perceive the same bias in themselves.

the magnitude of investments the couple puts into a relationship as an aspect

People are more likely to remain in a relationship if they have invested heavily in it. - Investments can include the time, effort, caring, and love expended, as well as the shared memories, mutual friends, and shared possessions that are part of having a life together. - Recent findings suggest that one person's investment in a relationship not only increases that person's own investment in the relationship but also increases the partner's investment in the relationship.

Experiment: (Tracy, 2013) How people's nonverbal displays of pride signal that person's elevated status in different cultures

People who display pride nonverbally are also more likely to be imitated and followed by other individuals - In one study, participants were more likely to copy the answer on a test of a confederate displaying pride rather than other emotions Anger is another emotion that can signal dominance, and much like pride, its expressions can lead people to gain power and status - For example: when negotiators express anger, they are more likely to get their way and prompt more subordinate behaviors in their counterparts

perception of causality (Michotte, 1946)

Perception of the causal nature of interactions between objects and between people. For instance, when one object collides with another it causes it to move

Experiment showing the different values placed on uniqueness between socioeconomic status (Stevens, 2014)

Research asked people how they would feel if a friend bought a car just like one they themselves had recently bought. Middle-class people were more likely to report that they would be disappointed because they like to be unique; working-class people were more likely to say they would be happy to share that similarity with a buddy

between-subjects experiment

Research design in which each subject experiences only one of the conditions in the experiment potential issue: self-selection solution: randomization

Dramaturgic Perspective on the Social Self

Social interaction can be thought of as a drama of self-presentation, in which we attempt to create and maintain an impression of ourselves in the minds of others

Selective evaluation

Social scientists have discussed the tendency people have to evaluate information - such as the credibility of a source or the soundness of an argument - in ways that support their existing beliefs and values.

Experiment: (Miller, 1992) embarrassment signal meanings

Study Finding: when strangers encounter someone who shows embarrassment or blushes visibly, as opposed to displaying no emotion or other emotions such as pride, they trust that stranger more and think they have a more upstanding character Study Finding: people will give more lottery tickets to such an individual, thereby increasing his or her chances of winning a cash prize

Experiment: (Fredrickson, 1993) how our recollections of past pleasures are also biased

Study: Barbara Referichson and Daniel Khaneman had participants watch a series of pleasurable film clips, such as a comedy routine or a puppy playing with a flower. While doing so, the participants rated the intensity of their second-by-second experience of pleasure by moving a dial back and forth. Then, after the film clips ended, they provided an overall assessment of how pleasurable it was to watch the clips. The researchers correlated these general, retrospective assessments with the specific, moment-to-moment ratings to find out how immediate experiences of pleasure relate to people's subsequent recollections of how much enjoyment they had Results: This study and others like it have documented two factors that influence recollections of pleasure and a third that has very little influence - the peak moment of pleasure during the course of an event (the most delicious bite of a dessert, the most beautiful sunset during a vacation, the most gratifying compliment received during a gathering) strongly predicts how much pleasure you'll remember later - How you feel at the end of the event also strongly predicts your overall experience of pleasure - Something that has surprisingly little impact on people's subsequent overall assessments is the length of the pleasurable experience in question Theme: vocalist

Study: (Piff, 2012) effect of power on driving

Summary: A confederate stood at an edge of a marked crosswalk on a busy street abutting a university campus in California. In California, it's state law for the driver to give the right of way to the pedestrian. They kept track of which cars stopped for pedestrians and which did not, noting the status of the car on a 5-point scale. Drivers of the fancy cars stopped 46.2% of the time; drivers of the low-status cars always obeyed the law.

Experiment: (Darley, 1973) noticing the event for helping versus time pressure - Good Samaritan study

Summary: Princeton theological seminary students were told they must deliver a speech across campus. They encountered a confederate withering on the ground needing help. Those who had time contracts didn't help as much. Conclusion: Time pressure can conflict with one's good intentions of helping.

Experiment: (Vallone, 1985) media bias

Summary: Research suggests that we all tend to believe the media are biased against our preferred causes. - According to these researchers, most people believe they see the world in a reasonable, objective fashion (naive realism). - Thus, any media presentation that attempts to present both sides of an issue is going to be perceived as biased by both sides of any controversy. Conclusion: Everyone thinks the media is biased.

Archival Research: (Mann, 1981) suicide baiting

Summary: Researchers examined 15 years of newspaper accounts of suicidal jumps and averted jumps. They found 21 instances of attempted suicide, and suicide baiting occurred in 10 of them. They then analyzed the data to determine whether two variables associated with deindividuation were related to whether suicide baiting occurred. Results: Suicide baiting was more than twice as likely when the crowd size exceeded 300. Suicide baiting was more than 4x as likely if the episode took place after 6 pm. Conclusion: As people feel more anonymous, they are more inclined to egg on a potential suicide. Also consistent with the idea that variables leading to deindividuation also lead to antisocial behavior.

Study: (Waytz, 2012) benign social connection and dehumanization

Summary: Students who were asked to recall a time of feeling connected to another person attributed less human-like mental states, such as empathy and moral concern, to out groups such as the wealthy or the poor. Extension: When participants reported their attitudes while sitting next to a friend (thus feeling socially connected) as opposed to sitting next to a stronger, they were more likely to dehumanize non-US citizens who were detained for security reasons and to more strongly endorse forms of torture such as waterboarding and the application of electric shock.

Study: (Griskevicius, 2010) altruism for social reward

Summary: This study found that when prompted to think about enjoying the respect of others, people were more likely to choose environmentally friendly consumer products over equivalently priced but more desirable luxury products; our desire for the rewards of being respected leads us to sacrifice personal desires for the greater good of the environment.

What is it about hot weather that makes people more aggressive?

The connection between aggressive behavior and heat may be associated with what the ambient temperature does to people's emotions. One explanation involved people's attributional processes. - People are aroused by the heat, but they are often unaware of the extent to which hot weather is the source of their arousal. - When they encounter circumstances that prompt anger, they attribute their arousal to that person, and this misplaced annoyance gives rise to amplified feelings of anger, which can lead to aggression.

naive realism

The conviction that we perceive things "as they really are," underestimating how much we are interpreting or "spinning" what we see

Experiment on how children in a U.S. Midwestern town interact with their surroundings (Barker)

The experimenters, Roger Barker and Herbert Wright, followed children around as they delivered the morning paper, went to school, played kick the can, did their homework, and went to church suppers. The study revealed a great deal about the way the children interacted with their environment, and the factors that molded their characters. Research Strategy: Participant observation!!!

Why might income inequality give rise to aggression?

The powerful feelings of social rejection that those at the bottom experience in unequal societies can trigger violence, a claim supported by our earlier discussion of social isolation and rejection. Another possibility is that inequality undermines feelings of well-being, trust, and goodwill among people, which can give rise to frustration, anger, and, ultimately, aggression. Evolutionarily, inequality throws males into more intense competition for economic resources and access to mates, two sources of conflict that often motivate murder and other crimes.

priming

The presentation of information designed to activate a concept (such as a stereotype) and hence make it accessible - An implicit measure of prejudice can be derived from comparing a person's average reaction time to real and made-up words preceded by faces of members of a given category (compared with "control" trials, in which positive and negative words are preceded by faces of people not in that category). Numerous studies using these priming methods have shown that people who are sure they aren't prejudiced against blacks nonetheless respond more quickly to negative words preceded by pictures of black faces.

Priming

The presentation of information designed to activate a concept and hence make it accessible. A prime is the stimulus presented to activate the concept in question.

Social loafing

The tendency for people to do worse on simple tasks but better on complex tasks when they are in the presence of others and their individual performance cannot be evaluated

Experiment: (Ekman, 1969) Universality of Emotions

Topic: Similar emotional expressions appear around the world, meaning that emotions are universal/biological. Background: Paul Eckman had photos of American undergraduates making a facial expression. He brought these images to Papua New Guinean tribesmen, told them an emotionally charged story, and then asked the tribesmen to pick out which facial expression conveyed that story's emotion. Results: The tribesmen had accuracy rates far above just chance guessing. When this procedure was flipped, the American undergrads also had accuracy rates above chance. Conclusion: Emotions are universal

Peak-end rule

We judge experiences largely based on how we feel at the peak and the end of the experience. - Increased suffering with a less intense end will be remembered as less painful.

alternative partners aspect

Whether or not alternative partners are available is another strong contributor to the enduring commitment a partner feels. - The fewer options a romantic partner has outside the relationships, the more committed that partner tends to feel, and the more likely that partner is to remain in the relationship. - For example, in questionnaire studies, romantic partners who report few potential alternative partners are less likely to break up later.

institutional review board

a committee that examines research proposals and makes judgements about the ethical appropriateness of the research

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

interdependent (collectivistic) culture

a culture in which people tend to define themselves as part of a collective, inextricably tied to others in their group and placing less importance on individual freedom or personal control over their lives

independent (individualistic) culture

a culture in which people tend to think of themselves as distinct social entities, tied to each other by voluntary bonds of affection and organizational memberships but essentially separate from other people and having attributes that exist in the absence of any connection to others

peremptory challenge

a defendant's or lawyer's objection to a proposed juror, made without needing to give a reason

schema

a knowledge structure consisting of any organized body of stored information

People can be trained to adopt more productive attributional tendencies for academic outcomes - in particular, an inclination to attribute failure to ___ - and that doing so has beneficial effects on subsequent academic performance; Making people believe they can exert __ over events that they formerly believed to be beyond their control restores hope and unleashes the kind of productive energy that makes future success more likely

a lack of effort; control

statistical significance

a measure of the probability that a given result could have occurred by chance primarily determined by (1) the size of the difference between groups in an experiment or the size of a relationship between variables in a correlational study and (2) the number of cases on which the finding is based

secular trend

a pattern of change occurring over several generations

psychological immune system

a set of unconscious psychological mechanisms that help us to recover from bad events

longitudinal studies

a study conducted over a long period of time with the same participants pro: rules out a direction of causality, nothing that happens later to that person could have affected anything the person did earlier in the study

working self-concept

a subset of self-knowledge that is brought to mind in a particular context ex: notions of the self related to competition are likely to be at the forefront during a sports match

classical conditioning

a type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events in persuasion context, stimulus 1 gets linked to the pleasurable feeling that stimulus 2 causes (hot people advertising product = happy > product being advertised makes us happy)

Primacy effect

a type of order effect: the disproportionate influence on judgment by information presented first in a body of evidence As a rough general rule, primacy effects most often occur when the information is ambiguous, so that what comes first influences how the later information is interpreted

Recency effect

a type of order effect: the disproportionate influence on judgment by information presented last in a body of evidence Regency effects typically result when the last items come more readily to mind. Information remembered obviously receives greater weight than information forgotten, so later items sometimes exert more influence on judgment than information presented earlier.

third variable

a variable, often unmeasured in correlational research, that can be the true explanation for the relationship between two other variables

Compassionate love

akin to a communal relationships, with bonds that focus on monitoring and responding to another person's needs, such as how a mother looks out for her child's well-being

Sleeper effect

an effect that occurs when a persuasive message from an unreliable source initially exerts little influence but later causes attitudes to shift - The idea is that over time, people dissociate the source of the message from the message itself.

Individuation

an enhanced sense of individual identity produced by focusing attention on the self, which generally leads people to act carefully and deliberately and in accordance with their sense of propriety and values

Attitude and its components

an evaluation of an object in a positive or negative fashion that includes three components: affect, cognition, and behavior

kin selection

an evolutionary strategy that favors the reproductive success of one's genetic relatives, even at a cost to one's own survival and reproduction

artifact

any variable other than the manipulation that influences the difference between observations - design confounds - experimenter artifacts - participant artifacts

message characteristics

aspects, or content, of a persuasive message, including the quality of the evidence and the explicitness of its conclusions

procedural justice

assessments of whether the processes leading to legal outcomes are fair - Procedural justice depends on how rewards and punishments are determined. - The concern with procedural justice is salient, for example, when considering whether employers use the same criteria to give bonuses to different employees, when there are conflicts about which criteria to use for admitting students to colleges and universities, or when there are concerns about whether the likelihood of arrest and the length of prison sentences depend on the race or social class of the individuals.

reactive devaluation

attaching less value to an offer in a negotiation once the opposing group makes it - In other words, "You're my enemy, so if you made this proposal, it must not be in my interests or morally sound."

Wegener and Petty suggest that persuasive efforts tend to be successful when the mood of the message matches the mood of the __.

audience

two types of conformity:

automatic and controlled

Why does proximity play a role in attraction?

availability and mere exposure

There is a two way relationship between basic and applied research?

basic research can give theories that lead to interventions and applied research can produce results that feed back into basic science

Can money buy happiness? In order to maintain balanced levels of wellbeing, individuals must take enough to meet their __ needs (~$60k/year) Anything more will do __ to enhance happiness. An extra $10,000 per annum will only bump up your happiness levels by approximately __%.

basic; little; 2

avoiding participant artifacts

camouflage the hypothesis so they don't know what's being tested - on a survey, ask a bunch of unrelated questions so the relationship you're looking for is not obvious covert observation implicit measures - reaction time - psychophysiology - fMRI test diverse populations

What do models of facial features do?

capture systematic biases in judgments, visualize stereotypes of a particular group, do NOT capture personality characteristics

stereotype activation and application process

categorization > stereotype activation > stereotype application - once a person is categorized stereotypes are usually automatically activated - application is when the stereotype informs judgment - application depends on cognitive resources and motivation

People experience conscious well to the extent that they infer that their thought __ their action. Causation is perceived when one event follows __ from another.

causes; quickly

For long-lasting attitude change, persuasion through the __ route is preferable. By contrast, for immediate acquiescence of an audience not very motivated or attentive, the __ route is the way to go.

central; peripheral

conformity

changing one's behavior or beliefs in response to explicit or implicit pressure (real or imagined) from others - The pressure to conform can be implicit, as when you decide to toss out your loose-fitting jeans in favor of those with a tighter cut simply because other people are doing so. - Conformity pressure can also be explicit, as when members of a peer group pointedly encourage one another to smoke cigarettes.

Psychological factors in law: summing up - trial outcomes can be influenced by defendant __ (attractiveness, similarity) - defendants may admit to crimes they did not commit, especially under certain __ practices - eyewitness testimony is not as __ as people think - jury members are susceptible to social influence and pitfalls of __ processes in decision-making - implicit biases exist and can get __ through the legal process from law enforcement to sentencing

characteristics; interrogation; reliable; group; amplified

How to avoid biases in interpretation: be clear about whether your research is a __ or __ analysis - a __ hypotheiss is not confirmed, and acting like it is can be misleading

confirmatory; exploratory; post-hoc

5 subgroups of compliance

conformity, consistency, reciprocity, commitment, authority

People tend to conform when they're __ by the events unfolding around them or the topic under discussion.

confused

Carefully conducted interviews with participants at the end of many priming experiments have found that few, if any, of them suspected that there was any __ between the two parts of the study (the initial priming phase and the subsequent judgment phase) This finding raises the question of how conscious a person must be of a stimulus for it to effectively prime a given schema Research suggests a clear answer: __

connection; we don't need to be conscious of the stimulus at all

group behavior based on local rules: coordination of attention

consequence of following what other people are doing: when the person next to you is looking in a direction, you do too, and that filters through the crowd - no one actually sees Rockefeller, but they're all looking in his direction

How to avoid biases in operationalization (example: octopus creativity test): measurement must be reliable: should yield __ results (people rate roughly the same) measurement must be valid: should __ the right construct - __ validity: does it seem like a good fit at face value - __ validity: does the measure relate to outcomes as expected must have __ validity: - avoid selection bias - avoid differential attrition - do this by creating __ conditions - avoid experimenter bias - avoid expectancy effect - do this by __

consistent; correspond; face; construct; internal; equal; blinding

Self-verification strategies: - selective attention and recall of information that is __ with their views of themselves - choose to enter into __ that maintain consistent views of the self

consistent; relationships

intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

controlling aspects of reward decreases intrinsic motivation competence-signaling aspect of reward increases intrinsic motivation

Summary of cognitive dissonance slide: - cognitive dissonance has been a useful theory in social psychology for decades - challenged __ thinking about the impact of rewards (and punishments) on attitudes - established a framework for discovering __ aspects of human social behavior at the level of application, dissonance has been used to: - help people lose weight - help elderly to increase exercise - encourage college students to use condoms - decrease anxiety in public speaking - encourage COVID-19 safety behavior including vaccinations

conventional; novel

High self-esteem __ with better work performance, less crime, less drug abuse, less teen pregnancy, but increasing self-esteem through manipulation __ __ improve academic perforce (Baumeister, 2003).

correlates; does not

display rules

cross-cultural guidelines for how and when to express emotions

Male faces have the same features, but are just __.

darker

Summary of "free choice": - making __ involves inconsistent cognitions - the more difficult the choice, the __ the dissonance - we reduce dissonance by "spreading the alternatives," coming to __ the choices we made

decisions; greater; justify

Having children __ momentary happiness.

decreases

Dissonance has a magnitude. Magnitude of tension state of dissonance increases with the size of __ x __. Even in the face of inconsistency, the magnitude of dissonance decreases with the size of __ __ x __.

discrepancy; importance; consistent cognitions; importance

What happens in crowds? 1. Emergent properties - local rule: ___ - Crowds are smart! And dumb! 2. Social influence - synchrony - social __ - social __

do what you see others doing; facilitation; loafing

This doesn't mean that finding an attractive person to deliver a persuasive message is a waste of time when your audience is apt to be thinking about the message carefully. Attractive sources can lead to persuasion through the central route by, for example, increasing the favorability of people's __ thinking about the position being endorsed.

effortful

Comparison level

expectations people have about what they think they deserve or expect to get out of a relationship - People who have a high comparison level expect a lot from their relationships

Commitment - low ball technique; what it exploits

exploiting people's tendency to follow through on commitments first get someone to agree to something and only after they agree you raise the stakes

__-level construals focus on abstract, global, and essential features, whereas __-level construals emphasize salient, incidental, and concrete details (seeing the forest v spotlight on the trees)

high; low

People with a high need for cognition are more persuaded by __-quality arguments are are relatively __ by peripheral cues of persuasion.

high; unmoved

power of the situation

idea that behavior is influenced by environmental factors, even though we focus on personal traits for explanation

Face Misidentification

impaired facial processing; inability to pair image of face to memory of face

selection bias

in an experiment, unintended differences between the participants in different groups

Obedience

in an unequal power relationship, submitting to the demands of the person in authority

The power of social influence can be seen in studies of how much people in different social networks __ each other. This pattern holds through __ degrees of connection.

influence; three

Base-rate information

information about the relative frequency of events or of members of different categories in a population

Expertise primarily affects __ social influence - Experts are more likely to be right, so we take their opinions more seriously as sources of information. Status mainly affects __ social influence. - The disapproval of high-status individuals can hurt more than the disapproval of people we care less about.

informational; normative

Work by Abraham Tesser (1993) indicates that our opinions and beliefs are in part __. He examined the attitudes of monozygotic twins and those of dizygotic twins. For most of the viewpoints surveyed, the identical twins' attitudes were more __ than those of fraternal twins. Moreover, researchers found that the more heritable attitudes were also more accessible, less susceptible to persuasion, and more predictive of feelings of attraction to a stranger who had similar attitudes.

inherited; similar

When you are objectively self aware, you compare yourself to an __ __, and __ consequences depend on how that comparison goes.

internal standard; behavioral

How does introspection about the reasons for our attitudes undermine how well those attitudes guide our behavior?

introspection may lead up to focus on the easiest-to-identify reasons for liking or disliking something at the expense of the real reasons for our likes and dislikes

Heuristics

intuitive mental operations, performed quickly and automatically, that provide efficient answers to common problems of judgment

Main objection to Zajonc's theory of mere presence:

it's actually evaluation apprehension that arouses the person, not the mere presence Several studies show that it is only when subjects feel they are being evaluated that they show arousal and consequent facilitation on easy tasks and impairment on difficult tasks

Research conducted confirmed that 6-person juries are more likely to arrive at a unanimous decision and do so with __ deliberation because, according to research by Asch, having an __ makes a difference in allowing the minority to stick to their convictions.

less; ally

Normative social influence is diminished in situations where people care __ about others' judgments because someone is a stranger and they all assume they'll never see one another again. If we can pinpoint a reason for why our opinions are different, both informational influence and normative social influence are __. - Informational social influence is reduced because the explanation for the difference of opinion can diminish the group's impact as a source of __. - Normative social influence is reduced because we can assume that those in the majority are aware of why we __ from them. There is an importance of construal; people respond not to the objective situations they face, but to their __ interpretations of those situations.

less; lessened; information; differ; subjective

Tips for reducing the tendency to ruminate: First, break __ from your pattern of rumination; turn your attention away from those recurring thoughts. Second, the __ strategy; simply say "Stop" to yourself when you find yourself ruminating. Third, simply set aside 30 minutes to __ time each day, ideally when you're feeling pretty calm.

loose; stop; ruminating

Why do public commitments increase our resistance to persuasion? One basic reason is that it's hard to back down from such endorsements without __ __, even when evidence is presented against the position we publicly embraced.

losing face

Experts produce more attitude change, but only when personal relevance is (high/low).

low

Peripheral route to persuasion: Message > Audience Factor: __ motivation and ability > Processing approach: __ route (focus on __ of the message) > persuasion outcome: __ change

low; peripheral; surface; temporary

How to tell if results are significant

magnitude of effect (bigger is better), variability (lower is better), sample size (bigger is better)

The social self is defined by two truths: it is __, shifting from one context to another, but it also has core components that __ across contexts

malleable; persist

Marriage benefit

married people fare better than unmarried ones on various indicators of well-being

What brain regions are active during theory of mind tests?

medial parietal cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, anterior temporal lobe

The physiognomist's promise... - __ our impressions for the real thing - assumes one-on-one mapping from __ to __ images - underestimates the effects of image __ on impressions

mistakes; faces; facial; variation

Examples of effects of first impressions: Competent-looking politicians are __ likely to be elected. - Especially by people who don't know much about politics and watch a lot of TV. Competent-looking CEOs are more likely to get __ compensation packages. Trustworthy-looking borrowers are more likely to get loans and with __ interest rates. Dominant-looking cadets are more likely to achieve __ military ranks.

more; higher; lower; higher

What two factors determines whether we'll engage in central or peripheral processing in response to a persuasive message?

motivation (involvement, need for cognition, forewarning) and ability (age, IQ, distraction) - In terms of our motivation to devote time and energy to a message: when the message has personal consequences - it bears on our goals, interests, or well-being - we're more likely to go the central route and carefully work through the arguments and relevant information. - In terms of our ability to process the message in depth: when we have sufficient cognitive resources and time, we're able to process persuasive messages more deeply; in general, the more we know, the more thoughtfully we're able to scrutinize a persuasive message.

The self-serving attributional bias is a __ bias, motivated by the desire to maintain __.

motivational; self-esteem

A single research study __ (dis)proves a hypothesis or theory, only ___ __. Update scientific knowledge using triangulation: gathering __ evidence from __ studies (using different methods) to test hypotheses/theories

never; adds evidence; converging; multiple

spotlight effect

overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us)

evaluation apprehension

people's concern about how they might appear in the eyes of others, or be evaluated by them

The expertise and status of the group members __ influences the rate of conformity.

powerfully - Expertise and status often go together, because we grant greater status to those with expertise, and we often assume (not always correctly) that those with high status are experts. - To the extent that these characteristics can be separated, expertise primarily affects informational social influence; Experts are more likely to be right, so we take their opinions more seriously as sources of information. - Status mainly affects normative social influence.The disapproval of high-status individuals can hurt more than the disapproval of people we care less about.

altruism

prosocial behavior that benefits others without regard to consequences for oneself - Many forces can inhibit altruistic action, including basic tendencies toward self-preservation and fear of embarrassment.

Status exchange hypothesis

romantic attraction increases when two individuals complement each other in terms of their social status by offering each other elevated status, through romantic partnership, where they themselves are lacking

basic science

science or research concerned with trying to understand some phenomenon in its own right, with a view toward using that understanding to build valid theories about the nature of some aspect of the world example: Social psychologists investigating people's obedience to an authority figure in the laboratory are doing basic science, attempting to understand the nature of obedience and the factors that influence it; they are NOT trying to find ways to make people less obedient to dubious authorities, though they may hope their research is relevant to such real world problems

What different explanatory explanations mean: - An explanation that mentions an internal cause implicates the __ ("There I go again"), but an external cause does not ("That was the pickiest set of questions I've ever seen"). - A stable cause implies that things will __ change ("I'm just not good at this"), whereas an unstable cause implies that things may improve ("The cold medicine I was taking made me groggy") - A global cause is something that affects __ areas of life ("I'm stupid"), while a specific cause applies to only a few ("I'm not good with names")

self; never; many

selective attention

several studies indicate that people are inclined to attend selectively to information that confirms their original attitudes.

How to avoid biases in publishing: avoid the file-drawer problem: only publishing studies that report __ findings - to do this, publish __ rigorous study

significant; every

Two influential theories specify how rewards shape our relationships.

social exchange theory and equity theory

thought experiment

speculate about the results you might obtain under two different sets of circumstances to develop more precise hypotheses about the phenomenon in question; can help clarify your assumptions and general conceptual understandings of the phenomena in question without actually collecting data

Induced (forced) compliance

subtly compelling people to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their beliefs, attitudes, or values in order to elicit dissonance and therefore a change in their original attitudes and values

Telling people about social norms is likely to be most effective when the information is __ (when people have __ the norm), such as when people overestimate the popularity of destructive behavior or underestimate the popularity of constructive behavior.

surprising; misunderstood

The most widely used manual for police interrogations advises a nine-fold process for questioning suspects in that situation: 1. Insist that the __ committed the crime 2. Give the suspect helpful __ for why he might have committed the crime 3. Cut the suspect off when he tries to maintain his innocence 4. Defeat the suspect's __ to the charges 5. Don't let the increasingly silent suspect succeed in ignoring the interrogator 6. Express __ for why the suspect might have committed the crime in an effort to get him to admit the crime 7. Offer the suspect an explanation for the crime that would make him feel __ in committing it 8. If possible, get the suspect to spell out details of the crime 9. Convert those details into a written confession

suspect; excuses; objections; sympathy; justified

Power

the ability to control one's own outcomes and those of others; the freedom to act

self-distancing

the ability to focus on one's feelings from the perspective of a detached observer - Revisiting a situation not from the perspective you initially had, but from the standpoint of a real or imagined observer, lets you reflect on stressful thoughts and feelings without becoming overwhelmed by negativity.

theory of mind

the ability to recognize that other people have beliefs and desires

specific behaviors; it's role in attitude

the affective evaluation of good versus bad is connected to a behavioral tendency to either approach or avoid When you see a young child crying, your mind prepares your body for the action of caretaking

Response latency

the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, such as an attitude question

Social class

the amount of wealth, education, and occupational prestige individuals and their families have

The heuristics of judgment

the argument that the intuitive system automatically performs certain mental operations (assessments of how easily something comes to mind or of how similar two entities are) that powerfully influence judgment

looking-glass self

the idea that other people's reactions to us serve as a mirror of sorts

normative social influence type of __ conformity

the influence of other people that comes from the desire to avoid their disapproval and other social sanctions (ridicule, barbs, ostracism); when a person yields to group pressure because they want to fit in motive: belonging controlled

differential attrition

the loss of participants during a study in a manner such that the loss is not randomly distributed across conditions

Romantic love

the love associated with intense emotion and sexual desire

Pre-suasion

the process of influencing an audience's state of mind before delivering a persuasive message

Availability heuristic

the process whereby judgments of frequency or probability are based on how readily pertinent instances come to mind

Representative heuristic

the process whereby judgments of likelihood are based on assessments of similarity between individuals and group prototypes or between cause and effect

contact hypothesis

the proposition that prejudice can be reduced by putting members of majority and minority groups in frequent contact with one another

Social exchange theory

the theory that our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs rewards: - reciprocity - personal distress - reputation costs: - physical danger - time - energy

sociometer theory (Leary, 1999)

the theory that self-esteem is a gauge that monitors our social interactions and sends us signals as to whether our behavior is acceptable to others

self-perception theory (Bem, 1967)

the theory that when we are unsure of our attitudes, we infer them much as would someone observing us - by looking at our behavior and the circumstances under which it occurs

There are three basic types of compliance approaches:

those directed at the head, those directed at the heart, and those based on the power of norms (which, given the impact of informational and normative influences, appeal to both the head and the heart) - People can be led to comply with requests because they see good reasons for doing so, because their emotions compel them to do so, or because everyone else is doing so - These types of influence aren't always neatly separable, and many compliance efforts are a blend of the three

Counterfactual thinking

thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened "if only" something had occurred differently

dispositional attribution occurs with what kind of covariation information

when consistency is high but consensus and distinctiveness are low Example: When few other students like the statistics class, when you friend claims to like all math courses, and when she has raved about the statistics class all semester, her fondness of the course must reflect something about her

situational attribution during what covariation principles

when consistency, consensus, and distinctiveness are all high Example: When everyone else taking your friend's statistics class likes it too, when you friend claims to like few other math classes, and when she has praised the class all semester, there must be something special about that class

correlational research

when psychologists measure two or more variables and examine whether a relationship exists between them

In cases where defendants are convicted and later proved innocent by DNA tests, as many as __ had confessed to the crime.

⅕

When we're trying to figure out the cause of something, a particularly important question is whether an outcome is the product of something within the person (a __ cause) or a reflection of something about the context or circumstances (a __ cause)

dispositional; situational

A second construal that has emerged as quite important in health is __. - Studies have shown that people who are more optimistic tend to have greater happiness and well-being - and they enjoy better health as well. - Self-reports of pessimism predict a more rapid weakening of the immune system.

optimism

If dissonance results from threats to people's sense of themselves as rational, competent, and moral beings, it follows that they can ward off dissonance not only be dealing directly with the specific threat itself, but also indirectly by taking stock of their ...

other qualities and core values Researchers have shown that people who value confronting prejudice but fail to do so end up evaluating the person making the prejudicial remark more favorable, and even reduce the importance they place on confronting prejudice in the first place. But a simple self-affirmation intervention (giving non confronters a few minutes to make a list of their positive characteristics) eliminated the need to reduce the dissonance arising from their failure to confront.

hedonic adaptation

our ability to adapt to changes in life circumstances

Ego justification motives

our need to think well of ourselves

present bias: "How good is your life"

people tend to generalize their present feelings with the quality of their whole life

Spotlight effect

people's conviction that other people are paying attention to them (to their appearance and behavior) more than they actually are

nonconscious attitudes

people's immediate evaluative reactions they may not be aware of, or that may conflict with their consciously endorsed attitudes

hindsight bias

people's tendency to be overconfident about whether they could have predicted a given outcome once we hear some new fact, it's easy to think of reasons why it might be true, and coming up with those reasons can make us feel like we could have predicted the outcome on our own

Once motivated to resist, what factors might increase someone's ability to stand firm?

practice, having an ally to resist social influence, being wary of potentially slippery slopes

Affective forecasting

predicting future emotions, such as whether an event will result in happiness or anger or sadness, and for how long

affective forecasting

predicting future emotions, such as whether an event will result in happiness or anger or sadness, and for how long

modern racism

prejudice directed at racial groups that exists alongside the rejection of explicitly racist beliefs

self-regulation

processes by which people initiate, alter, and control their behavior in the pursuit of goals, including the ability to resist short-term rewards that thwart the attainment of long-term goals

Suicide baiting

when observers urge suicidal individuals to commit suicide

People are sometimes only modestly influenced by __ information.

consensus

Study: (Batson, 1983) pitting empathic concern against the selfish motive of reducing personal distress

- Background: Participants were told they'd interact with another participant of the same sex (actually a confederate of the experiment), who would complete several trials of a digit-recall task and receive a shock after each mistake. - In the easy-escape condition, the participant had to watch the confederate receive only two of the ten shocks and was then free to leave the experiment while the confederate finished the study. - In the difficult-to-escape condition, the participant was told it would be necessary to watch the other person take all ten shocks. - After the first two trials, the confederate, made up to look a little pale, asked for a glass of water, mentioned feelings of discomfort, and recounted a traumatic shock experience from childhood. - At this point, participants reported on their current feelings, which were used to divide participants into those who were feeling egoistic distress and those who were feeling empathic concern. - The experimenter then asked if the participant would be willing to take some of the confederate's shocks. - If there is such a thing as altruism based on empathic concern alone, the researchers reasoned, then they should see substantial levels of altruism (agreeing to sit in for the confederate) on the part of participants who felt empathic concern for the confederate, even when they had the option to simply leave the experiment to escape their distress. Results: In keeping with this reasoning, those participants who mostly felt egoistic distress and could escape the situation took few shocks on behalf of the confederate. - Those participants who felt empathic concern, however, volunteered to take more shocks, even when they could leave the study.

Weiner and his colleagues have tested this framework in studies of teachers' attitudes toward punishing students for breaking rules and US citizens' attitudes toward punishing O.J. Simpson when he was on trial for murdering his wife.

- The findings are in keeping with their analysis: attributions give rise to feelings of anger or sympathy, and these emotions lead to different punitive judgments. - These principles are also at play in the legal strategies typically pursued by the prosecution (focusing on the responsibility and poor character of the defendant) and the defense (focusing on the role of circumstance). - The same principles apply in debates about the relevance of a defendant's life history in the courtroom. Many perpetrators of violent acts have suffered profound physical abuse as children, and increasingly this evidence is being considered in trails, particularly in death penalty cases. This kind of information, if allowed at trial, is likely to generate more sympathy for the defendant and therefore more lenient punitive judgments.

Experiment: Escaping Objective Self Awareness

- researchers tell the participant about surgency - 1/2 of the participants are told this is the best thing to have; other 1/2 told the opposite - everyone is told they have a lot of it - experimenter leaves and doesn't come back - how long does the participant wait for them to come back? - when the feedback is bad AND there's a mirror, the participant leaves much quicker than when the feedback and good and there's a mirror or when the feedback is bad with/without the mirror - mirror causes awareness (OSA) and participants leave room to try to escape it when they are not meeting their standards

Study: (Sweck, 1986) Gender differences in attribution style

. - Research shows that boys are more likely than girls to attribute their failures to a lack of effort, and girls are more likely than boys to attribute their failures to lack of ability Study: Carol Dweck and her colleagues have found that this difference results in part from teachers' feedback patterns in fourth-grade and fifth-grade classrooms Results: The researchers found that although girls, on average, out-perform boys in school, negative evaluation of girls' performance was almost exclusively directed at intellectual inadequacies ("That's not right"), whereas almost half of the criticism of boys' work referred to nonintellectual factors ("This is messy"). Positive evaluation of girls' performance was related to the intellectual quality of their performance less than 80% of the time; for boys, it was 94% of the time. Conclusion: From these data, Dweck and her colleagues argue that girls learn that criticism means they may lack intellectual ability, whereas boys learn that criticism may just mean they haven't worked hard enough or paid enough attention to detail. Similarly, girls are likely to come to suspect that praise may be unrelated to the intellectual quality of their performance, whereas boys learn that praise means their intellectual performance was excellent. Spin-Off: When Dweck and her colleagues performed an experiment in which they gave both boys and girls feedback (either the kind girls typically receive or the kind boys typically receive) they found that both genders tended to view subsequent failures accordingly, either as a reflection of their lack of ability or as a reflection of their lack of effort and attention to detail. Therefore, whatever other reasons there may be for boys routinely taking credit for their successes and dismissing their failures and for girls' more modest attributions, these patterns are reinforced by the treatment they receive in the classroom.

Study: (Chapman, 1967) illusory correlations and their consequences

. / Background: The experimenters first asked numerous clinicians about which of their clients' specific test responses tended to indicate the presence of which specific pathological conditions. Much of their work focused on the Draw-a-Person Test, in which the client draws a picture of a person and the therapist interprets the picture for signs of various psychopathologies. The clinicians reported that they observed many connections between particular drawings and specific conditions, drawings and pathologies that seem, intuitively, to belong together. The experimenters gathered a sample of 45 Draw-a-Person pictures: 35 drawn by psychotic patients in a nearby hospital and 10 drawn by graduate students in clinical psychology. They then attached a phony statement to each picture that supposedly described the condition of the person who drew it. The researchers were careful to avoid any correlation between the nature of the drawings and the condition attached to each one. These pictures and accompanying statements were then shown to college students who had never heard of the Draw-a-Person Test. Results: Although the study was carefully designed so there was no connection between the pictures and specific conditions, the students nonetheless "saw" the same relationships reported earlier by the clinical psychologists. To the students, too, it seemed that prominent eyes were likely to have been drawn by individuals who were suspicious of others. This finding suggests that the clinical psychologists were not detecting any real correlations between pathological conditions and responses on the Draw-a-Person Test, but instead detecting the same nonexistent associations that the undergraduates were seeing, illusory correlations produced by the availability and representativeness heuristics working together. Certain pictures seem representative of specific pathologies (prominent eyes and being suspicious of other people) and therefore instances in which the two are observed together are particularly memorable. Extension: The experimenters asked another group of students to indicate the extent to which various conditions (suspiciousness, dependence, etc) "called to mind" different parts of the body (eyes, mouth, etc) Their responses matched the correlations reported by the earlier groups of clinicians and students In addition to highlighting the joint influence of availability and representativeness, these findings exemplify a much broader point about human judgment: when associations or propositions seem plausible, people often believe them regardless of the evidence

Study: (Kitayama, 2002) How do Asians and Westerners differ in the attention they give to context, even when perceiving inanimate objects?

. Background: After examining a square with a line drawn at the bottom, the participants went to another part of the room and saw a square of a different size. They had to draw either a line of the same length as the original or a line having the same length in relation to the original square. Results: The Americans were better at the absolute judgment, which required ignoring the context, whereas the Japanese were better at the relative judgment, which required paying attention to the context. Hadden and his colleagues used fMRI imaging to examine activation of the frontoparietal area of the brain, which is associated with difficult perceptual judgments. There was more activity in that region when participants had to do the task that did not come as naturally to them: for East Asians when they made judgments about the absolute line length and thus had to ignore the context, and for Westerners when they made proportional judgments and thus had to attend to the context.

Study: (Hong, 1997) Can citizens of Hong Kong (heavily influenced by westerners) be encouraged to think in either an interdependent or dependent way by being presented with images that suggest one culture or the other?

. Background: Experimenters showed some participants the US Capitol building, a cowboy on horseback, and Mickey Mouse. They shows other participants a Chinese dragon, a temple, and men writing Chinese characters using a brush. They also showed a control group of participants neutral pictures of landscapes. The investigators then showed all participants animated cartoons of an individual fish swimming in front of a group of other fish, behind the group, joining the group, and so on. They had the participants explain why the individual fish was behaving in these various ways. Results: Participants who previously saw the American pictures gave more reasons relating to motivations of the individual fish and fewer explanations relating to the other fish or to the context than participants who saw the Chinese pictures. Participants who saw the neutral pictures gave explanations that were in between those of the other two groups.

Study: (Payne, 2016) the effect of priming on betting

. Background: Participants plays a simplified game of blackjack in which a computer dealt them two cards and they had to decide whether to bet that the sum of their two cards would exceed the sum of two cards that would soon appear for the "dealer" (the computer) or whether they wanted to pass and go to the next round. If they decided to bet, they won 5 points if their cards were higher than the dealer's and lost 5 points if they were lower. On some trials, the word gamble or wager was subliminally presented right before the participants made their decisions. On other trials, the word fold or stay appeared. Results: Even though the primers were presented too quickly for participants to consciously perceive them, participants were more likely to bet on trials preceded by the word gamble or wager than on trials preceded by the word fold or stay. Commentary: Other studies of this sort found that priming participants with dollar signs increased their betting on a laboratory slot machine and that activating the goal of achievement led people to persevere longer at difficult tasks. Moreover, playing German music in a liquor store appears to boost sales of German wine at the expense of French wine, whereas playing French music appears to boost sales of French wine, even if customers don't realize what type of music is being played.

Experiment: (Beckman, 1970) common circumstance eliciting self-serving attributional bias

. Background: Participants tutor a student who is having difficulty mastering some material. (In some studies the participants are real teachers, and in others they're college students.) After an initial round of tutoring, the student is assessed and found to have done poorly. A second round of tutoring follows and then an additional assessment. For half the participants, the student's performance on the second assessment remains poor; for the other half, the students shows marked improvement. Results: The teachers tend to take credit if the student improves from session to session, but they tend to blame the student if the student continues to perform poorly. Conclusion: People make an internal attribution for success (improvement) but an external attribution for failure (continued poor performance).

3 factors that increase confession:

1. vulnerability - suspects [induced to] lack clear memory of the event in question - youth, mentally ill 2. false incriminating evidence - presentation of false evidence 3. inducements - benefits of confession

Experiment on how culture shapes the brain (Wang, 2017)

265 Chinese participants had images of their brains taken and then completed measures of how independent or interdependent they were. Those participants who were more independent showed denser gray matter in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which supports attention and thought about the self, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is thought to support thoughts of self-agency.

Experiment: (Caspi, 2002) biological factors of aggression

=Background: They tested for the two forms of the MAOA gene. - MAOA is an enzyme that metabolizes certain neurotransmitters in the synapses in the brain, allowing for smooth communication between neurons. - In nonhuman species, individuals with a defective, short form of the MAOA gene have been shown to be more aggressive, suggesting that this version of the gene might also predict aggressive behavior in humans. - They found men with this defective short of the gene (37% of the sample) and those with the long form of the gene. - To examine the influence of situational factors, they also identified men who had or hadn't been mistreated by their parents as children. Results: Overall, the defective MAOA gene alone didn't affect whether the boys committed violent crimes by age 26. - This finding suggests that by itself, a genetic predisposition doesn't determine whether an individual will engage in aggression. - But the combination of the short form of the MAOA gene and a family environment of physical abuse led boys to be three times more likely to have been convicted of a violent crime by age 26 than the boys who had the defective gene but had not been mistreated. - Another way of putting it is that 85% of the boys with the short form of the MAOA gene who were severely mistreated engaged in some form of antisocial behavior. Conclusion: Nature typically requires nurture to shape behavior.

Experiment: (Keysers, 2004) Your Touch is my Touch

A similar pattern in neural activity for observing others being touched and being touched yourself. Secondary but not primary cortex is activated when the participants are both touched and when they observe someone else getting touched, Provides evidence that we might use similar processes to understand other people's experience as our own. Simulation theory.

prisoner's dilemma as an economic game

A situation involving payoffs to two people who must decide whether to cooperate or defect. In the end, trust and cooperation lead to higher joint payoffs than mistrust and defection. The setup: Image being ushered into a small cubicle; the experimenter tells you there's another participant (whom you'll never meet) in a cubicle nearby. - Both you and the other participant are required to make a simple decision: independently, you must choose to either "cooperate" with each other (do what will benefit both of you) or "defect" (do what will disproportionately benefit only you). The compensation you receive will depend on the choices you make. - If both of you cooperate, you'll receive $5. If both of you defect, you'll each get $2. If one cooperates and the other defects, the defector will receive $8 and the cooperator will not receive anything. - The experimenter says you'll be paid as soon as each of you makes your choice and reiterates that you and the other person will never meet. The logic: To maximize your own self-interest, the best, or "rational," choice is to defect. Whatever your partner does, you make more money by defecting than cooperating. - If your partner cooperated, you receive $8 by defecting but only $5 by cooperating. If your partner defects, you receive $2 by defecting and nothing by cooperation. Why not defect?: If both players reason this way and choose to defect, they both receive only $2 rather than the $5 that would be theirs through mutual cooperation. The "best" choice for each person (defection) is a terrible choice from the standpoint of the two people in combination.

Mob Mentality: the aftermath of the Patriots win

After the Patriots won, fans in Boston gathered in the streets to celebrate, but eventually, the mob turned violent. What started as a happy event turned into something very ugly, and no one individual would have acted the way that the crowd had. Takeaway: something about large crowds makes things weird

Experiment: (Bartholow, 2002) violent video games and aggression

Background: 43 undergraduate women and men with an average amount of experience playing video games were randomly assigned to play one of two games. - Some played Mortal Kombat (a violent game) and some played PGA Tournament Gold (a non-violent game). - All participants played several rounds of one of these games against a confederate of the researchers. - When participants lost, the confederate punished them with an unpleasant, loud burst of white noise. - When participants won, they returned the favor, punishing the confederate with white noise. Results: Participants who had played Mortal Kombat gave longer and more intense bursts of white noise to their competitor than those who had played the golf game.

Study: (Surowiecki) Emergent Knowledge - Wisdom of Crowds

Background: 787 attendees of a livestock exhibition attempted to guess his ox's weight for a prize. Each wrote a guess on the ticket and group average was very close, but the individual guesses were very far.

Study: (Danziger, 2011) "Justice is What the Judge Ate for Breakfast"

Background: 8 Israeli judges made 1112 parole decisions over 10 months. Findings: The longer it had been since the judge had eaten, the less favorable the parole decisions tended to be.

Experiment: (Aknin, 2013) Money Can Buy Happiness...if you spend it on other people

Background: 820 people from Canada and Uganda recalled spending money on self or someone else. - Participants were given $5 and told to either spend it on themselves or someone else. Results: Prosocial spending increases happiness more than personal spending.

Study: (Finkel, 2008) the speed-dating approach to the study of early desire

Background: A dozen or so young heterosexual women and an equal amount of young heterosexual men arrives at the lab and engages in a series of rapid-fire, 2-minute get-acquantied conversations with all the members of the opposite sex. After each interaction, the participants rated their sexual desire and feelings of chemistry for each other. Results: The researchers found that when one person felt unique desire and chemistry for another, those feelings were often reciprocated. - Speed-daters who felt chemistry for many other people actually generated little desire or chemistry in others. - Apparently, people can detect whether another's interest in them is targeted or promiscuous.

Study: (McNulty, 2013) Is there any way to predict which couples are likely to thrive over the long term and which ones are headed for trouble?

Background: A group of investigators asked 135 newlywed couples to rate their relationship on a number of scales, such as good/bad and satisfied/dissatisfied. They also administered an implicit measure of how much the partners liked each other by flashing a picture of their partner very briefly before showing them pictures of positive and negative items. - The participants indicated, as quickly as possible, whether the items' pictures were positive or negative, and the investigators used the extent to which their partner's photo speeded up participants' responses to the positive words and slowed down their responses to the negative words as an indirect measure of how much they liked their partner. - The investigators then checked in with the newlyweds every 6 months for the next four years and asked how satisfied they were with their relationship. Results: The indirect measure did a very good job of predicting relationship satisfaction down the road. - The more positive they felt about each other as newlyweds by that measure, the more satisfied they were four years later. - The explicit measure was worthless. Conclusion: People's automatic, nonconscious attitudes can reveal a lot about what's really going on inside, but explicit assessments don't really reveal anything.

Experiment: (Eisenberger, 2003) The pain of social exclusion

Background: A participant is playing a virtual ball-toss game with two other people who they assume to be real people. They being with the participant being involved, but then the two other players just start throwing between themselves. Results: When left out, the participants' dorsal anterior cingulate cortex was active, showing physical pain

Experiment: (Hare, 2001) Revised Chimp Theory of Mind

Background: A subordinate and dominant chimp were on either side of a glass room. Researchers put food out in the middle where both chimps could see and put food behind a barrier where only the subordinate chimp could see. Then, the experimenter let the subordinate chimp in and saw which pile of food he went for. Results: The subordinate chimp went to the occluded food. Conclusion: The subordinate chimp IS sensitive to what the dominant chimp can see. The chimps didn't pass the other test because they don't understand being given food generously, but rather only understand things in terms of competitiveness.

Experiment: (Hertenstein, 2006) demonstrating the effect of touch in communicating emotions

Background: A toucher and a touchee sat at a table with a black curtain between them, preventing all communication other than touch between the two. The toucher attempted to convey different emotions by making contact with the touchee for 1 second on the forearm for example, smoothly stroking the arm to convey compassion or lightly clasping and shaking the arm a bit to convey gratitude Upon being touched, the touchee selected which emotion had been communicated from a list of emotion terms Results: participants could reliably communicate love, sympathy, and gratitude with brief tactile contact, all emotions that convey commitment and provide rewarding experiences to others

Study: (Crocker, 1991) attributional ambiguity

Background: African-American and white students received flattering or unflattering feedback from a white student in an adjacent room. - Half the participants were led to assume that the white student could see them through a one-way mirror, and half thought they couldn't be seen because a blind covered the mirror. Results: Whether or not they could be seen had no effect on how white students reacted to the feedback, but it did affect how black students reacted. - When black students thought the other person could not see them—and therefore didn't know their race—their self-esteem went down from the unflattering feedback and was boosted by the positive feedback. - When they thought the other person could see them, in contrast, their self-esteem was not injured by the bad news (presumably because they did not know whether to attribute the negative feedback to their own failings or to the other's prejudice), nor was it enhanced by the good news (presumably because they did not know whether to attribute the positive feedback to their own skill or to the other's condescension). Conclusion: This study indicates that members of stigmatized groups live in a less certain world, not knowing to what cause they can attribute their experience.

Experiment: (Allport, 1945) Where there is bias, it gets amplified (picture of man)

Background: Allport sent 12 students into the hall. - He brought 1 student in to see a picture were a white guy is holding a razor and pointing it at a black guy's face. - The student sees the picture, the picture is put away, student 2 is brought in, student 1 describes the photo to student 2, this filters through all 12 students. Results: By the end of the chain of 12 students, 70% of the time, the black guy is holding the razor. Conclusion: Small amounts of bias in any individual gets amplified in a group.

Study: (Anderson, 1992) making sense of both the historical and current norm for women's bodies

Background: Anderson examined the preferred female body type in 54 cultures. Results: She and her colleagues found a relationship between body-weight preferences and the reliability of the food supply across cultures. - In cultures with a relatively uncertain food supply, moderate-weight to heavyset women were considered more desirable. - In cultures with very reliable supplies of food, a thin body type was generally preferred.

Study: (Aronson, 1992) What would happen if the classroom were made less competitive?

Background: Aronson wanted to institute procedures that would unite students in the common goal of mastering a body of material, rather than competing for the highest grades and the teachers' attention. - He and his colleagues came up with something called the "jigsaw" classroom. In the jigsaw classroom, students are divided into small groups of about six students. Every effort is made to balance the groups in terms of ethnicity, gender, ability level, leadership, and so on. The material on a given topic is then divided into six parts, and each student is required to master only one part. By dividing the material in this way, Aronson ensured that no student could learn the entire lesson without help from peers. Each student's material must, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, fit together with all the others for everyone in the group to learn the whole lesson. Results: The students' dependence on one another dampens the usual competitive atmosphere and encourages them to work cooperatively toward a common goal. To the extent that the groups are ethnically heterogeneous, members of different ethnic groups gain the experience of working together as individuals rather than as representatives of particular ethnic groups. Students in the jigsaw classrooms like school more and develop more positive attitudes toward different ethnic groups than students in traditional classrooms.

Study: (Alexrod, 1984) illuminating the evolutionary origins of cooperation through Prisoner's Dilemma Strategies

Background: Axelrod ran a tournament in which players - academics, prize-winning mathematicians, computer hackers, and common folk - were invited to submit computer programs that specified what choices to make on a round of the prisoner's dilemma game, given what had happened on previous rounds. - In the first tournament, 14 strategies were submitted. - Each strategy played 200 rounds of the prisoner's dilemma game with every other strategy. - The points were tallied and the most effective strategy was announced. Results: The winning strategy was the tit-for-tat strategy. - tit-for-tat strategy: a strategy in the prisoner's dilemma game in which the player's first move is cooperative; thereafter, the player mimics the other person's behavior, whether cooperative or competitive. This strategy fares well while used against other strategies. - The tit-for-tat strategy didn't win every round when pitted against all the different strategies. Instead, it did better overall against the diversity of strategies.

Study: (Baldwin, 1996) attachment styles across relationships

Background: Baldwin asked undergraduates to list 10 important relationships in their lives and then had them indicate the attachment style (secure, anxious-ambivalent, or avoidant) that best characterized them in each relationship. Results: Rather than having the same attachment styles across all, or even most, of their relationships, more than 50% of participants characterized themselves as having all three attachment styles across their 10 relationships. In other words, people have multiple kinds of attachment working models stored in their memories, and any of these can be activated in the many relationships in their adult life.

Experiment: (Burger, 2009) replication of Milgram's basic experiment to investigate whether the tendency to obey authority has changed since Milgram's time

Background: Burger identified a critical moment in the original processings when disobedience was most likely: right after the participant had (supposedly) delivered 150 volts of electric shock and the learner protested and demanded to be released. It was something of a now-or-never moment: four out of five of Milgram's participants who didn't stop at this point never stopped at all. - Burger saw an opportunity. It would be ethically unacceptable to put people through the stress of deciding between disobeying the experimenter and administering 300 or 400 volts of electricity. - But the procedure isn't so stressful - and is thus more ethically acceptable - up to the 150-volt level. - Until that point, Milgram's learner hadn't protested, so the pain caused by the shock (the participants would presume) can't be that bad. Results: The results were essentially the same as those obtained by Milgram himself. - In Burger's study, 70% of the participants were willing to administer the next level of shock (165 volts) after hearing the learner's protest. - This compares with 82% of Milgram's participants - not a statistically significant difference. - Men and women were equally likely to continue past the critical 150-volt level. - Today, people seem to react to pressure to obey the same way they did more than 50 years ago.

Experiment: How do the different self-construals reflect in the stories that members of different cultures construct about themselves? (Cohen and Gunz, 2002)

Background: Cohen and Gunz asked Canadian and Asian students to tell stories about 10 different situations in which they were the center of attention (like being embarrassed) In Action: Canadians were more likely than Asians to reproduce the scene from their original point of view, looking outward from their own perspective. Asians were more likely to imagine the scene as an observer might, describing it from a 3rd person perspective. Conclusion: Westerners tend to experience and recall events from the inside out, with themselves at the center looking out at the world. Easterners are more likely to experience and recall events from the outside in, starting from the social world and looking back at themselves as an object of attention.

Study: (Darley, 1968) the effect of other people's presence on altruistic behavior

Background: College students sat in separate cubicles discussing the problems associated with living in an urban environment. - They engaged in this conversation over an intercom system, which allowed only one participant to talk at a time. - One of them, a confederate, described his difficulties in adjusting to urban life and mentioned he had problems with seizures from time to time, especially when under stress. - Then, after everyone else had spoken, the confederate took his second turn. As he did so, he became increasingly loud and incoherent; he choked and gasped. Before falling silent, he cried for help. - In one condition, participants were led to believe that their discussion group consisted of only two people (the participant and the victim). - In another condition, the conversation was among three people (the participant, the future victim, and another person). - In the final condition, the audience was the largest: the conversation involved six people (the participant, the victim, and four other people). Results: The presence of others had a strong effect on helping rates. - 85% of the participants who were in the two-person condition and hence the only witness to the victim's seizure, left their cubicles to help. - In contrast, 62% of the participants who were in the three-person condition and 31% of those in the six-person condition attempted to help the victim. Continuation: In a related vein, several types of studies have examined whether people are less likely to help someone out when other people are around or when they are alone. - In these studies, a participant might witness a victim in danger or someone passed out in the subway or a theft occurring in a store. - Across these kinds of studies, 75% of people helped when they were alone compared with 53% who helped when they were in the presence of others.

Study: (Nemeroff, 1989) the representativeness heuristic and cause-and-effect in "you are what you eat"

Background: College students were asked to make inferences about the attributes of members of (hypothetical) tribes. One group read about a tribe that ate a wild boar and hunted sea turtles for their shells. A second group read about a tribe that ate sea turtles and hunted wild boar for their tusks. Results: The students' responses indicated that they assumed the characteristics of the food would "rub off" on the tribe members. Members of the turtle-eating tribe were considered better swimmers and more generous; those who ate wild boar were thought to be more aggressive and more likely to have beards. Theme: How representatives affects causal judgments

Experiment: (Asch, 1956) normative social influence and conformity

Background: Eight male students were gathered together to perform a simple perceptual task: determining which of three lines was the same length as a target line. Each person called out his judgment publicly, one at a time. The task was so easy that the experience was uneventful, boring even. - On the third trial, however, one participant found that his private judgment was at odds with the expressed opinions of everyone else in the group. He was the only true participant in the experiment; the seven others were confederates instructed by Asch to respond incorrectly. Results: The confederates responded incorrectly on 11 more occasions before the experiment was over. - As Asch predicted, there was less conformity in his study than in Sherif's, but the rate of caving into the group was still surprisingly high. ¾ of the participants conformed to the group's incorrect answer at least once. - Overall, participants conformed on a third of the critical trials. Conclusion: The question was how often the participant would forsake what he knew to be the correct answer and conform to the incorrect judgment given by everyone else. - Here there was no ambiguity as there was in Sherif's experiment: the right answer was clear. - We like to think of people, ourselves especially, as sticking to what we think is right rather than following the herd. - In addition, we worry about people abandoning the dictates of their own conscience to follow others into wrongheaded or potentially destructive behavior. - There is undoubtedly some informational social influence: the incorrect judgments called out by the majority were for lines that were only 0.5 - 0.75 inches off the correct answer, so some participants may have questioned their own judgment and regarded the confederates' responses as reliable sources of information. However, control participants who were not subject to social pressure got the answer right nearly 100% of the time, so there wasn't much uncertainty about the correct response - Thus, informational social influence was not the main cause of conformity - The primary reason people conformed was to avoid standing out negatively in the eyes of the group (normative social influence)

Experiment: (Ekman, 1969) testing Darwin's universality hypothesis

Background: Ekman and Friesen took more than 3,000 photos of people, including a sample of actors, as they portrayed anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. They then presented photos of these expressions to people in Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and the United States, who selected from six emotion terms the one that best matched the feeling the person appeared to be showing in each photo. In Action: Across these five cultures, accuracy rates were in the 70-90% range for the 6 emotions. If participants couldn't read the emotions with any accuracy and had been merely guessing, they would have succeeded only 16.7% of the time. Conclusion: These findings seemed to provide strong evidence that emotions are indeed universal. Commentary: Critics of Ekman and Friesen were unconvinced, noting a fundamental flaw in the study: the participants had all been exposed to Western media and therefore might have learned how to identify the expressions through that exposure.

Experiment: (Ekman, 1991) How good are people at catching liars?

Background: Ekman and his colleagues have presented videotapes of people lying and telling the truth to thousands of people. - Participants simply had to indicate whether each person was lying or telling the truth. Results: Whereas chance guessing would yield accuracy rates of 50%, people were correct, on average, only 57% of the percent of the time. - Contrary to what you might expect, those sages of the human character - judges, clinicals, and psychological scientists - proved no better than the average person. - The one group that shone in their ability to catch liars was Secret Service agents, probably because they get sound training in the social psychology of lying.

Experiment: (Dunn, 2008) Is it better to give than receive?

Background: Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues tested this idea by asking participants to rate how happy they were and then giving them either $5 or $20 to spend by the end of the day. Some were told to spend the money on themselves; others were told to spend it on someone else Results: Those required to spend the money on others reported greater happiness during a follow-up assessment at the end of the day compared with those told to spend the money on themselves

Experiment: (Fowler, 2010) social influence on social network effects; whether participants in a game where money was at stake cooperated with one another or focused on their narrow self-interest

Background: Everyone played many rounds of the game, with each participant randomly assigned to a different four-person group each round. Results: The investigators found that whether a person was altruistic on round 3 had been influenced by how selfish or altruistic that person's groupmates had been on round 2. But the person was also influenced by what her round 2 groupmates had experienced with their groupmates on round 1. Conclusion: Because the participants were strangers randomly assigned to different groups, the results must have been due to social influence, not homophily or genetics. Thus, some types of behavior truly are contagious.

Experiment: (Prentice, 1993) the discrepancy between private attitudes and public norms about alcohol use at Princeton University

Background: Experimenters asked Princeton undergraduates how comfortable they felt about campus drinking habits, as well as the comfort level of both their friends and the average undergraduate. Results: If the students were suffering from pluralistic ignorance, they would indicate that they were less at ease with drinking than they supposed most students were. Conclusion: The experimenters attributed the discrepancy to the visibility of drinking on campus.

Experiment: (Kahneman, 1973) the representative heuristic and base-rate neglect

Background: Experimenters asked participants to consider a description of Tom W., supposedly written during Tom's senior year in high school by a psychologist who based his assessment on Tom's responses on personality tests. The participants were also told that Top is now in graduate school. The description roughly said that Tom was very intelligent, lacked true creativity, needed order and clarity and very neat systems, had dull writing, strong drive, little sympathy for others, no socialible, self-centered by with a deep moral sense. The first group participants then ranked nine academic disciplines in terms of the likelihood that Tom chose them as his field of specialization. The second group ranked the nine disciplines in terms of how similar they thought Tom was to the typical student in each discipline. A final group did not see the description of Tom; they merely estimated the percentage of all graduate students in the US who were enrolled in each of the nine disciplines. Results: The rankings of the likelihood that Tom chose to study each of the disciplines were virtually identical to the rankings of Tom's similarity to the students in each discipline. In other words, the participants' responses were based entirely on how much the description of Tom resembled the typical student in each field. The likelihood rankings didn't correspond at all to what the participants knew about the overall popularity of each of the fields. Conclusion: By basing their responses exclusively on representativeness, the participants failed to consider the other useful source of informations.

Study: (Kassin, 2003) Demonstration of the impact of self-fulfilling prophecies within the criminal justice system

Background: Experimenters had some students commit a mock crime (stealing $100 from a locked laboratory cabinet) and other students simply visit the scene of the crime. These students were then questioned by student interrogators who were led to believe they were likely to be guilty or innocent. Results: The interrogators who thought their suspects were likely to be guilty asked more incriminating questions and generally conducted more vigorous and aggressive interrogations. This in turn led these suspects to act more defensively, which made them appear guilty to a group of observers who listened to tapes containing only the suspects' comments (with the interrogators' questions removed). Conclusion: When the interrogators thought someone was guilty, they acted in ways that elicited apparent evidence of guilt.

Experiment: (Gilbert, 1986) the fundamental attribution error in action, how people will sometimes attribute to personal dispositions another person's behavior even if they themselves have elicited that person's behavior

Background: Experimenters assigned participants to one of two roles: questioner or responder. The questioner's job is to read a series of questions to the responder, who then answers with one of two entirely scripted responses (thus, the responders' answers are not their own and shouldn't be considered informative about their true personalities). The added twist in these studies is that the questioners themselves, following instructions from the experimenter, indicate to the responders which of the two responses to read (thus, the questioners are determining the responders' behavior). After reading a list of these questions to the responders and eliciting a particular response, the questioners in one such study rated the responders on a set of personality traits: trustworthiness, greediness, and kindheartedness. Results: The investigators found that the questioners drew inferences about the responders, even though they themselves had directed the responders to answer as they did! Responders led to recite mainly altruistic responses were rated more favorably than those led to recite mainly selfish responses. This occurred even though the responders could have (and may have) tried through tone of voice to distance themselves from the responses they had to give.

Experiment: (Somerville, 2013) Someone's watching - brain differences between being alone v being watched

Background: Experimenters brought adolescents into an fMRI scanner and were told that there was not testing being done, but that they were just looking at the equipment/methods. The adolescents were told to lie in the scanner, and sometimes the camera would be on and sometimes it would be off, but that didn't mean anything, the experimenters were just testing the equipment In Action: The experimenters compared neural activity when the camera was on versus off Results: The MPFC (region of thinking about the self) was more active when the camera was on Conclusion: just the thought that someone could be watching makes people more self conscious

Experiment: (Petty, 2002) the self-validation hypothesis

Background: Experimenters designed a study in which university participants read a persuasive message arguing in favor of a new campus policy that would require all seniors to take a comprehensive exam before they graduate, and then recorded whether their thoughts in response to the message were favorable or unfavorable. - Participants were then led to feel confidence or doubt by recalling a situation in the past when they had experienced either confidence or doubt. Results: In the condition where participants had recalled an episode of confidence, those who had previously generated mostly favorable thoughts about the comprehensive exam reported more favorable attitudes toward this issue - in other words, they were more persuaded - than those with most unfavorable thoughts about the exam. - For those who recalled a time of doubt, their attitudes toward the comprehensive exam were not predicted by the favorability or unfavorability of their thoughts about the exam - that is, they didn't rely on their thoughts to come up with their attitudes toward the senior comprehensive exam - presumably because those thoughts were shrouded in doubt. Conclusion: Just as the self-validation hypothesis would predict, the favorability or unfavorability of one's thoughts influenced persuasion only when they were associated with a feeling of confidence.

Experiment: (Ditto, 1988) selective evaluation

Background: Experimenters gave undergraduates a test of a fictitious medical condition, a deficiency that was supposedly associated with pancreatic disorders later in life. - The test was simple: put saliva on a piece of yellow paper and observe whether it changes color in the next 20 seconds. - In the deficiency condition, participants were told that if the paper remained yellow, they had the medical condition; in the no-deficiency condition, participants were told that if the paper changed to a dark green, they had the medical condition. Logic: Clearly, participants in the deficiency condition would be motivated to see the paper change color, and they should be disturbed by the evidence confronting them. Results: Participants in the deficiency condition took almost 30 seconds longer than those who got more favorable evidence to decide that their test was finished, repeatedly dipping the paper in saliva to give it every possible opportunity to turn green.

Experiment: (Moscovici, 1969) how minority opinions influence

Background: Experimenters had groups of participants call out whether a color was green or blue. The border between blue and green isn't always clear, but the critical stimuli the participants saw were one that, when tested along, participants nearly always thought were blue. - The experimenter showed participants these stimuli in a setting in which they could hear one another's responses, including those of a minority group of respondents (confederates) who all responded aline. Results: When the confederates varied their responses randomly between green and blue, the participants said green after the confederates did so only 1% of the time. When the confederates responded with green consistently, the participants responded with green 8% of the time. The influence of the consistent minority showed up in other ways as well. - When the participants thought the study was over, the experimenter introduced them to a second investigator. This second investigator showed participants a series of blue-green colors and recorded where each participant, individually, thorough blue left off and green began. - Those who had earlier been exposed to a consistent minority not identified more of these stimuli as green; their sense of the border between blue and green had shifted. - Thus, when the minority opinion was consistent, it had both a direct effect on participants' responses in the public setting and a latent effect on their subsequent private judgments.

Experiment: (Todorov, 2008) What is it that people think they see in brief glances at another person's face?

Background: Experimenters had participants rate a large number of photos of different faces on the personality dimensions people tend to mention spontaneously when describing faces. Results: When they looked at how all these judgments correlated with one another, they found that two dimensions stand out. One is a positive-negative dimensions, including such assessments as whether someone is seen as trustworthy or untrustworthy, aggressive or not aggressive. The other dimension centers around power, involving assessments such as whether someone seems confident or bashful, dominant or submissive. People are set to make quite important judgments about others: whether they should be approached or avoided (dimension 1), and whether they're likely to be top dog or underdog (dimension 2). More Background: Todorov used computer models to generate faces that represent various combinations of these two dimensions, including faces that are more extreme on each trait dimensions than would even be encountered in real life In these faces, you can see the hypermasculine features, such as a very pronounced jaw, that make someone look dominant, and the features, such as the shape of the eyebrow and eye sockets, hat make someone look trustworthy

Experiment: (Wiltermuth, 2008) synchronization and cooperation

Background: Experimenters induced synchrony amongst the group and measured its consequences on a group directed behavior. - Ps were wearing headphones and sat across from each other. - Headphones either played song at the same time or at different random intervals. - The Ps could also be moving cups around at the same or different times. - Then Ps played a "public goods" game as a measure of willingness to cooperate (meant to show how synchrony or asynchrony impacted generosity to their group) Results: Singing/moving together made people increase how much they cooperated with other people. Conclusion: Synchrony is one way to create groups. - Synchrony induces feelings of fondness and coordination with the in-group, but can also induce distance from outgroups.

Study: (Chen, 2001) the effect of power on expressing underlying inclinations

Background: Experimenters preselected participants who were either self-interested and exchange oriented or more compassionate and communally oriented. Each participant was then randomly assigned to a high-power or low-power position in a clever, subtle manner: high-power participants were seated in a snazzy leather professional chair during the experiment; low-power people were seated in a plain chair. Participants were then asked to complete a long questionnaire with the help of another participant, who was late. Results: Consistent with the idea that power amplifies the expression of preexisting tendencies, the high-power communally oriented participants performed the lion's share of the task. In contrast, the more self-interested participants with high power acted in a more self-serving fashion, leaving more of the task for the other participant. The same difference was not found between low-power communal versus exchange participants. Conclusion: The effects of power depend on who holds it. Power corrupts the corruptible.

Experiment with 2 pictures of different women

Background: Experimenters show participants 2 pictures. The participant selects "more attractive" picture. The experimenter then puts pictures away before giving them their choice back. - some participants were given their correct choice in picture back, some were not (most people didn't notice if they had been given the wrong picture, only about 30%) In Action: When describing the reasoning behind their choice between participants shown the correct and incorrect picture, there was no difference in the level of detail, emotional engagement, or certainty Theme: Choice blindness! People are readily making up explanations for choice they (never) made

Experiment: (Gegrely, 1995) How babies interpret goal attribution (ball over barrier)

Background: Experimenters showed 1 year olds a display of a ball moving over a barrier to get to the other side and measured how long the baby looked each time the display was played until they became habituated. Then, the experimenters changed the display to remove the barrier. Half the babies saw the ball take the same motion, while the other Half saw it take a different movement. Results: The babies were more interested in the display that continued to show the hop motion. This indicated that the baby had habituated to the goal of the ball rather than the path.

Study: (Quattrone, 1980) the outgroup homogeneity effect

Background: Experimenters showed Princeton and Rutgers students a series of videos of other students making decisions, such as whether to listen to rock or classical music or whether to wait alone or with other participants during a break in an experiment. - Half the participants were told the students on the video were from Princeton; half were told they were from Rutgers. - Afterward, the participants estimated the percentage of students at the same university who would make the same choices as those they had seen on the video. Results: The results indicated that the participants assumed more similarity among outgroup members than among ingroup members. Princeton students who thought they had witnessed the behavior of a Rutgers student were willing to generalize that behavior to other Rutgers students. In contrast, Princeton students who thought they had witnessed the behavior of a Princeton student were less willing to generalize. The opposite was true for Rutgers students. Conclusion: People see more variability of habit and opinion among members of the ingroup than they do among members of the outgroup.

Experiment: (Haidt, 1999) Cultural specificity of emotions

Background: Experimenters showed participants two different images of a woman conveying embarrassment. In Action: Only one of the photos was equally recognized as embarrassment between the US and Indian participants, the other was only recognized as embarrassment by Indian participants. Conclusion: There are non-universal features of emotional expressions. CULTURES VARY IN DISPLAY RULES.

Study: (Schroeder, 2014) do coexistence programs work?

Background: Experimenters surveyed four sets of Seeds of Peace campers, 279 in all, before camp began, as it ended, and more than nine months later. The participants described their attitudes toward the Israelis and Palestinians they met at camp and toward Israelis and Palestinains in general, and they indicated whether they had made any friends from the other group at camp. Results: The researchers found that living together for three weeks led to attitudes at the end of camp that were more mutually favorable, and more favorable toward each other's ethnic group, than they were at the beginning. - Attitudes more than nine months later were still more favorable than they had been at the beginning of camp. - The investigators also found that forming a friendship with someone from the other groups was a significant predictor of favorable attitudes after the teenages had gone back to their normal lives.

Experiment: (Kalish, 2007) where there is bias, it gets amplified (x and y graphs)

Background: Experimenters tell participants that they're going to show them a bunch of data with an x and y component and there's a rule that specifies the relationship. - The Ps are asked to guess the rule (given the x, they report what the y is) - Experimenters then took the x's and y's from the first participant and used their data as the input for the next participant (like a math telephone game). Results: People converge on their answer - People are biased to see x = y Conclusion: This kind of bias is like a lot of things in life and a small amount of bias exerts a big effect in the long run.

Intervention on Individuals Experiment: (Walton, 2011) Increasing social-belonging of minority college students Real-world problem: inequality in graduation rates between White and underrepresented minority (URM) students Psychological theory: - Marginalized groups concerned about belonging in "mainstream" contexts - social belonging = basic human need - belonging uncertainty > negative outcomes Solution: target individual students' sense of social belonging to improve graduation rates of URM students.

Background: Experimenters took first-year undergraduates and had them undergo an intervention. - In the experimental group, the intervention was made to make social adversity seem norms. In the control condition, they did something unrelated. - The race of the students were also important. - Participants in the intervention condition read survey results from juniors and seniors at their school describing how they were also concerned about belonging in the beginning but how it went away over time. They then wrote their own speech for future students in an effort to internalize the message/reduce the stigma. - All participants then took an end-of-college survey 3 years later regarding GPA, belonging uncertainty, self-doubt, happiness, and general health Results: By their senior year, Black students who received the social-belonging intervention in their first year had GPAs equal to those of White students in the control group, reported less uncertainty about their belonging and greater happiness (equal to white students)

How to do interventions: Resources (Haushofer, 2016) Real-world problem: many poverty-reduction measures are flawed Psychological theory: - "in-kind" (physical, tangible) donations have high administrative costs - cash earmarked for certain purpose may reduce people's autonomy Solution: give people in poverty unconditional cash transfers

Background: Experimenters took poor households in Kenya and gave the treatment group unconditional cash transfers of $700. Background: After 9 months, the cash-transfer recipients were spending more on important things, had more in assets, received more income, and reformed greater happiness than the control group.

Study: (Salganik, 2006) Herding in Humans: What Music Do You Like?

Background: Experimenters wanted to find out what becomes a trend. Is it that it's objectively good, or does everyone just follow one person's lead? - They launched a website with a bunch of different songs. On the website, you rate the songs. - When participants go to the website, they are randomly assigned to a "world" - In one of the worlds, songs were arranged in a completely random order for every participant, so they didn't know how much other people were listening/downloading/interacting with each song. So, in this world, songs at the top were there solely based on the aggregate taste of the participants listening, providing an objective measure of which songs people actually life. - In the other 8 worlds, people rated the songs that they liked, and the songs on the page were ordered based on these ratings (socially influenced). Results: There's evidence for both aesthetic preferences and randomness. - the songs ranked in the top/bottom 20% in the independent world were usually also in the top/bottom 20% in the socially influenced world. - but there was a massive group in the middle 60% that was random

Intervention on Dyadics Experiment: (Okonofua, 2016) Increasing empathy among teachers to reduce suspension rates Real-world problem: suspensions from school increasing over time; deny students learning opportunities and increase likelihood of negative outcomes later in life Psychological theory: - feeling respect for and respected by authority figures > rule-following - teacher-student relationships = strong predictor of classroom behavior - self-reinforcing cycle: punishment > lowers trust > increases misbehavior > labelling as "troublemaker" > harsher punishment Solution: target teacher-student relationship by increasing teachers' trust and empathy toward students

Background: Experiments created an intervention of an online module encouraging the adopting of an empathic mindset towards discipline for middle school match teachers. - Teachers in the intervention condition read an article highlighting non-pejorative reasons why students might misbehave and encouraging teachers to understand and value students' experiences and feelings. They then wrong about how they'd apply these ideas in their own lives. - Teacher in the control condition did the same thing but on an unrelated topic. Results: Students whose math teacher received the empathic-mindset intervention were half as likely to be suspended over the school year (4.6%) as students of control teachers (9.8%). - Intervention particularly effective for students with prior suspensions, likely because it increased their perception of how much their teacher respected them.

Experiment: False-Belief and Autism (Happe, 1995)

Background: Experiments gave an alternative version of the Sally-Anne task to children with autism in which after Sally puts the ball in the basket, she draws a picture of her pal in the basket and then leaves before Anne moves the ball. The participant is then asked if the drawing is accurate. Result: Autistic children pass this test. Conclusion: 3 year olds and children with autism fail the false belief task for different reasons. For the drawing test, the 3 year old can't understand why the drawing hasn't updated to the real world. For the children with autism, there are no deficits in representing things that don't exist in general, their deficit is specific to representing MENTAL STATES.

Study: (Rigdon, 2009) how the sense of being watched increases altruism

Background: Experiments have gathered evidence showing that the sense of being watched increases altruism. - In fact, so powerful is this effect that it can be achieved by simply seeing three dots arranged to look like the eyes and mouth of a human face. - Seeing this arrangement of dots evokes the sense that someone is looking at you, and, the reasoning goes, triggers more cooperative behavior. - In the relevant study, participants played the dictator game. - They were given a sum of money and asked to write down on a sheet of paper the amount they wanted to give to a stranger. - On the other hand, they saw one of two sets of dots. - In one condition, participants saw the pattern of three dots evocative of the human face. - In a second condition, participants saw the same dots but configured upside-down. Results: When presented with the non-face dots on the response sheet, 40% of the participants decided to keep all the money for themselves. This selfish tendency dropped to 25% when the dots representing the fact were on the response sheet.

Study: (Rudman, 2012) dehumanization and sexual violence

Background: Experiments identified men who were more likely to dehumanize women according to how quickly they paired the concept of "woman" with concepts such as "animal" and "instinct." Results: Men who were more likely to dehumanize women in this way reported that they would harass women sexually, that if no one would ever find out about it they would force a woman to have sex, and that women on occasion deserve to be raped.

Study: (Langlois, 1991) infants and attractive faces.

Background: Experiments showed infants as young as 3 months slides of two human faces side by side. - Adults had previously judged one of the faces as attractive and the other as unattractive. - The slides were typically shown to the infant for 10 seconds. Results: Infants showed a clear preference for attractive over unattractive faces, with the time the infant spent looking at each one serving as an indicator of the infant's preference. - By the end of the first year, when infants' behavioral repertoires are more advanced, they are more inclined to play contentedly with an adult stranger who is attractive than with one who is unattractive.

Study: (Inzlicht, 2000) implicit stereotype threat

Background: Female undergraduates took a math test in the company of either two other women or two men—they did not say a word about any gender differences on the test. Results: Nonetheless, those who took the test with other women got a 70% on the test and those who took the test with men got 55%.

Experiment: (Waltser-Hatfield) does attractiveness matter? Dance

Background: First year students were randomly paired for a dance. - The researchers measured each student's intelligence, social skills, personality, and attractiveness. Results: What predicted enjoyment of the date at the end of the dance was their physical attractiveness. - People with higher attractiveness ratings were harsher.

Study: (Gerbner, 1986) agenda control; what's on the TV?

Background: Gerbner and his colleagues have explored the agenda control thesis by coding the content of television programs and looking at the attitudes of heavy TV viewers. Observations: It should come as no surprise that the world depicted on most TV shows scarcely resembles social reality. - On prime-time programs, for example, males outnumber females by a factor of 3:1; and recent analyses of popular films from 2007 to 2012 find that women have only about 25% of the speaking roles. - Ethnic minorities, young children, and older adults are also underrepresented. - Crime is wildly more prevalent per unit of time on prime-time shows than in the average American's real life. - Heavy TV viewers construe social reality much like the reality they see on the screen. - They tend to endorse more racially prejudiced attitudes, assume that women have more limited abilities than men, and overestimate the prevalence of violent crime.

Study: (Gottman, 1992) identifying the specific emotions and patterns of communication that predict dissatisfaction and, ultimately, the termination of relationships

Background: Gottman videotaped married couples engaged in intense conversations in the lab and then studied the videos carefully for clues to romantic dissatisfaction. - In a "conflict discussion task," partners talked for 15 minutes about an issue they both recognized as a source of intense conflict in their relationship, and they tried their best to resolve it. - The researchers studied those interactions and coded them for anger, criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, contempt, sadness, and fear, as well as several positive behaviors, including affection, enthusiasm, interest, and humor. - In one long-term study using this technique, Gottman followed the marriages of 79 couples from one city over many years. - Based on their observations, they identified "the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" - that is, the four negative behaviors that are most harmful to relationships: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt. Results: The researchers found, just as you would expect, that married individuals who continually criticize and find fault with their partners have less satisfying marriages. The same is true of people who are prone to stonewalling and avoidance. - Romantic partners are also in trouble when they are unable to talk openly and freely about their difficulties without getting defensive - refusing to consider the possibility that something they are doing might contribute to the conflict. - In contrast, the more couples disclose to each other about how they are feeling, the better it is for the relationship. - Finally, contempt, the emotion felt by one person looking down on another, is particularly toxic to maintaining relationship bonds. Conclusion: Negative communication patterns contribute directly to divorce. - In another study of the 79 couples, the researchers used measures of the four toxic behaviors early in the relationship to predict who would stay together and who would be divorced 14 years later. Remarkably, they could predict with 93% accuracy.

Experiment: (Baldwin, 1990) Who's watching? The effect on present people on self-evaluation

Background: Graduate psychology students were asked to talk about their 3 most recent research ideas. While they were talking, they witnessed subliminal presentations of Bob Zajonc (looks mean, known to be mean) or a kind post-doc. They were then asked to self evaluate their ideas. Results: Grad students shown Zajonc were more negative. Conclusion: Just thinking of someone who you expect would be critical of you makes you more critical of yourself Additional Research: Catholic female undergrads read about a girl's sex dream while shown subliminal presentation of Zajonc (who they had no knowledge of) or the Pope. They felt worse when subliminally shown the Pope. So it matters the perception of the person.

Study: (Doob, 1979) How does the bad-news bias affect people?

Background: Investigators have conducted surveys that ask people how much TV they watch and their impressions of the prevalence of crime: "How likely do you think it is that you or one of your close friends will have their house broken into during the next year?" Results: There is a positive correlation between the amount of time spent watching TV and the fear of victimization. Of course, this is hard to interpret and can be more things at play. When accounting for demographic, the correlation is substantially reduced among people living in low-crime neighborhoods than high-crime areas.

Experiment: (Paluck, 2012) norm-based approaches on combating harassment and bullying in schools

Background: Half of a group of 56 middle schools in New Jersey were randomly assigned to a social norm treatment condition in which a randomly selected group of students was asked to model opposition to the kinds of conflict and harassment that were common at their school (for example, speaking out when one student taunted or viciously teased another). - The other schools served as controls. Results: Disciplinary reports declined in the treatment schools by 30% relative to the control schools. - As you might expect, some students were more effective than others at modeling anti-harassment norms, with the more popular students having a bigger effect on their peers' beliefs about what sorts of conflicts are common or acceptable at their school.

Experiment: (Harlow, 1959) the need to belong in nonhumans

Background: Harlow raised baby rhesus monkeys without contact with other rhesus monkeys but with access to two "mother surrogates" - props vaguely resembling monkeys. - One prop was covered in cloth, where the monkeys could go for comfort when feeling threatened. The other was made out of wire that could provide milk when the monkeys were hungry. Results: The monkeys preferred the mother who could provide comfort to the one that could provide food. - Still, those raised with these mothers, but otherwise in isolation, were in no way normal when they reached adolescence. As adolescents, they were highly fearful, couldn't interact normally with their peers, and engaged in inappropriate sexual behaviors. Conclusion: we have a biological need to belong

Experiment: (Fredman, 1966) foot in the door - homeowners sign

Background: Homeowners were first asked to perform an action by signing a petition/displaying a small placard and for the cause of either driving safely to keeping California beautiful. - 2 weeks laters, they were asked to put up a large, ugly, "Drive Carefully" lawn sign. Results: Participants who had previously displayed a small sign for the cause were most likely to display the big sign (the Ps who had done the most similar act before) Conclusion: If you comply with the first request, you're more likely to comply with the second.

Study: How does gender affect the social self?

Background: In a review of the literature in the self-concept and gender, Susan Cross and Laura Madson (1997) gathered evidence indicating that women in the US tend to construe the self in more interdependent terms than men do in terms of connection to others. In contrast, men in the US tend to prioritize difference and uniqueness, construing the self in more independent terms. The same differences are found among the Japanese. Why? Diverse reasons! - Socialization processes - The friendships that people form at early ages - Gender-specific roles in adulthood

Study: (Bateson, 2006) self-awareness in the workplace

Background: In many offices, it's common to have a regularly offered goody, like coffee, snacks, or tea, with an "honest box" next to it, in which people donate to cover the cost of the refreshment. But people are prone to exploit such a public good. Set up: The experimenters set up an image of flowers on a wall near the coffee dispenser. When they did so, her work colleagues on average gave 15 pence for every liter of milk. When an image of a person's eyes stared at them as they contributed, prompting greater self-awareness, their donations jumped considerably, rising to 70 pence when it was that of a stern-looking mall. Conclusion: Self-awareness prompts more socially appropriate behavior.

Study: (Miller, 1986) examining the effect on exceptions vs routines on how easy it is to image an event not happening on its effect on how easy it is to imagine an event not happening

Background: In one study that examined this idea, participants read about a man who was severely injured when a store he happened to be in was robbed. In one version of the story, the robbery took place in a store he decided to visit for a "change of pace." Results: When participants considered how much the victim should be compensated for his injuries, those who thought the injuries were sustained in an unusual setting recommended over $100,000 more than those who thought the injuries occurred in the victim's usual store. Commentary: The injuries were presumably more tragic because it was so easy to imagine the counterfactual event that would have left the man unharmed.

Study: (Fallon, 1985) misperceptions in body types and attractiveness

Background: In one study, male and female undergraduates were shown a series of 9 drawings of body types ranging from very thin to very heavy. - The participants had to identify the body types along a continuum that represented (1) their own current body type, (2) the body type they would most want to have, (3) the body type they thought would be most attractive to the opposite sex, and (4) the body type of the opposite sex that they personally found most attractive. Results: The male students, on average, thought that their current body type was precisely as heavy as the ideal body type. Moreover, they also believed that their current body type was the most attractive to female students (although the women actually preferred a more slender male physique than the men anticipated). - The results were different for the female students. The women judged themselves to be heavier than their own ideal and also heavier than what they thought would be most attractive to men. The women also believe that the most attractive body type to men was much more slender than the ideal the men actually preferred.

Study: (Todorov, 2005) How well do snap judgments predict more considered consensus opinion? (politicians)

Background: In one study, participants were shown, for 1 second, pictures of the Republican and Democratic candidates in US congressional elections and asked to indicate which candidates looked more competent. Results: Those judged to be more competent by most of the participants won 69% of the races. Commentary: These judgments of competence might lack validity: the person judged to be more competent might not actually be more competent. However, what matters in predicting the outcome of elections is not what is really true, but what the electorate believes to be true.

Study: (Burgess, 1953) similarly in personal characteristics on relationships

Background: In one study, the members of 1,000 engaged couples - 850 of whom eventually married - rated themselves on 88 characteristics. Results: When researchers compared actual couples' ratings with those of "random couples" created by pairing individual members of different couples, they found that on 66 of 88 characteristics, the average similarity of the engaged couples was greater than the similarity of "random couples." - Furthermore, the members of engaged couples were never more dissimilar than the "random couples" on any characteristic. - The similarity of engaged couples was strongest for demographic characteristics (such as social class) and physical characteristics (such as health and physical attractiveness). Continuation: Similarity was less strong-but still present-for personality characteristics (leadership, sensitivity), although other studies find that married couples do exhibit stronger similarity in certain core personality characteristics, such as extraversion and genuineness. - Moreover, interracial and interethnic couples tend to be more similar to each other in terms of their personality traits than are couples of the same race and ethnicity. - People may compensate for dissimilarity on one dimension by seeking out greater similarity on others.

Study: accuracy of eyewitness identification

Background: In phase 1, they staged a theft and the participants was tasked with picking out the thief from photos. - In one condition, identifying the thief was hard because they were wearing a cap and they were only present for 12 seconds. - In another condition, the thief revealed more of his face but was only present for 12 seconds. - In the last condition, the thief wasn't wearing a cap and was present for 20 seconds. In phase 2, the participants (witnesses) questioned and identified the thief and the session was videotaped. Then new participants (jurors) watched those videotaped sessions and rated the extent to which they believed the witness correctly identified the thief. Results: Even if they had a good look at the thief, the participants were only 75% accurate. With a bad look, they were near chance. - Jurors are highly likely to believe that the witness made the correct identification and was almost entirely unaffected by the quality of the identification.

Study: (Bapna, 2016) What impact does anonymity have on how people search for matches during online dating and how many matches they get?

Background: In their randomized field experiment, they teamed up with a major North American online dating website to randomly select 50,000 out of 100,000 new users of the website who would get the ability to look at others' dating profiles anonymously, without leaving a trace. - The remaining 50,000 new users, who made up the control group, did not have this anonymity feature enabled. - The researchers reasoned that the anonymity feature may lead to more disinhibited search behavior, thereby increasing the number and diversity of profiles people view, and it may also reveal people's true preferences because it can be conducted at minimal to no social cost. The end result of such processes could be more matches. - However, when people search others' profiles anonymously, they are no longer leaving any signal of interest. Results: Although participants in the anonymity condition did view more profiles than their control counterparts, they ended up having fewer matches, which was partly accounted for by the fact that these participants sent fewer signals of interest. - Because people are often nudged to initiate communication precisely when they learn that someone is interested in them, anonymous participants receive fewer attempts from others to initiate communication, which is the first step in finding a match.

Intervention on Groups Experiment: (Paluck, 2016) showing visual statement of setting the norm of anti-bullying Real-world problem: middle school is a challenging time and kids bully each other Psychological theory: - the perceived social norm is of exclusivity > increases bullying - changing the perceived social norm can change behavior - students who are more popular can set the social norm Solution: change the perceived social norm by sending some students to an antibullying training and giving them a visible cue to communicate the new antibullying norm

Background: In treatment schools, random subsets of students were sent to the anti conflict training where the students were given a wristband (inside cue) after training. In control schools, the school as a whole received anti conflict intervention. Results: Students are more aware of anti-conflict wristbands when worn by a popular student. - Treatment schools saw a 25% reduction in administrative disciplinary reports. - Students with more social connections/more central to the network are more effective in increasing antibullying norm.

Study: (Shariff, 2007) do secular, nonreligious concepts related to kindness and ethical behavior generate similar levels of generosity as religious concepts?

Background: In what they called a "civic" condition, participants unscrambled sentences that included words related to the secular institutions and ideas that build more cooperative societies, such as civic, jury, coury, police, and contract. Results: These words also generated high levels of generosity in the economic game - as much generosity as the religious words prompted. Conclusion: The emphasis on fairness and cooperation and equality, seen in both religious traditions and sexular treatments of ethics, can do a great deal to elicit prosocial behavior.

Experiment: (Southgate, 2014) Infant Theory of Mind with Brain Patterns

Background: Infants are shown something similar to the Sally-Anne task. This time, researchers track brain activity to see surprise when the researcher reaches into the correct box. Results: 7 month olds shown the brain pattern indicating they have theory of mind because they are surprised when the experimenter reaches into the correct box.

Study: (Miller, 2010) women's menstrual cycle on the behavior of nearby men

Background: Men were asked to smell the T-shirts worn by women at different points in their cycles. Results: Those exposed to the scent of women near ovulation had higher levels of testosterone-a hormone known to lead to status-enhancing behavior that might be more likely to attract women-than those exposed to a woman's scent at other phases of her cycle.

Experiment: (Isen, 1987) How happiness prompts people to reason in ways that are flexible and creative

Background: Isen induced positive emotion in her participants with trivial events. She gave them little bags of candy or made sure that they'd find a dime she had placed in their path. Results: These subtle ways of making participants feel good produced striking changes in their reasoning. When given one word and asked to general a related word, people feeling positive emotions came up with more novel associations that people in a neutral state, who tended to produce more common responses. Participants in a good mood categorized objects in more inclusive ways, rating fringe members of categories (like cane as an example of clothing) as better members of that category than people in a neutral state, whose categories tended to be more narrowly defined. Conclusion: The effects of positive emotion have important social consequences: negotiators in a positive mood are more likely to reach an optimal agreement that incorporates the interests of both sides, because positive moods allow opponents to think flexibly about the positions and interests of the other side.

Study: (Crocker, 1982) confirmation bias in action

Background: Jennifer Crocker asked one group of participants to determine whether working out the day before an important tennis match makes a player more likely to win. Another group was asked to determine whether working out the day before a match makes a player more likely to lose. Both groups could examine any of four types of information before coming to a conclusion: the number of players in a sample who worked out the day before and won their match, the number of players who worked out and lost, the number of players who didn't work out the day before and won, and the number of players who didn't work out and lost. Results: Participants tended not to seek out all the necessary information. Instead, participants exhibited the confirmation bias: they were especially interested in examining information that could potentially confirm the proposition they were investigating.

Study: (Kassin) Can jurors recognize whether a confession is real or fake when they're allowed to watch a videotape of the interrogation?

Background: Kassin videotaped prison inmates confessing either to a crime they had actually committed or to one they had not committed. - College students and police investigators watched the video and indicated whether the inmate had or had not actually committed the crime. Results: Neither the students nor the police were particularly accurate, but the police tended to be quite confident in their judgments.

Experiment: (Lepper, 1973) Intrinsic v Extrinsic Motivation - the effects of getting external rewards on intrinsic motivation

Background: Kids were allowed to play with markers. In the expected condition, kids were told they'd receive a prize after playing. In the unexpected condition, kids weren't told they'd receive a prize, but did. In the no reward condition, kids weren't told they'd receive a prize, and they didn't. The researchers then allowed the children to play again, but told them there wouldn't be a prize. Results: Kids who were in the expected condition lost interest, but the other kids did not. Conclusion: Extrinsic reward undermines intrinsic interest.

Study: (Kuo, 2001) might green spaces decrease neighborhood violence?

Background: Kuo studied police reports of violence occurring near 98 low-rise buildings that are part of the Ida Wells housing project in Chicago. - Some of the buildings were surrounded by trees and lawns, others by asphalt and a lack of greenery. - The residents in these 98 buildings came from similar backgrounds, were enduring similar levels of unemployment and economic hardship, and had been randomly assigned to the buildings they lived in. Results: Kuo discovered that the likelihood of violent crime was lower near apartments surrounded by green spaces. Continuation: In experimental research, Kuo allowed children with ADD, who are more prone to aggressive acts, to go for a walk of comparable length and physical exertion in one of three places: a green park, a quiet neighborhood, or noisy downtown Chicago. She found that children scored better on a measure of concentration only after the walk in the park. Conclusion: Green spaces seem to calm people's minds, enabling them to concentrate more effectively and better handle the frustrations of daily living.

Study: (Langer, 1976) might introducing a sense of control into the lives of people with declining health improve their health and well-being?

Background: Langer decided to explore the effects of increasing the sense of control in a particular nursing home. - The participants were all healthy, ambulatory residents, ages 65-90. On one floor, individuals were brought together and led in a discussion, by a young male staff member, about personal responsibility and the various ways they had personal control in their residence, ranging from planning their free time to voicing complaints to the staff. Each participant then received a small plant and was asked to take care of it. - In a second condition, on a neighboring floor, participants were told about all the things in the nursing home available to them, with no mention of their personal control. They, too, all received plants but were told the staff would water and care for them. Results: Before these discussions and again three weeks later, the researchers gathered several measures of how well the elderly residents were faring. - Participants on the floor that emphasized personal control showed greater increases in happiness compared with those on the neighboring floor. - They were more inclined to attend a free movie. - There were 10x as likely to participate in a game proposed by the staff. - As measured by the nurses, nearly 4x as many of the participants with the uplifted sense of control were judged to have improved in their overall functioning.

Study: (Ross, 1995) construals on opposite conflicts

Background: Lee Ross and his colleagues surveyed people on opposite sides of ideological conflicts over such issues as abortion and the death penalty, as well as enemies embroiled in geopolitical conflicts like those in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. - The researchers had members of both sides report on their own attitudes and estimate the attitudes of their opponents. Results: They found that group members systematically overestimated the extremity of their opponents' attitudes; that is, they assumed that the other side was made up of fanatical extremists and that the conflict was very polarized, when in fact many people on the other side were more moderate in their convictions.

Experiment: (Curtis, 1986) reciprocity - liking others who like us

Background: Pairs of unacquainted students had a 10-minute get to know you conversation. - In one condition, the participant was told that their partner did not like you. In the other condition, they were told that they did like them. Results: The participants who thought their partner liked them acted more likable, leading to reciprocally more agreeable behavior by their partner.

Experiment: (Leventhal, 1967) ELM and fear

Background: Leventhal and his colleagues tried to change smoking habits in one of three ways. - They showed some participants a graphic film on the effects of lung cancer, which included footage of a long operation in which the blackened lung of a smoker was removed. - They have other participants a pamphlet with instructions about how to quit smoking. - A third group saw the film and read the pamphlet. Results: Participants who only viewed the scary film reduced their smoking more than those who just read the bland instructions. - In this case, fear was persuasive. - Participants exposed to both the film and the pamphlet decreased their smoking the most. In short, it appears that fear-eliciting persuasive messages that provide information that can be acted on can be highly effective.

Study: (Loftus, 1978) memory and automobile accidents

Background: Loftus and her colleagues showed participants a series of slides of an automobile accident. - The image on one of the slides varied slightly from the others. A red Datsun was shown stopped at either a stop sign or a yield sign. - Participants were asked questions about the accident they had "witnessed." One crucial question was different for two groups of participants. Participants were asked either "Did another car pass the red Datsun while it was stopped at the stop sign?" or "Did another car pass the red Dtsun while it was stopped at the yield sign?" - Later, the participants were shown the two pictures and asked which one they had actually seen before. Results: Of those who'd been asked about the sign they had actually seen (stop sign or yield sign), 75% identified the correct picture. Of those who had earlier been asked about the sign they hadn't actually seen, only 41% identified the correct picture.

Experiment: If self-schemas exist, then a person who has a self-schema in a particular domain (such as how extraverted she is) should process information in that domain more quickly, retrieve evidence consistent with the schema more rapidly, and readily reject information that contradicts the schema (Markus 1977)

Background: Markus first identified participants who labeled themselves as either quite dependent or quite independent. She labeled the participants who rated themselves closer to the extremes of dependence and independence as "schematic." She also identified "aschematic" participants, those who rated themselves moderately on this dimension and for whom neither dependence nor independence was important to their self-definition In Action: Several weeks later, the participants rated how well a series of traits presented on a computer screen described them. Results: The schematic participants judged schema-relevant traits as true or not true of themselves much more quickly than aschematic participants, suggesting that people are particularly attuned to information that maps onto an existing self-schema. Also, when asked to do so, the schematic participants were able to generate many more behaviors consistent with the schema-relevant traits, suggesting that past actions and experiences supporting the self-schema are abundant in memory and come readily to mind. Finally, the schematic participants were more likely to refute feedback from a personality test that contradicted their self-schemas, such as independent participants being told they were actually dependent. Conclusion: Regardless of their accuracy, self-schemas serve as a basic unit of organization for self-knowledge and influence our interpretations and judgments of ourselves and the social world.

Study: (Murray, 1993) idealizing one's romantic partner

Background: Married couples and dating partners rated themselves and their partners on 21 traits related to virtues, desirable attributes within romantic relationships, and faults. - The researchers compared the participants' rating of their partners' virtues and faults with their ratings of their satisfaction in the relationship. Results: Those who idealized their romantic partners-that is, rated their parents higher on positive traits than the partners did themselves-were more satisfied with their relationships. - Individuals also reported greater relationship satisfaction when their partners idealized them.

Study: (Aron, 1991) the second phase of a relationship

Background: Married couples first rated 90 trait adjectives for how accurately they described themselves and their spouse. - After a brief distractor task, participants viewed each trait on a computer screen and indicated as quickly as possible whether the trait was "like me" or "not like me." Results: Participants were faster to identify traits on which they were similar to their spouse and slower to ascribe traits to themselves that their partner didn't also possess. - With increasing intimacy, it's almost as if the two partners become one.

Self-serving biases experiment (Ross, 1979)

Background: Married couples rated how much they and their spouse took responsibility for 20 household chores Results: On average, each partner thought they were responsible for handling 16/20 of the chores. Conclusion: Each person's own actions have a more privileged place in their mind than actions from another person

Study: (Ross, 1979) the availability heuristic on estimated contributions to joint projects

Background: Married couples were asked to apportion responsibility for various tasks or outcomes in their daily life: how much each contributed to keeping the house clean, managing the social calendar, etc Results: The respondents tended to give themselves more credit than their partners did. In most cases, when the estimated made by the two participants were summed, they exceeded 100%. Commentary: The overestimation of a person's own contributions held for negative outcomes (starting arguments) as well as positive outcomes (taking care of the house) were the same.

Experiment: (McGuire, 1961) attitude inoculation

Background: McGuire first assessed participants' endorsements of different cultural truisms to confirm a preexisting attitude. More than 75% of the participants checked 15 on a 15-point scale to indicate their agreement with truisms like these. - Then, he exposed participants to a small attack on their belief in the truism. - In some conditions, the researchers had the participants refute teat attack by offering arguments against it; this was the attitude inoculation. - In other conditions, the researchers had participants consider arguments in support of the truism. - Then, at some time between 1 hour and 7 days later, the participants read a three-paragraph, full-scale attack on the truism. Results: The small inoculation created more effective immunization against the attack.

Study: (Bosson, 2011) precarious manhood hypothesis

Background: Men first either braided a bunch of ropes or braided the hair of a wig, the latter being a more feminine task and a threat to stereotypical notions of masculinity. - All participants then put on boxing gloves and struck a punching bag. Results: Men who had braided hair hit the bag much harder than those who had braided ropes. - These findings suggest a link between a precarious manhood and violence against gay people. - In laboratory studies, men whose manhood has been threatened express more distance from gay people and greater aggression toward them.

Experiment: (Kraus, 2010) How the right kind of touch can prompt people to act collaboratively

Background: Michael Kraus and his colleagues coded all the touches (high fives, fist bumps, head slaps, and bear hugs) that basketball teammates in the NBA engaged in during one game at the beginning of the 2008 season Each player touched his teammates for only about an average of 2 seconds during the game. Results: Teams who touched more early in the season plated better later in the season, even when controlling for how well the team was playing in the game in which the touch was coded, how much money the players were making, and the preseason expectations for the team Commentary: This study was not a pure experiment in the sease that players were randomly assigned to touch their teammates or not, and this weakens the inferences to be drawn from its results Conclusion: Its results converge with an intriguing study of touch promoting collaboration in the classroom In one study, teachers were randomly assigned to touch some students in a friendly fashion and to not touch others. Students who were toucher were much more likely to go to the chalkboard to solve a difficult problem the teacher had assigned

I Spy Experiment

Background: Modified version of Ouija board to computer where participants use paddle to move cursor on screen full of objects. - both plays have headphones on and are hearing constant stream of words but are told to not pay attention to them - in reality, words were used to inter thoughts - sometimes, in the stream of words, one would correspond to an object on the screen - sometimes they just heard the word, sometimes they heard the word AND they moved the cursor to word (actually done by other participant, who was actually experimenter) results: depending on the length of time between hearing the word and the cursor moving, the participants had different levels of perception between their thoughts and actions theme: idea of conscious will

Study: (Sinclair, 1999) denigrating outgroups via race - the Black Doctor

Background: Non-black participants were either praised or criticized by a white or black male doctor. - The investigators predicted that the participants would be motivated to cling to the praise they received but to challenge the criticism and that they'd use the race of their evaluator to do so. In particular, the investigators predicted that participants who received praise from a black doctor would tend to think of him more as a doctor (a prestigious occupation) than as a black man, whereas those who were criticized by a black doctor would tend to think of him more as a back man than as a doctor. - The participants performed a lexical decision task right after getting feedback from the doctor. - The researchers flashed a series of words and nonwords on a computer screen and had the participants indicate, as fast as they could, whether each string of letters was a word. - Some of the words were related to the medical profession and some were associated with common stereotypes of blacks at that time. - Researchers reasoned that if the participants were thinking of their evaluator primarily as a doctor, they would recognize the medical words faster; if they were thinking of their evaluator primarily as a black man, they would recognize the words related to the black stereotype faster. Results: The predictions were true. Participants were particularly fast at recognizing words associated with the black stereotype when they'd been criticized by the black doctor. The reverse was true for the medical words. - When the black doctor criticized them, participants saw him as a balck man—and when he praised them, they saw him as a doctor.

Study: (Cross, 1967) the mere exposure effect on albino rats

Background: One group of rats was raised in an environment where selections of Mozart's music played for 12 hours each day. A second group was exposed to an analogous schedule of music by Schoenberg. - The rates were then placed individually in a test cage that was rigged so that the rat's presence on one side of the cage would trip a switch that caused previously unheard selections of Mozart to be played and the rat's presence on the other side would generate new selections of Schoenberg. The rats were thus able to "vote with their feet" and express a preference for the quintessentially classical music of Mozart or the modern, atonal compositions of Schoenberg. Results: The results support the mere exposure effect: rats raised on a musical diet of Mozart moved significantly more often to the side of the cage that caused Mozart to be played, whereas those raised on a diet of Schoenberg moved to the side that caused Schoenberg's music to be played. - Rats in a control condition with no initial exposure to music later exhibited a preference for Mozart.

Study: (Quattrociocchi, 2016) Confirmation bias and technologically created "information bubbles"

Background: One study examined which sites people visited, "liked," and forwarded on Facebook. The investigators identified people for whom 95% of their "likes" were for posts that embraced various conspiracy theories and people for whom 95% of their "likes" were for posts that embraced scientific claims. Findings: The investigators found that the more these individuals favored one type of post over the other, the more their friends tended to be highly polarized as well, and the more often these individuals responded to the occasional post that challenged their beliefs by going to posts that reinforced their beliefs.

Experiment: (Humphrey, 1985) How the fundamental attribution error in our perception of advantage/disadvantage plays out in our everyday lives

Background: Organizational psychologist Ronald Humphrey set up a laboratory microcosm of a business office. He told participants he was interested in "how people work together in an office setting." All participants witnessed a random procedure whereby some of the participants were selected to be "managers" and to assume supervisory responsibilities, while others were selected to be mere "clerks" who followed orders. Humphrey gave the managers time to study manuals describing their tasks. While they were studying them, the experimenter showed the clerks the mailboxes, filing system, and so on. In Action: The newly constructed office team then went about their business for 2 hours. The clerks were assigned to work on a variety of low-skilled, repetitive jobs and had little autonomy. The managers, as in a real office, performed reasonably high skill-level taste and directed the clerks' activities. At the end of the work period, managers and clerks rated themselves and each other on a variety of role-related traits, such as leadership, intelligence, capacity for hard work, assertiveness, and supportiveness. Results: For each trait, managers rated their fellow managers more highly than they rated their clerks. For all but the capacity for hard work, clerks rated their managers more highly than they rated their fellow clerks. Keep in mind that these attributions were made by people who knew their jobs were assigned by the proverbial flip of a coin. Commentary: Studies like these serve as a caution about rushing to judgment when it comes to the successes and failures we see in everyday life.

Experiment: (Verduyn, 2015) social media and happiness

Background: Participants play on Facebook in the lab and either play actively or passively. Results: Passive Facebook use decreases happiness

Experiment: (Gollwitzer, 2016) How implementation intentions affect goal attainment

Background: Participants are randomly assigned to either form an implementation intention or not. All students share the goal of completing a paper. Those who are randomly assigned to the implementation intention condition are asked to form an implementation intention by indicating a specific point in time and specific place when they will engage in the goal-directed behavior. Students in the other group are not asked to form an implementation intention but simply have the general goal of completing the paper. In Action: When level of goal completion is assessed, students who formed an implementation intention show higher rates of goal completion. Commentary: If-then implementation intentions help you reach your goals by putting you on the lookout for whatever cue is specified ("if it's Saturday afternoon") and making you likely to automatically enact the goal-directed behavior ("then I will work on my paper")

Experiment: (Wimmer, 1983) Sally-Anne (false belief) task

Background: Participants are shown a comic strip in which Sally puts her ball into a basket and leaves. While she leaves, Anne moves the basket to the box. The participants are then asked, where will Sally look when she gets back? The idea is if people do not have theory of mind, they think Sally will know to look in the box. But if people do have theory of mind and can infer where Sally would think to look, they will predict that Sally will look in the basket. This is the idea of representational theory of mind. We know what Sally thinks and how she will act in accordance.

Experiment: (Morse, 1970) Social Comparison

Background: Participants came into the lab thinking they were coming to a job interview. While in the waiting room, they meet another job candidate, either Mr. Clean (better than them) or Mr. Dirty (worse than them). Results: People's self-esteem increased when they could compare themselves as better than Mr. Dirty, but decreased when they compared themselves as worse than Mr. Clean Conclusion: How we see ourselves and our abilities depends on comparisons to other people.

Study: (Hovland, 1951) the ineffectiveness of a noncredible source

Background: Participants first rated the likelihood that a nuclear submarine would be built in the near future (at the time, they didn't exist). - Five days later, participants read an essay about the imminence of nuclear submarines and were told the essay was written either by the highly credible physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb," or by a noncredible journalist who worked for the propaganda newspaper of the former Soviet Union. Results: The Oppenheimer essay led to greater attitude change than the essay by the less credible journalist, even though the content of the essay was exactly the same. - Much more surprising, however, was that four weeks later, participants who had read the essay by the journalist, although unmoved initially, actually shifted their attitudes toward the position he advocated (sleeper effect)

Experiment: (Baumann, 2010) How anger affects our perception

Background: Participants first wrote about a memory that made them feel either angry, disgusted or sad. Then they briefly viewed a photograph of a man who was holding either a gun or a neutral object. Results: Anger, but not disgust or sadness, made participants more likely to identify the neutral object as a gun, but not misidentify the gun as a neutral object. Conclusion: Anger primes us to perceive threat and aggression

Study: (Payne, 2001) people's automatic reactions to members of stigmatized groups

Background: Participants had to decide as quickly as possible whether an object depicted in a photo was a handgun or a hand tool. - Each photograph was immediately preceded by a picture of either an African-American face or a white face. Results: The participants (all of whom were white) were faster to identify a weapon as a weapon when it was preceded by an African-American face and faster to identify a hand tool as a hand tool when it was preceded by a white face.

Experiment: (Nisbett, 1963) The actor-observer difference

Background: Participants had to explain why they chose the college major that they did or why their best friends chose the major that they did. Results: When the investigators scored the participants' explanations, they found that participants more often referred to characteristics of the person when explaining someone else's choices than they did when explaining their own choice. They typically focused on the specifics of the major when explaining their own choice.

Study: (Darley, 1973) combating pluralistic ignorance with expressions

Background: Participants had to pass by a worker doing repairs in a hallway on the way to the lab room where the study was being held. - Once in the lab room, as part of the experiment, participants had to draw a picture of a horse, either by themselves (the control condition), facing another participant, or turned away from the other participant. - As the participants labored over their drawings, they suddenly heard a loud crash and the workman crying out in obvious pain. Results: 90% of those who were alone left the room to help the workman. - The results of the other two conditions make it clean that seeing others' spontaneous emotional expressions reduces the effects of pluralistic ignorance. - While only 20% of the participants who were seated back-to-back left to help the workman, demonstrating pluralistic ignorance, a full 80% of those who were seated face-to-face left to help. Conclusion: Having others' initial, unguarded reactions to help interpret the incident as a true emergency enabled these participants to overcome pluralistic ignorance and construe the situation as an emergency requiring their help.

Experiment: (Harris, 2001) understanding why we express embarrassment as we do through the parallels between human and nonhuman expression

Background: Participants had to watch themselves on video sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" (recorded in a prior session) in the presence of other research participants In Action: When feeling embarrassed, people shifted their gaze down, smile in a self-conscious way, move their head down and to the side, thus exposing their neck, and often touch their face or shrug their shoulders Interpretation: Cross-species comparisons reveal that our expression of embarrassment resembles appeasement displays in other mammals, which short-circuit conflict and trigger affiliation

spotlight effect experiment (Gilovich, 2000)

Background: Participants had to wear an embarrassing t-shirt in a room of 6 people doing other tasks. The researchers asked the participant to estimate how many people noticed their shirt. The researchers asked the other people whether or not they noticed the shirt, and if they could say who was on the shirt. Results: The participant estimated the 50% fo people would have notices. But in reality, only 20% did.

Study: (McConnell, 2001) Is a person's response on the IAT predictive of behavior that's more significant than pressing computer keys?

Background: Participants interacted with a white experimenter, took the IAT, and then interacted with a black experimenter. Results: The participants' IAT scores predicted the discrepancy between how much the spoke to the white versus the black experimenter, how often they smile at the white versus the black emperimenter, and the number of speech errors and hesitations they exhibited when interacting with the white versus the black experimenter.

Study: (Stone, 1997) secondhand stereotyping

Background: Participants listened to a play-by-play account of a college basketball game and were told to focus on the exploits of one player in particular, named Mark Flick. - Half the participants saw a photo of Mark that made it clear he was African-American and half saw a photo that made it clear he was white. Results: When participants rated Mark's performance, their assessments reflected commonly held stereotypes about black and white basketball players. - Those who thought Mark was African American rated him as more athletic and as having played better; those who thought he was white rated him as having hustled more and as having played a more savvy game. Conclusion: Studies like these demonstrate that people don't evaluate information evenhandedly. Instead, information that's consistent with a group stereotype typically has more impact than information that's inconsistent with it.

Experiment: (Briñol, 2003) self-validation hypothesis and embodied attitudes

Background: Participants listened to either strong or weak arguments in favor of a consumer product (headphones) while nodding or shaking their heads. Logic: The expectation was that strong arguments about the quality of headphone would elicit primarily favorable thoughts about the product, whereas weak arguments would elicit mostly unfavorable thoughts. Results: Nodding while listening to the strong arguments led to greater confidence in the mostly favorable thoughts participants generated, leading to more favorable attitudes toward the headphones. - In the weak condition, students who nodded their heads were actually less persuaded than those who shook their heads side to side. - This may seem surprising in light of the idea that nodding one's head is a sign of agreement, but the self-validation hypothesis accounts for this counterintuitive finding: namely, nodding led students to feel greater confidence in the unfavorable thoughts they had in response to the weak arguments they were listening to, leading them to feel less favorable toward the headphones. Conclusion: It's important to understand people's thinking about their thoughts to have a fuller understanding of the dynamics of persuasion.

Study: (Macrae, 1994) stereotyping and cognitive resources for multitasking

Background: Participants performed two tasks simultaneously. - On one task, they formed an impression of a (hypothetical) person described by a number of trait terms presented on a computer screen. - The other task involved monitoring a tape-recorded lecture about Indonesia and then taking a quiz on the content of the lecture. - For half the participants, the trait terms were accompanied by a stereotype associated with those terms; for the other half, the trait terms were presented alone. - The key questions were whether presenting participants with the stereotypes would help them later recall the trait terms they'd seen and, more importantly, whether being prompted to stereotype would also release extra cognitive resources that could be devoted to the lecture on Indonesia. Results: As the experimenters anticipated, the use of stereotypes made the first task easier and thereby freed up cognitive resources that allowed them to perform better on a second task. - Those given a stereotype not only remembered the relevant trait information better, but also performed better on the test on Indonesia.

Experiment: (Tesser, 1991) Self-Evaluation Maintanence

Background: Participants play a game where they try to guess a word and their partner is giving clues. Half were told that it was "just a game" and the other half were told that the results were diagnostic of the guesser's intelligence. Results: When the participants were giving clues to strangers, the quality of their clues were the same regardless of if it was a game or a diagnostic. When the participants were giving clues to friends, the quality of their clues were far worse when it was understood to be a diagnostic of their friend's intelligence.

Study: (Feinburg, 2014) how does gossip impact the cooperation of a group?

Background: Participants played an economic game in which they could give some money to other people in their group. - In one condition, they were allowed to gossip about each other's generosity (or lack thereof). - In a second condition, no such opportunity to gossip was afforded. Results: Over the course of several iterations, the groups whose members could gossip became more cooperative than the groups who weren't allowed to gossip. Conclusion: The threat of gossip makes people aware of what might happen to their reputations should they choose to act selfishly, thus encouraging more cooperation.

Study: (Christakis, 2009) is cooperation contagious?

Background: Participants played several rounds of an economic game in groups of four; each round involved an entirely new set of participants. - In each round, the participant was given 20 money units and allowed to give some amount, between 0 and 20, to the group. - Each MU the participant gave to the group was translated to an increase of 0.4 MU for each of the 4 group members. This means that each give of 1 MU would cost the give 0.6 personally but benefit each other group member. If participants kept all their MUs, they would end the game with 20 MUs. If they each gave all their MUs away, each group would end the game with 32 MUs. Results: For every MU a player gave, that player's partners would give 0.19 MU more on average to a new set of players in the next round and 0.07 MU on average to still other players in the round after that, two times removed from the original round. Conclusion: cooperation is contagious.

Study: (Petty, 1981) varying the strengths of various aspects of a campaign

Background: Participants read either eight weak arguments or eight strong arguments in support of implementing a policy to require a comprehensive exam for all graduating seniors at their university. - Personal relevance was manipulated by telling the participants the policy would be initiated either the following year, meaning they would have to take the exam, or in ten years. - Finally, source expertise was varied: half the participants were told the arguments were generated by a local high school class, and half were told the arguments were generated by the "Carnegie Commission on Higher Education," allegedly charred by a Princeton University professor. Results: When the message was personally relevant to the students, they were motivated to pay attention to the strength of the arguments. But for the students for whom the message was not personally relevant, the strength of the arguments didn't matter as much. The participants noticed, and were mainly influenced by, the expertise of the source. Students who would theoretically have to take the test the following year were far less influenced by whether or not the source was an expert and more persuaded by strong than by weak arguments. - In short, high personal relevance led participants to be persuaded by the strength of the arguments (the central route to persuasion), whereas a lack of personal relevance led participants to be persuaded by the expertise of the source (the peripheral route to persuasion).

Study: ambiguity and helping

Background: Participants saw a confederate who was unconscious. - In the more vivid condition, participants saw the confederate faint and slowly regain consciousness. - In the less vivid condition, the participant saw only the aftermath of the incident, a confederate just regaining consciousness. Results: Participants were much more likely to come to the individual's aid (89% v 13%) when they saw the entire drama unfold, because they understood the full nature of the problem.

Experiment: (Ross, 1977) How the fundamental attribution error related to perception of advantages/disadvantages

Background: Participants took part in a quiz-game competition like Jeopardy. Half of them were assigned to the role of questioner and the other half the role of contestant. The questioner's job was to think of challenging, but not impossible, general-knowledge questions ("Who were the two coinventors of calculus?"), and the contestant would try to answer the questions. In Action: From a self-presentation standpoint, the questioners had a tremendous advantage. It was relatively easy for them to come off well because they could focus on whatever personal knowledge they happened to have and ignore their various pockets of ignorance. The contestants, however, suffered from the disadvantaged of having to field questions about the questioners' store of knowledge, which typically didn't match their own. Results: If participants were thinking logically, they should correct for the relative advantages and disadvantages enjoyed by the questioners and contestants, respectively: any difference in the questioners' and contestants' apparent knowledge and intelligence could easily be explained by their roles. But that was not what happened. Predictably, the hapless contestants failed to answer many of the questions correctly. The contestants came away quite impressed by the questioners' abilities, rating the questioners' knowledge and intelligence more highly than their own. When the quiz game was later reenacted for a group of observers, they too rated the questioners' general knowledge more highly than that of the contestants. The only people not fooled by the questioners' performance were the questioners themselves, who rated their own general knowledge and intelligence as roughly equal to the average of the student body.

Experiment: (Anderson, 2010) the effects of media violence on aggression

Background: Participants typically view aggressive films and then have an opportunity to act in an aggressive fashion, such as by administering a shock to a confederate of the researcher who was acting confrontational. Results: In these types of controlled experiments with appropriate comparison conditions, exposure to media violence does indeed make people more aggressive. - For example, watching aggressive films has been found to make juvenile delinquents confined in a minimum-security prison more aggressive, to make male college students apply more intense shocks to a female confederate when made to feel angry, and, when the videos were violently pornographic, to make males more strongly endorse aggression against women.

Experiment: (Gump, 1997) stress and mimicry

Background: Participants were introduced to a stranger (a confederate) who would be going with them to the experiment that they did not know the procedure of yet. - In the low threat condition, the procedure of the experiment was to get their blood pressure taken - In the high threat condition, the procedure of the experiment was to have a heart attack simulation - In one condition, the confederate was smiling, and in the other, they were frowning. Results: People mimic more in high stress situations (even mirroring smiling in the high threat condition)

Study: (Correll, 2002) racial stereotyping

Background: Participants watch a video game in which, at unpredictable moments, a target individual—sometimes white, sometimes black—pops up out of nowhere holding either a gun or some other object. - Participants are instructed to "shoot" by pressing one key if the person is holding a gun and to press a different response key if he is not. - Because participants are instructed to respond as quickly as possible, they are bound to make occasional mistakes. Results: Participants tend to treat black and white targets differently. - Participants made both types of mistakes—shooting an unarmed target and not shooting an armed target—equally often when the target individual was white. - But for black targets, participants were much more likely to make the mistake of shooting when the target was unarmed and less likely to make the mistake of not shooting an armed target. This effect is especially pronounced when the background is itself threatening and when the black individuals depicted in the video game have more stereotypical African features. - Notably, the same effect was obtained in a follow-up experiment with African-American participants. - Police don't show the same error effects but show speed effects - suggesting that they are good at correcting, but can we expect them to engage in that correcting behavior in real life?

Experiment: (Taylor, 1975) demonstrating the importance of perceptual salience in our causal attributions

Background: Participants watched a videotape of a conversation between two people. Some participants saw a version that showed only one of the individuals; others saw a version that showed both people equally well. Results: When the participants assigned responsibility for setting the tone of the conversation, those who could see only one person assigned more responsibility to that individual than those who could see both people in the conversation equally well. Conclusion: Features of the environment that more readily capture our attention are more likely to be seen as potential causes of an observed effect, and because people are so noticeable, they tend to capture our attention much more readily than other aspects of the environment.

Experiment: (Beaman) How to increase helping behaviors

Background: Participants went to a lecture. - One of the lectures was about bystander intervention. The other was on an unrelated topic. - 2 weeks later, the participants was asked to be in a separate study. During this study, there was a student lying on the floor, but the confederate acts unconcerned. Results: Those who attended the bystander intervention lecture were more likely to help.

self enhancement (Eply, 2008) on our physical characteristics

Background: Participants went to the lab and had their picture taken. The experimenter then used computer software to merge that picture with two other images (one was more attractive, the other was less attractive). The experimenter then created a continuum from least to most attractive faces and shows the participants each image one at time and asked them to choose which one was theirs. Results: On average, participants thought that the 20% more attractive face was theirs. This effect just happened on the self, not to strangers' faces. In addition, had a test where they quickly flashed the images. During this, the participants were quicker to recognize the more attractive face as their own. This shows implicit egoism.

Me, Now experiment (Quoidback, 2013)

Background: Participants were asked how much they have changed in the last decade and how much they expected to change in the next decade. Results: The participants suggested that they would change less in the next decade than they did the in the last, suggesting that people are always convinced that who they are now is who they will be.

Experiment: (Ayduk, 2008) anger recall, effect of distancing yourself

Background: Participants were asked to think about a time that had made them angry. - Half of them were told to immerse themselves in the experience and vividly feel it in the present moment. - The other half, those in the distance condition, were told to look at the experience from a distance, as if they were watching themselves in a movie. Results: Those participants who distanced themselves from their anger showed less fight-or-flight increases in blood pressure and reported a greater sense of calm. Continuation: When people look at conflicts from a more distant perspective by imagining what the situation will be like a year from now, they tend to blame other less and are more forgiving. - When you ask people why they are upset, referring to them in the third person rather than the second person evokes less negative emotion.

Study: (Allen, 1979) the impact of arbitrary categorical boundaries on beliefs about beliefs of in-group v outgroup members

Background: Participants were divided into two arbitrary groups. They then filled out an attitude questionnaire twice—once to record their own attitudes and once to record how they thought another ingroup member or outgroup member might respond. Results: Participants consistently assumed that their beliefs were more similar to those of another ingroup member than to those of an outgroup member, even though the basis of group membership was arbitrary. What is troubling is that people make such assumptions even when the groups are formed arbitrarily or on the basis of a dimension that had no bearing on the attitude or behavior under consideration. In these circumstances, the pure act of categorization distords judgment. Also, the more people think of outgroup members as homogeneous, the more likely they are to spout prejudices about them and discriminate against them.

Study: (Piff, 2010) how to trigger empathic concern in well-off people

Background: Participants were given the chance to help an obviously distressed confederate who had arrived late for the experiment and therefore needed the participant's assistance to complete required tasks. - Before this opportunity to provide help, participants watched either neutral film clips or a moving portrayal of the suffering of children living in poverty. Results: After watching a neutral film clip, lower-class participants offered to spend more time helping with the other participant's tasks that upper-class participants did. When upper-class people were made to feel compassion, however, they responded in the same prosocial fashion as their lower-class counterparts.

Experiment: (Denes-Raj, 1994) The role of gut feeling in probability

Background: Participants were offered a chance to win $10 by picking, without looking, a red marble from a bowl containing a mixture of red and white marbles. There were two bowls: a small bowl with 1 red marble and 9 white marbles and a large bowl with 9 red marbles and 91 white marbles. The rational thing to do it to select the small bowl because it offers better odds: 10% > 9%. But there are 9 potential winning marbles in the large bowl and only 1 in the other. The greater number of winning marbles gives many people a gut feeling that they should select from the large bowl. Results: 61% chose the larger bowl Commentary: These results show that we're often "of two minds' about certain problems

Study: (Hamilton, 1976) paired distinctiveness

Background: Participants were presented with information about the actions of members of "group A" or "group B." Those were the only group labels they received; these were not existing groups they were familiar with. Mimicking real life, most of the actions by members of each group were positive. Thus, there was no correlation between group membership and the likelihood of positive or negative behavior. - ⅔ of the actions they read about described the actions of someone in group A, thus making A the majority group. Results: When later asked to remember who did what, participants overestimated how often the negative behaviors were performed by a member of the minority groups. - They also rated members of the minority group less favorably. - Even though participants knew nothing about these two arbitrary "groups" beforehand, and even though they were exposed to the same ratio of positive and negative actions on the part of both groups, they came away thinking that the smaller group did more bas things. - A distinctiveness-based illusory correlation became lodged in participants' minds; that is, they "detected" false correlations based on the distinctiveness of minority group members and the distinctiveness of negative behaviors.

Study: (Spiegel, 1989) can the health benefits of social connection extend to breast cancer?

Background: Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. - In one condition, they engaged in weekly sessions of emotionally supportive group therapy with other breast cancer patients. In a second condition, participants were assigned to a nonintervention control group. Results: Those in the group therapy condition survived 18 months longer (37 months) than women in the nonintervention control group (19 months).

Study: (Ambady, 1993) How well do snap judgments predict more considered consensus opinion? (professors)

Background: Participants were shown thin slices of professors' performance in the classroom (three 10-second silent video clips) and asked to rate the professors on a variety of dimensions, such as how anxious, competent, active, and warm they seemed. Results: These relatively quick assessments correlated significantly with students' evaluations of their professors at the end of the semester. Conclusion: The quick reactions did a decent job predicting later judgments based on exposure to much larger samples of behavior.

Experiment: (Taylor,1998) argue that self-knowledge often includes positive illusions about the self and that such illusions actually enhance well-being.

Background: Participants who were more likely to hold positive illusions about themselves (high self-enhancers) and participants who were less likely to hold positive illusions about themselves (low self-enhancers) faced several stress-inducing tasks (such as counting backward by sevens from 9,095), during which their biological responses to stress were being recorded. Results: The results shows a healthier set of coping responses among high self-enhancers compared with low self-enhancers

Study: (Piff, 2010) are lower-class people more likely to act in a prosocial fashion?

Background: People from different class backgrounds played the dictator game, an economic game in which they received 10 points and were asked to give some portion of those points to a stranger. - The number of points the participants had at the end of the experiment determined their chances in a lottery conducted after all participants had completed the study. Results: On average, participants gave away 41% of their points, and lower-class participants gave away more of their points to the stranger than did members of the upper class. - Subsequent research has found that in contexts in which economic inequality is high, the wealthy share even less or they choose to share mainly with other wealthy individuals, only augmenting levels of economic inequality.

Study: (Steele, 1995) sensitivity to stereotype threat on the part of African-American students

Background: Playing on a stereotype that questions blacks' intellectual ability, they had black and white college students take a difficult verbal test taken from the GRE. - Half the students were led to believe that the test could measure their intellectual ability, and half were told that the investigators were in the early stages of developing the test and that nothing could be learned about intellectual ability from the participants' scores. Results: This information had no effect on the performance of white students. In contrast, the African-American students did as well as the white students when they thought it was the test that was being tested, but they performed much worse than the white students when they thought their intellectual ability was being tested. Conclusion: A blatant manipulation was not required to produce a significant effect on the performance of African-Americans: even without priming any stereotypes about African-Americans' intellectual performance, the African-American students still felt the effect of that pervasive stereotype, and it affected their scores accordingly. - In a follow-up study, it was enough simply to have participants indicate their race at the top of the page to cause African-American students' performance to be worse than in a control condition in which they did not indicate their race.

Study: (Lord, 1979) Motivated confirmation bias on interpretation of evidence

Background: Proponents and opponents of capital punishment read about studies of the death penalty's effectiveness as a deterrent to committing a crime. Some read state-by-state comparisons purportedly showing that crime rates are not any lower in states with the death penalty than in states without the death penalty, but they also read about how crime rates within a few states decreased as soon as the death penalty was put in place. Other participants read about studies showing the exact opposite: state-by-state comparisons that made the death penalty look effective and before-and-after comparisons that made it look ineffective. Results: Those who favored the death penalty interpreted the evidence, whichever set they were exposed to, as strongly supporting their position. Those opposed to the death penalty thought the evidence warranted the opposite conclusions.

Experiment: Does exposing people to images of the American flag make them more politically conservative?

Background: Research conducted in the early part of this century found that exposing people to images of the American flag made them more politically conservative. ISSUE: Most recent studies have failed to find that same effect. When the initial studies were done, Republican Bush was president, an administration marked by 9/11 and an aggressive military response. The political atmosphere changed after Obama in 2008, altering the psychology that led to the original findings.

Study: (Wedekind, 2000) does knowledge of one's reputation influence levels of cooperation?

Background: Researchers added a twist to the prisoner's dilemma game: prior to playing, participants are told about their participant's reputation of being someone who cooperates or defects. Results: As you'd expect, participants will readily cooperate and give resources to an interaction partner who has a reputation for cooperation, but they'll defect and choose not to give resources to an interaction partner known to be greedy.

Study: (Snyder, 1978) The role of confirmation bias in choice of questions

Background: Researchers asked one group of participants to interview someone and determine whether the target person was an extravert; another group was asked to determine whether the target person was an introvert. Participants selected their interview questions from a list provided. In Action: Those charged with determining whether the target was an extravert tended to ask questions that focused on sociability ("In what situations are you most talkative?"). Those change with determining whether the target was an introvert tended to ask questions that focused on social withdrawal ("In what situations do you wish you could be more outgoing?"). Continuation: The investigators tape-recorded the interview sessions, edited out the questions, and then played the responses to another, uninformed set of participants. These latter participants rates those who had been interviewed by someone testing for extraversion as more outgoing than those who had been interviewed by someone testing for introversion.

Study: (Latané, 1968) the role of pluralistic ignorance in bystander intervention - smoke in a room

Background: Researchers asked participants to fill out a stack of questionnaires. - Participants were assigned to one of three conditions in which they carried out this task: alone, in a room with two passive confederates exhibiting the calm demeanor intended to produce pluralistic ignorance, or with two other genuine participants. - As participants in these three conditions completed their questionnaires, smoke started to filter in from beneath a door, filling the room. Results: When participants were alone and had no input from other participants as to what was happening, 75% of them left the room and reported the smoke to the experimenter. - In both of the other two conditions, pluralistic ignorance took hold, and participants were less likely to assume that something was amiss. - Even in the condition with two other real participants, only 38% of the participants left to report the smoke. - With two passive confederates showing no signs of concern, only 10% reported the smoke to the experimenter. - Anecdotal evidence from this study suggests that participants construed the smoke differently in the three conditions. - The students who did report the smoke construed it as a sign of imminent danger. - Participants who didn't report the smoke consistently reported that they didn't believe it was dangerous.

Study: (Kahneman, 1973) the availability heuristic

Background: Researchers asked people whether there are more words that begin with the letter r or more words than have r as the third letter Results: A large majority thought more words beginning with r, but in fact the opposite was true. Because words are stored in memory in some rough alphabetical fashion, words that begin with r are easier to recall than those with r as the third letter.

Experiment: (Nelson, 2005) rating attractiveness before and after eating

Background: Researchers asked undergraduates to rate attractiveness of women. - For some, they were asked before going into the dining hall. For others, they were asked after leaving the dinning hall. Results: Hungry men prefer heavier women when they're hungry.

Experiment: (Cialdini, 2006) the approach of descriptive and prescriptive norms

Background: Researchers conducted an investigation of this approach in the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, where visitors sometimes take samples of petrified wood home with them as souvenirs. - If everyone took samples, of course, there would soon be no Petrified Forest to visit. - To examine the most effective ways to deal with the problem, the investigators rotated different warning signs at various locations in the park. - One sign included the usual emphasis on the severity of the problem, stating, "Many past visitors have removed petrified wood from the park, changing the state of the Petrified Forest," accompanied by photographs of visitors taking wood. - An alternative sign was framed positively: "The vast majority of past visitors have left the petrified wood in the park, preserving the natural state of the Petrified Forest," with accompanying pictures of visitors admiring and photographing a piece of petrified wood. - The investigators placed specially marked pieces of wood along trails near these signs and monitored how many of them were stolen over the course of the experiment. Results: In a remarkable demonstration of the importance of aligning perspective and descriptive norms, the theft rate was over 4x lower when the signs emphasized how few people take wood from the park.

Study: (Zajonc, 1987) do couples look alike?

Background: Researchers enlisted the help of 12 married couples to see whether they came to look more alike over time. - The couples, all of whom were 50-60 years of age, provided both current photos of themselves and photos taken during their first year of marriage, about 25 years earlier. - The photos were cropped to remove extraneous identifying information, leaving just the head and shoulders. - Judges who were unaware of who was married to whom were then asked to assess how much each of the men resembled each of the women (for both the current and the older photos). Results: The couples looked significantly more alike roughly 25 years into their marriage than they did as newlyweds. Contrary to the notion that older people are generally more homogenous in appearance, there was no tendency for the random couples to converge in appearance over time, though, as noted, this tendency was evidence maong actual couples. Conclusion: Not only do we seek mates who are similar to ourselves in personality and background; we also become more similar in appearance over time.

Study: (Spencer, 1999) stereotype threat and performance on math tests

Background: Researchers examined the effect on women's math test scores of bringing to mind the stereotype that women don't perform as well as men in mathematics. - In one condition, participants were told there was no gender difference on a particular test they were about to take. - Other participants were told that there was a gender difference in favor of men. Results: Men and women performed equivalently when they thought there was no gender difference on the test but women performed worse than men when they thought there was a gender difference.

Study: (Dahl, 2009) media violence in the real world and acts of aggression outside of the lab

Background: Researchers examined whether the rate of violent crime tends to rise or fall on dates surrounding the theatrical release of blockbuster films with especially violent content. Results: Contrary to what you might expect, when viewership of violent films in theaters rose, violent crimes actually dropped that day. - For every million additional viewers of violent films, there was a 1.1-1.3 percent drop in violent crimes during the day in question, and viewership of violent films was especially likely to be associated with reduced violent crime during the evening and early-morning hours of the day when viewership was high. The authors explain this results in two ways: 1. First, people who are most likely to commit violent crimes are particularly drawn to violent films and are of course less likely to engage in acts of aggression when sitting in a theater seat and engaged with watching the movie. - This account explains the decrease in crime during the house from 6pm to midnight, when the movies are showing. 2. Second, to explain the even larger drop in the crime rate from midnight to 6am, the authors note that the time spent in the theater is a time some violent individuals would be drinking alcohol, a contributor to aggression. Being in the theater at a key point in the evening therefore sends them down a more benign path that night than they might otherwise travel. Conclusion: In general, it does seem that viewing media violence increases aggressive tendencies.

Experiment: (Hamill, 1080) vivid information v bland information

Background: Researchers first assessed attitudes toward welfare. In one condition, participants then read a vivid, gripping story about a woman who was a lifetime welfare recipient. - The story was based on one that former U.S. President Ronald Reagan told to great effect about a "welfare queen," a lifetime recipient of welfare who exploited the system to enjoy a life of comfort and leisure. - In another condition, participants read facts about welfare: that the average time on welfare was two years, and only 10% of recipients received welfare for four years or more. - In a third condition, participants read both the vivid narrative and the facts. - In this condition, it should have been clear that the case was not typical to welfare recipients in general. Results: Which message led to more attitude change? - Participants changed their attitudes more if they heard the vivid story - even when they had the cold statistics. - The facts did little to alter their attitude.

Experiment: (Back, 2010) What is the effect of the fact that most information on social networking sites is provided by the users themselves?

Background: Researchers had observers rate the personality traits (including extraversion, neuroticism, and openness) of 236 American and German users of online social networking sites based on the information provided on their profile pages. Observers' ratings were compared with an accuracy criterion made up of an average of users' own rating of their personality and the rating of four well-acquainted friends. Users were also asked to provide ratings reflecting who they would ideally like to be. Results: Online, people tend to present their offline selves fairly accurately

Study: (Oliner, 1988) what cultivates empathic concern in people?

Background: Researchers interviewed over 100 rescuers from World War II - individuals who risked their lives to save Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. Results: In the course of these interviews, rescuers reported that altruism and compassion were highly valued in their homes. - Rescuers reported that their parents and grandparents frequently told stories from their own lives and from their culture in which altruism was a theme. - Altruism was also a central theme in the books the family read and the teachings they discussed. - In their dinnertime conversations about the happenings of the day, they discussed events through the lens of altruism and concern for other people. - Altruism was explicitly invoked as an important ethical principle. Conclusion: Empathic concern apparently is a powerful force for good in human societies and can be passed from parents to children.

Experiment: (Schultz, 2007) using norm-based approach to energy use that was instituted in California

Background: Researchers left hang-tags on people's doors indicating their average daily residential energy use (in kilowatt-hours), as well as that of their neighbors. Results: The effect of this simple intervention was clear-cut and immediate: those who consumed more energy than average altered their habits to significantly reduce their energy use. - Households that used less energy than average made them more wasteful, but investigators had a simple remedy at hand that preserved the decrease in energy use among the energy wasters while avoiding increased energy use by the energy savers. The usage information given to half the households was accompanied by a small sign of approval or disapproval: a happy face for those who had used relatively little energy and a sad face for those who had used more than average. The signal of approval to the former was enough to maintain the superior conservation efforts of those who might otherwise have slacked off after hearing that their neighbors used more energy than they did. Conclusion: Used wisely, providing information about norms can be a powerful tool to promote energy conservation: giving consumers information about norms reduces energy consumption by the same amount as does raising the price of energy 10-20%.

Study: (Ross, 1991) reactive devaluation

Background: Researchers measured student protestors' attitudes about their university's proposal about its investments in companies doing business in South Africa during the height of student protests against apartheid in the 1980s. Results: Before the university adopted the plan, when students were considering its merits in the abstract, the students felt it was a significant and positive move. But after the plan was adopted and it was no longer an abstract proposal, students evaluated it much less favorably. Conclusion: The mere fact that "the other side" (the university administration) was known to have adopted the plan was enough to make students regard it with suspicion. - When parties to a conflict react in this way, it can be difficult to reach a satisfactory resolution.

Study: (Wilkinson, 2009) is economic inequality associated with increased violence?

Background: Researchers measured the degree of inequality, indicated by differences between the relatively wealthy in a society and the relatively poor in various regions of the world. - They then looked at whether regional inequality correlated with the prevalence of different kinds of violence. Results: It does. In countries characterized by high economic inequality, the average citizen is much more likely to be murdered, assaulted, or raped than in countries with less economic inequality. - In addition, children in countries with greater income inequality are more likely to experience conflict with their peers and to report being victims of bullying. - This pattern emerges as well when states within the US are classified according to their levels of economic inequality. - On an even smaller scale, inequality also seems to play a role in determining which neighborhoods are more violent: there are higher rates of violence in urban neighborhoods in the US with high income inequality than in neighborhoods with lower income inequality.

Study: (Hastie, 1983) 10-12 majority rule

Background: Researchers recruited over 800 people and assembled them into 69 mock juries. - After watching a filmed reenactment of a real-world criminal trial, the mock juries rendered verdicts using one of three different decision rules: unanimous, 10-of-12, or 8-of-12. Results: Although the verdicts rendered by juries operating under different decision rules didn't vary by much, the juries that did not have to achieve unanimity spent much less time discussing the facts of the case and questions of law. Those required to reach unanimity thought more highly of the thoroughness and seriousness of their discussions.

Experiment: (Lee, 2000) impact of promotion v prevention orientation on effective advertising

Background: Researchers recruited participants from a British university who identified themselves as white British or of East Asian origins and presented them with a persuasive appeal about the importance of flossing one's teeth, - The appeal was framed in terms of either the benefit of flossing or the cost of not flossing. Results: The white British participants were more persuaded by the gain-framed message, whereas the East Asian participants were more swayed by the loss-framed message.

Study: (Steblay, 1987) do people in rural areas have higher levels of empathic concern, leading to more altruistic behavior?

Background: Researchers reviewed 35 studies that focused on comparisons of helping rates in rural and urban environments. - She looked at the helping rates in communities of different sizes, ranging from fewer than 1,000 people to more than 1 million. - In all, 17 opportunities to offer assistance were created experimentally, typically in naturalistic settings. - Researchers examined whether people would grant simple requests (such as giving the time of day when asked), whether they would intervene to stop a crime, and whether they would help people in need (an injured pedestrian, for instance). Results: Steblay's analysis showed that strangers are significantly more likely to be helped in rural communities than in urban areas. - The effect of population size was particularly pronounced in towns with populations between 1,000 and 50,000. Thus, you're much more likely to be helped in a town of 1,000 than a town of 5,000; in a town of 5,000 than a town of 10,000; and so on. Once the population rises above 50,000, however, there's little effect of increasing population. - You might ask which matters most for whether a person is likely to offer help: the person's current context or the context in which the person was brought up. The current situation wins - hands down. In analyzing the 35 studies, Steblay found that the participant's current context, rural or urban, was a much stronger predictor of helping behavior than the person's rural or urban background. Continuation: What accounts for this rural-urban difference in helping rates? Researchers have offered 4 explanations: 1. Milgram attributed it to stimulus overload. The amount of stimulation in modern urban environments is so great that no one can register all of it. 2. A second explanation might be labeled the diversity hypothesis. Urban areas are made up of more diverse populations. Thus, on average, you're more likely to encounter someone similar to yourself in a rural environment than in an urban environment. 3. A third explanation is that more people are generally around to help in urban areas than in more rural environments, so a diffusion of responsibility could discourage people from helping out in urban settings. 4. Finally, it's probable that in rural settings, people's actions are more likely to be observed by people who know them and who can comment on their reputation to others.

Experiment: (Onishi, 2005) Infant Theory of Mind

Background: Researchers show infants a scene similar to the Sally-Anne test. But instead of asking the infants to say where Sally will look, they instead track eye movement. Findings: Babies understand false beliefs at 15 months.

Study: (Brown, 2003) volunteering is good for your health

Background: Researchers studied 423 elderly married couples over the course of five years and found that volunteerism increases longevity. - At the beginning of the study, the participants reported on how often they offered help to other people by doing errands, shopping, or providing childcare for neighbors. - To capture how much participants were themselves beneficiaries of volunteering, they also indicated how often they received this kind of help from people other than their spouses. - Following the participants over the course of five years, the researchers kept track of who died. Results: People who gave more to others were less likely to die during the five years of the study, when controlling for the participant's initial health, gender, and social contacts. - The recipients of help were no less likely to die than people who didn't receive help.

Study: (Fein, 1997) does criticizing another group make people feel better about their own group-and hence themselves?

Background: Researchers threatened the self-esteem of half the participants by telling them they had just performed poorly on an intelligence test; the other half were told they had done well. - The participants then watched a videotaped interview of a job applicant. - The video made it clear to half the participants (none of whom was Jewish) that the candidate was Jewish, but not to the other half. - Participants later rated the job candidate. Results: Participants whose self-esteem had been threatened rated the candidate negatively if they thought she was J; participants whose self-esteem was not threatened did not. - In addition, the participants whose self-esteem had been threatened and had "taken it out" on the Jewish candidate experienced an increase in their self-esteem from the time they received feedback on the IQ test to the end of the experiment. Conclusion: Denigrating members of outgroups can indeed bolster self-esteem.

Study: (Rosenthal, 1968) Demonstration of the impact of self-fulfilling prophecies in the classroom

Background: Researchers told elementary school teachers that aptitude tests indicated that several of their students could be expected to "bloom" intellectually in the coming year. In reality, the students so described were chosen randomly. Results: The expectation that certain students would undergo an intellectual growth spurt set in motion a pattern on student-teacher interactions that led those students to score higher on IQ tests administered at the end of the year.

Experiment: (Aviezer, 2012) Emotional Context Dependence

Background: Researchers took photos of tennis players after winning or losing, but removed all parts of the photo except for the face. In Action: The class had an accuracy of guessing by chance when trying to interpret what the facial expressions were conveying. Conclusion: Facial expressions need context, and they do not always map nearly to an emotional expression. It isn't the fact that reveals information, but also the body and surroundings.

Experiment: (Povinelli, 1996) Chimp Theory of Mind

Background: Researchers trained chimps to beg for food. The chimps could choose from 4 conditions, (1) between someone who has their eyes or mouth covered, (2) someone with a bucket over their head or next to their head, (3) someone looking at them or away from them, and (4) someone with their face covered or not covered. Results: The chimps failed, evidence that they don't have basic understanding of other people's thoughts.

Experiment: (Dutton, 1974) Emotion Misattribution

Background: Researchers wanted to see if they could get people to misattribute their bodily reaction of fear to attraction. An attractive experimenter stood at the end of the bridge. The participants were either on a high, dangerous bridge or a low, safe bridge. After crossing, the attractive experimenter gave a very boring survey, as well as her personal phone number if the men wanted more information about her study and the results. Results: The men on the high bridge contacted her much more than the men on the low bridge, indicating that they attributed their fear response to attraction.

Experiment: (Kraut, 1979) Social Functions of Emotion

Background: Researchers went to a bowling alley and recorded when people smiled after a bowl. They broke the smiling down by whether it was a good bowl and if the bowler had people around to smile at. Results: Bowlers smiled more when other people were around, but it was not dependent on the quality of the bowl. Conclusion: Our emotional expression is more about the social context than the actual event. The point of emotional expression is to communicate your state to someone else.

Study: (Lau, 1980) How do athletes and coaches explain their wins/losses and triumphs/setbacks

Background: Richard Lau and Dan Russell examined newspaper accounts of the postgame attributions of professional athletes and coaches and found that attributions to one's own team were much more common for victories than defeats; in contrast, attributions to external elements (bad calls, bad luck, etc) were much more common for defeats than victories Results: 80% of all attributions for victories were to aspects of one's own team compared to 53% of all attributions for defeat. Only 20% of attributions for victories were to external factors, whereas 47% of attributions for defeats were to external elements Theme: self-serving attributional bias

experiment: How does familiarity with a stimulus affect its attractiveness?

Background: Robert Zajonc and his colleagues showed fictitious Turkish words and fake Chinese characters to Americans, presenting some of them many times and some of them only a few times. In Action: The more times participants saw a given stimulus, the more they thought the stimulus referred to something good. Commentary: The experiment had POOR external validityy because the experimental situation was unlike something anyone would encounter in real life, but the simplicity of the situation and the initial unfamiliarity of the foreign words and characters ensured that it was the sheer number of repetitions of the words that affected their attractiveness and not something else about the stimuli.

Experiment: (Heine, 2001) response to failures/successes between cultures

Background: Steven Heine and his colleagues asked Canadian and Japanese students to take a so-called creativity test and then gave them false feedback. Some were told they had performed well, while others were told they had performed badly. The experimenters then gave the participants the opportunity to work on a similar task. Results: The Canadians worked longer on the second task if they had succeeded at the first; the Japanese worked longer if they had failed. Commentary: The Canadians thus avoided being reminded of failure, and the Japanese used the occasion to improve.

Study: (Sanday, 1981) what makes rape more prevalent in certain cultures than in others?

Background: Sanday relied on archival records to study the cultural determinants of rape. - She read descriptions provided by historians and anthropologists of 156 cultures dating back to 1750 BCE and continuing to the 1960s. Results: rape-prone culture: a culture in which rape tends to be used as an actof way against enemy women, as a ritual act, or as a threat against women to keep them subservient to men The cultures where rape was particularly prevalent were defined by two qualities: - First, rape-prone cultures were more likely to have high levels of violence generally, a history of frequent warfare, and an emphasis on machismo and male toughness. - Second, in keeping with the idea that rape is a means of subordinating women, a rape was more prevalent in cultures in which women had lower status. - Where rape was uncommon, women were more enpowered and more likely to be granted equal status with men. - Additionally, studies find that with rising economic equality, violence perpetrated by romantic partners against women declines.

Study: (Schwartz, 2013) the status exchange hypothesis

Background: Schwartz examined the family class background (based on the parents' educational achievement) and the participant's own educational achievement in 7,398 couples who married between 1968 and 2013. Results: In this study, like others, there was a strong tendency for people to marry individuals of similar family class backgrounds and personal educational achievement - another nod to the power of similarity in predicting attraction. - But at greater rates than expected by chance, individuals in a couple complemented each other's social status: it was the individual who hailed from a modest family background, but who had personally achieved high levels of education, who married someone who came from a more distinguished family background but who had achieved less in education. Conclusion: Similarity appears to be the rule and complementarity the exception, except when it comes to social status.

Experiment: (Sherif, 1936) intentional conformity

Background: Sherif was interested in how groups influence the behavior of individuals by shaping how reality is perceived/how other people can serve as a social frame of reference to change our perception of reality. - The experiment was built around the autokinetic illusion: the sense than a stationary point of light is a completely dark environment is moving. This occurs because in complete darkness there are no other stimuli, or grames of reference, to help the viewer discern where the light is located. In Action: Sherif put individual participants in a darkened room alone, presented them with a stationary point of light on trial after trial, and had them estimate how far it "moved" each time. - Some people thought, on average, that the light moved very little on each trial (2 inches), and others thought it moved a good deal more (8 inches). - Sherif then brought several participants into the room together and had them call out their estimates. - People's estimates tended to converge over time. - Those who individually had thought the light moved a fair amount soon lowered their estimates and vice versa. Conclusion: Everyone's individual judgments quickly fused into a group norm, and that norm influenced how far participants reported seeing the light move. - A follow-up experiment reinforced his interpretation: when participants came back for individual testing up to one year later, their judgments still showed the influence of their group's earlier responses. - Informational conformity gets internalized Theme: informational social influence and private acceptance

Experiment: (Smith, 2008) the effects of low- or high-power words on the individual

Background: Smith induced people to feel elevated power or diminished power by priming them with low- or high-power words (obey, dominate) or having them recall an experience of low or high power. Participants then worked on a variety of cognitive tasks. In one task, words were flashed one at a time on a computer screen, adn participants indicated whether a current word on the screen matched the word presented two trials earlier. In another, the Stroop task, participants had to name the color of the in which a word was written - a task made more difficult on trials in which the word itself referred to a color different from the font color. Results: As predicted, participants randomly assigned to feel relatively powerless proves less effective in performing these cognitive tasks. The vigilant and narrowed focus that comes with a sense of reduced power can diminish an individual's ability to think flexibly and creatively.

Study: (Solomon, 1946) the primacy effect

Background: Solomon Asch asked people to evaluate a hypothetical individual described by the following terms: intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and envious. A second group read the same trait adjectives in the opposite order. In Action: The individual was rated favorable by the first group, no doubt because of the influence of the two very positive terms that began the list (intelligent and industrious). The second group formed a much less favorable impression, because the first two descriptive terms (stubborn and envious) are negative. Commentary: Traits presented at the beginning of the list had more impact than those presented later on

Experiment: mood maintenance on compliance

Background: Some of the participants were first given cookies, which put them in a good mood; the others weren't given cookies. - All of them were then asked (by someone other than the person who provided the cookies) if they'd be willing to assist with an experiment by serving as a confederate. - Half the participants were told the job of confederate would involve helping the "true" participant in the experiment, and the other half were told it would involve hindering the participant. Results: Having received a cookie (and being in a good mood) increased the compliance rate when the task involved helping the participant, but not when it involved hindering the participant. Helping another person promotes feeling good; hurting someone doesn't. Conclusion: Thus, while being in a good mood increases compliance, it does not do so when the act of compliance would undermine that good mood.

Experiment: (Aron, 2000) how keeping an element of playfulness alive in a relationship can help

Background: Spouses who had been married for several years engaged in one of two tasks. - In a playfully arousing condition, partners were tied together at the knees and wrists with Velcro straps, and they were required to move a soft ball positioned between their heads across a long mat. - In the other condition, each partner had to push a ball alone to the middle of the mat with a stick. Results: Spouses reported significantly higher marital satisfaction after engaging in the novel, amusing joint task, compared with participants in the other condition and with a baseline assessment earlier. - Unusual, playful activities are fun and exciting-and spouses often misattribute their excitement about the activities to their feelings about their partner, thereby enhancing both partners' satisfaction with the relationship.

Study: (Kross, 2012) actively imagining other people's perspectives to counteract isolationist trends

Background: Student participants talked about two heated political issues and what the future would look like if their preferred candidate in the 2008 US presidential election were to lose. - They did so after being instructed either to immerse themselves in their own point of view, as people so often do during conflict, or to reflect on this political future from the perspective of someone in Iceland, thus taking on an outsider's view of the polarizing political issues of the day. Results: Participants who looked at the conflicts of the day from a different, more distant perspective were more likely to humbly recognize the limitations of their own knowledge, were more convinced that the conflicts of the day would change, reported less extreme attitudes, and were more likely to join a bipartisan political discussion group that brought together students of contrasting political views.

Experiment: (Neighbors, 2004) the effect of providing students with accurate information about their peers' drinking habits on excessive alcohol consumption

Background: Students attending regularly scheduled club or organizational meetings typed into wireless keypads information about their own drinking behavior and their beliefs about the drinking habits of their peers. - Their aggregate responses were immediately projected for all to see, giving everyone information about actual drinking behavior on campus - and correcting widespread misunderstandings of how much and how often other students drink. Results: In follow-up online surveys conducted one and two months later, students who received this information reported drinking significantly less than they had previously and less than students in a control group.

Study: (Darley, 1983) unfair stereotyping

Background: Students watched a videotape of a fourth-grader named Hannah. - One version of the video reported that Hannah's parents were professionals and showed her playing in an obviously upper-middle-class area. - Another version reported that Hannah's parents were working class and showed her playing in a rundown environment. - The next part of the video showed Hannah answering questions involving math, science, and reading. Her performance was ambiguous; she answered some difficult questions well but also seemed distracted and flubbed easier questions. - The researchers asked the students how well they thought Hannah would perform in relation to her classmates. Results: Those who saw an upper-middle-class Hannah estimated she would perform better than average, while those who saw working-class Hannah assumed she would perform worse than average. - What's especially sad is that these assumptions about a student's performance based solely on her social class are grounded in fact. On average, upper-middle-class children perform better in school than working-class children. Therefore, given an ambiguous performance by a child, we might reasonably anticipate her long-term academic success would be greater if she's upper middle class than if she's working class. The reason is that working-class Hannah starts life with two strikes against her. People will expect and demand less of her and will perceive a given performance as worse than if she were upper middle class. Moreover, the mistaken impression about Hannah will tend to reinforce the stereotype that working-class children are less academically able than middle-class children.

Experiment: (Cohen, 1981) The impact of schemas on memory

Background: Students watched a videotape of a husband and wife having dinner together. Half of them were told that the wife was a librarian, the other half that she was a waitress. The students later took a quiz that assessed their memory of what they had witnessed. The central question was whether their memories were influenced by their stereotypes of librarians and waitresses. The researchers asked them, for example, whether the woman was drinking wine (librarian stereotype) or beer (waitress stereotype) and whether she has received a history book (librarian) or romance novel (waitress) as a gift. The tape had been constructed to contain an equal number of items consistent and inconsistent with each stereotype Results: Students who thought the woman was a librarian recalled librarian-consistent information more accurately than librarian-inconsistent information, and the same for the waitress. Conclusion: Information that fits a preexisting schema often enjoys an advantage in recall.

Experiment: (Gilbert, 2000) the expected impact of breaking up with a romantic partner compared to its actual impact

Background: Students who had not experienced a romantic breakup, called "luckies," reported on their own overall happiness and then predicted how unhappy they would be two months after a breakup The researchers compared this estimate with the happiness of people who had recently broken up, labeled "leftovers." Results: Leftovers were almost as happy as luckies, but luckies predicted they would be much less happy two months after a breakup than actual leftovers actually were

Experiment: (Tesser, 1975) thought polarization hypothesis

Background: Tesser measures participants' attitudes about social issues, such as legalization prostitution. He then had them think for a few moments about the issue. Results: When they stated their opinions about the same issue a second time, they routinely gave stronger ratings; both opponents and proponents became polarized.

Study: (Tetlock, 1981) How does the complexity or simplicity of reasoning influence group conflict?

Background: Tetlock and his colleagues coded the complexity of politicians' reasoning from their speeches and interviews. Results: They found that politicians are more simplistic and extreme when combating opponents and wooing potential voters on the campaign trail, but then become more complex once elected, when dealing with the give-and-take of policy making. Continuation: In another study, researchers examined the complexity of political leaders' rhetoric during two crises: the buildup to WWI in 1914 and the 1972 Cuban missile crisis. - Between the preliminary phase of the conflict and the climax that led to WWI, the complexity of the political leaders' rhetoric decreased. - In the Cuban missile crisis, which was successfully resolved, the complexity of the leaders' rhetoric increased between the preliminary phase of the conflict and the climax.

Study: (Alter, 2013) cognitive reflection test and fluency

Background: The test was printed in either a normal, highly readable font, or a hard-to-read font. Performing well on the test requires stifling an immediate gut feeling to get the correct answer to each question. For example: cost of bat and ball question. Results: Participants gave more correct answers when the questions were presented in a disfluent font. The difficulty of reading the question caused them to slow down and analyze more.

Experiment: (Swann, 1987) Does self-enhancement seem to be most relevant to our emotional responses to feedback about ourselves whereas self-verification determines our more cognitive assessment of how valid that feedback is?

Background: The Swann team gave participants with negative or positive self-beliefs negative or positive feedback. In Action: In terms of participants' evaluations of the accuracy and competence of the feedback (the quality of the information), self-verification prevailed. Conclusion: Those with negative self-beliefs found the negative feedback most accurate, whereas participants with positive beliefs rated the positive feedback as more accurate. All participants, however, felt good about the positive feedback and disliked the negative feedback Commentary: Our quest to verify our sense of ourselves guides our assessment of the validity of self-relevant information, while our desire to think favorably about ourselves guides our emotional reactions to the same information.

Study: (Fultz, 1986) anonymous altruism

Background: The experimenters had female participants interact with another person, a communicator, seated in another cubicle. - The communicator, a student confederate who called herself Janet Arnold, wrote two honest and somewhat confessional notes to the participants. The task of the listener (the actual participant) was to form as accurate an impression of Janet as possible. - This time, empathic concern was manipulated. In the low-empathy condition, the participant was told to objective when reading the notes, concentrating on the facts. In the high-empathy condition, the participant was told to imagine how Janet felt. - In the first note to the participant, Janet confessed to feeling out of place at her new home at the university. In the second note, Janet expressed a strong need for a friend and asked the participant if she'd like to hang out a bit. - After receiving the second note, the participant was told that Janet had finished and left the study. The experimenter then gave the participant a form that described another "long-term relationship study" and asked whether the participant would like to spend time at some later date with Janet Arnold. - In the low-social-evaluation condition, Janet's notes were delivered in sealed envelopes, and the experimenter didn't read them. - Similarly, the participant indicated how much time she would spend with Janet on a form enclosed in a sealed envelope to be sent to the professor conducting the study (who was never to meet the participant). Neither the experimenter nor Janet would know of the participant's response. - In the high-social-evaluation condition, both the experimenter and would know how much time the participant said she would be willing to spend with Janet. - The critical dependent measure was the number of hours the participant volunteered to spend with Janet. Results: Participants in the high-empathy condition volunteered to spend more time with her, even when no one would know of their action.

Study: (Liberman, 2002) demonstration of the power of labels on cooperation

Background: The experimenters labeled the prisoner's dilemma game in one of two ways. - Half the participants were told they were going to play the "Wall Street" game, and the other half were told it was the "community game". - Everything else about the experiment was the same for the two groups. Results: What might seem to be a trivial change of labels had a dramatic effect on the participants' behavior. - Those playing the community game cooperated on the opening round twice as often as those playing the Wall Street game. - Moreover, these initial differences were maintained throughout the subsequent rounds of the experiment. - The Wall Street label doubtless made the participants adopt a perspective that made maximizing their own profits paramount. - In contrast, the community label conjured up a different set of images and motives that increased the appeal of maximizing the participants' joint outcomes.

Study: (Goldman, 1977) attractiveness and impressions

Background: The experimenters rated all participants for physical attractiveness. Participants then had 5-minute telephone conversations with a member of the opposite sex. Results: Even though participants couldn't see their conversation partners, they still rated the more attractive individuals as more likable and socially skilled than less attractive counterparts.

Experiment: (Berkowitz, 1967) theory of construal in the relationship between anger and aggression

Background: The hypothesis being tested was that the presence of guns will lead to aggression only when combined with experiences of anger. - Male participants worked on a series of intellectual problems with a male confederate, taking turns "evaluating each other's performance" by delivering shocks for performances that needed improvement. - The participants worked on the problems first and then were shocked by the confederate. - Unknown to the participants, the confederate delivered shocks based on whether the participants had been assigned to a neutral condition or an anger condition (not based on their actual performance). - The confederate shocked those assigned to the neutral condition just one time and those assigned to the anger condition seven times. - The participant then watched the confederate work on the problems and provided feedback to the confederate. - The participants did so under one of three conditions: in a "no object" condition where no objects were near the shock machine, in a "neutral object" condition where badminton rackets and shuttlecocks were near the shock machine, and a "gun" condition where a revolver and a shotgun lat near the shock machine. Results: The presence of guns made participants more aggressive only when they were also angered by the confederate's actions (that is, after being shocked seven times in the anger condition). - In further support of the point that the presence of guns alone does not trigger aggression, a more recent study found that hunters don't become more aggressive when presented with images of guns, probably because they construe guns as objects for recreation and fun rather than for violence.

Experiment: (Asch, 1951) conformity

Background: The initial logic of the experiment was that if you put people in a situation where it's obvious that they shouldn't conform, they won't, and conformity should only happen with ambiguous information. - The task was to pick the matching line length. - One of the answers were obviously wrong, but confederates chose it. Results: It only takes 3 confederates agreeing on an answer to get the P to conform. - Ps later reported that they knew the answer was incorrect, so they didn't change their perception, but rather their public behavior Conclusion: normative social influence, public acceptance

Experiment: (Frank, 1988) does colored uniform impact aggression?

Background: The investigators began by examining the penalty records of all teams in American professions football and ice hockey from 1970 to 1985. Results: The black-uniformed teams consistently ranked near the top in penalties every year. - Thus, the tendency for black-uniformed teams to draw so many penalties appears to be the joint effect of a bias on the part of referees and a tendency for players wearing black to act more aggressively.

Experiment: (Moreland, 1992) mere exposure - "four women and a classroom" study

Background: There were 4 conditions: (i) the participants say the woman once in a photo, (ii) the woman attended class 5x, (iii) attended class 10x, (iv) attended class 15x. Results: When students rated the women on traits at the end of the semester, they found her more attractive. Conclusion: the more you see someone, the more attractive they become

Study: (Kraus, 2009) The effect of social class on attributional style

Background: The investigators had participants make attributions for positive life events (getting into a desired graduate program) and negative life experiences (suffering a health problem). Results: Lower- and working-class participants were more likely to involve situational causes, whereas those higher up the socioeconomic ladder were more likely to invoke dispositional causes. When investigators showed participants a person with a particular facial expression surrounded by people with the same or different expressions, those lower on the socioeconomic ladder were more likely to be swayed by the emotions of the faces in the surrounding context. The lower-class participants were less likely to rate a smiling target as happy when the other faces were frowning. Conclusion: Kraus and his colleagues have found that lower-class or working-class individuals resemble individuals from interdependent cultures in their attributional tendencies. Commentary: Investigators believe that these class differences are found because, similar to Asians, lower-class people live in a world where attention to other people is more essential for effective functioning than it is for higher-class people.

Experiment: (Watson-Jones, 2015) ostracism induced mimicry; are people in particular need of social comforts more likely to mimic?

Background: The participant (a child) plays cybermall with 3 other players. - They are either in an inclusion or exclusion condition - They are either in an in-group or out-group based on the shirts of the different avatars. Results: Ps were more likely to imitate and show greater anxiety after being ostracized and the effect was strongest when ostracized from the in-group. - Researchers also found that children who are ostracized by in-group members display greater anxiety compared to kids ostracized by out-group. Conclusion: We mimc to ingratiate ourselves in our group.

Study: (Tajfel, 1971) minimal group paradigm

Background: The participants first performed a rather trivial task and were then divided into two groups, ostensibly on the basis of their responses. - In one such task, for example, participants had to estimate the number of dots projected briefly on a screen. Some participants were told they belonged to a group of "overestimators" and others were told they belonged to a group of "underestimators." - In reality, the participants were randomly assigned to the groups, and they learned only that they were assigned to a particular group; they never learned who else was in their group or who was in the other group. Thus, what it meant to be part of a "group" was boiled down to the bare minimum—the category was arbitrary and members of each group did not know who the other members were. - After learning of their group membership, the participants were taken to separate cubicles and asked to assign points, redeemable for money, to pairs of their fellow participants. They were shown multiple pairings of preassigned point values, where one amount would go to a participant who was in the group they were in (the ingroup) and the other amount to a participant in the outgroup. Participants assigning points didn't know the individual identity of those to whom they were awarding points; all they knew was the other participants' group membership. In this way, the investigators could determine whether participants assigned points equally to members of the ingroup and outgroup; whether they instead maximized the total point payout regardless of group membership; or whether they maximized the points given to the ingroup over the outgroup, even if the ingroup could have gotten more points through other choices that would have given the outgroup more points as well. Results: A majority of participants are interested more in maximizing the relative gain for members of their ingroup over the outgroup than they are in maximizing the absolute gain for their ingroup. The participants don't know how the ingroup and outgroup members are; the points awarded are never for themselves; and, of course, the basis for establishing the two groups is utterly meaningless. Yet participants still tend to favor their minimal ingroup. In fact, they're willing to do so at a cost to the ingroup, which earns fewer points when the focus is on "beating" the other group rather than on maximizing their group's absolute gain. - The ingroup favoritism that emerges in this context demonstrates how easily we slip into thinking of us versus them.

Study: (Wood, 1982) knowledge and resistance about environmental preservation

Background: The students were divided into two groups: those who were pro-preservation and knew a lot about the issue and those who were pro-preservation but knew less about the subject. - She exposed these two groups to a message opposed to environmental preservation. Results: Those with a lot of knowledge about the environment changed their stance only a little bit, as they counterargued a great deal in response to the message, relying on what they already knew and strongly believed about the issue. In contrast, the less knowledgeable students shifted their attitudes considerably toward the anti-preservation message.

Study: (Maass, 1989) concrete versus abstract construal

Background: The study took place during the annual palio competition in Italy. Pitting teams from different districts, or contrade, against one another, the races take place in the context of an elaborate festival in which residents of each contrada root for their team. In the weeks leading up to the palio, feelings of intergroup competition run high. Before one such palio competition, the researchers showed the residents of two contrade a number of sketches depicting a member of their own team or of the rival team engaged in an action. The contrada membership of the person depicted was established simply by having the color of the protagonist's shirt match that of one contrada or another. - Some of the sketches portrayed desirable actions, and some portrayed undesirable actions. - After inspection of each sketch, the participants describe what it depicted, and their responses were scores for level of abstraction. Results: The results revealed a clear bias. Participants maintained positive views of their own group by describing negative actions of members of their own group on a more concrete level—a low level of abstraction—so the individual was less implicated in the action ("The guy from my contrada dropped a piece of paper"). But participants maintained their less favorable views of the other group by describing negative actions of members of the other group at a high level of abstraction ("The guy from your contrada is a litterer"). - They did the opposite for positive actions. - This asymmetry feeds the tendency to perceive the ingroup in a favorable light. - Abstractly evaluating events that fit one's stereotypes lends them greater import; concretely evaluating events that violate one's preferences or expectations renders them less consequential.

Experiment: (Magee, 2006) the empathy failures associated with elevated power

Background: These investigators first induced people to feel relatively powerful or powerless by having them recall a time when they exerted control over another person or when someone else exerted control over them. Participants then performed a simple perspective-taking task: drawing the letter E on their forehead so that someone across from them could read it. This task requires the participant to take the other person's perspective and draw the E in reverse. Results: Participants feeling a surge of power were much less likely to draw the E in a way that took the other person's perspective into account. Conclusion: Power reduces the ability to take the perspective of others.

Experiment: (Crocker, 2002) measuring the self-esteem of University of Michigan students who had applied to grad school

Background: They asked students to fill out a self-esteem questionnaire every day that they received an acceptance or rejection response from a graduate school Results: Students had higher self-esteem on days when they received a rejection. But these effects were much larger for those students whose self-esteem was highly dependent on academic competence. Commentary: These findings suggest that it's wise for people to stake their self-worth in a wide range of areas (academic achievement AND strength of their friendships and family relationships, etc) rather than put all their eggs in one basket - Studies suggest that to the extent we derive our self-worth from multiple domains that are distinct from one another, the more likely we are to avoid feeling devastated by a setback in any one domain

How to do interventions: Information (Destin, 2017) Real-world problem: SES disparities in academic achievement despite having the same desire Psychological theory: - high costs can make college feel unattainable for low-SES students, which reduces salience of college-bound future self - people want to act in identity-consistent ways (including future identities) > more academically motivated if future identity is education-dependent Solution: provide middle-schoolers with information about need-based financial aid to increase academic persistence by making it so they have an idea of a college bound future self

Background: They brought 7th graders (either low-SES v high-SES) into a seminar either about financial aid options (intervention) or college costs (control) Results: Receiving information about need-based financial aid increased low-SES students' motivation to engage in schoolwork

How to do interventions: Choice architecture (Johnson, 2013) Real-world problem: people often make suboptimal decisions about their health coverage Psychological theory: - consumers get overwhelmed when making cognitively intensive decisions - choice defaults improve decision quality by simplifying comparisons and they increase decision satisfaction Solution: offer a default at the point of decision making that directs consumers to an optimal choice

Background: They brought online participants and MBA students. The gave either a "smart" default, financial incentive, or a control and then saw if participants chose the most cost-effective choice. Results: Providing people with the default improved their decision quality above economic incentives and control conditions.

Experiment: Do the cultural differences in self-construal reflect in differences in neural activation? (Zhu, 2007)

Background: They had Chinese and Western European participants rate the applicability of different traits to themselves, their mothers, and another unrelated person. In Action: For members of both cultures, considering the applicability of the traits to themselves produced activation in the medial prefrontal cortex. But for Chinese participants, activation in this same region was also observed when participants were thinking about whether the traits characterized their mothers. For the Westerners, there was, if anything, a relative deactivation of the medial prefrontal cortex when they thought about their mothers. Conclusion: For people with interdependent self-construals, the same region of the brain represents the self and mother; they are merged within the brain. For those with independent self-construals, the self and mothers are quite distinct, all the way down to which neurons are activated in the brain.

Experiment: (Watson, 23) Is the brutality of warfare related to deindividuation?

Background: They investigated 23 non-Western cultures' warfare practices. The researchers examined each culture to see whether its warriors were deindividuated before battle (wearing masks, war paint) and how aggressively they waged war (torturing the enemy, fighting to the death, etc) Results: As predicted, there was a strong correlation between deindividuation and aggressiveness in warfare. Among those cultures whose warriors changed their appearance before battle, 80% were deemed particularly aggressive; among those cultures whose warriors did not change their appearance, only 13% were deemed especially aggressive. When warriors are disguised in battle, they fight more ferociously.

Study: (Anwar, 2012) jury composition

Background: They looked at an exhaustive record of all the criminal cases that were brought to trial and looked at the racial composition of the jury and the race of the defendants. - They wanted to know if having a black jury members would influence the conviction rate of the defendant. Results: The composition of the jury mades a difference. - When the jury was all white, black defendants got convicted much more often than white defendants. - There was less likely to be a conviction of a black person when there was at least 1 black jury member.

Experiment: (Greene, 2013) demonstration of Haidt's social intuitionist model of moral judgment

Background: They presented participants with morally compelling scenarios and asked for quick decisions about what to do while their brains were scanned using fMRI. Some of the moral dilemmas were likely to engage mainly impersonal, rational calculation (trolley problem) whereas other scenarios were more emotional (footbridge dilemma). Results: The personal moral dilemmas activated regions of the brain that are involved in emotional processing, whereas nonmoral dilemmas and impersonal moral dilemmas activated brain regions associated with working memory and deliberative reasoning

Study: (Judd, 2004) racial stereotyping

Background: They replicated Payne's experiment with four types of stimuli that varied in whether they were viewed positively or negatively and whether they were stereotypically associated with African-Americans. - Specifically, the stimuli associated with African-Americans consisted of pictures of handguns (negative) and sports equipment (positive), and the stimuli not associated with African-Americans consisted of pictures of insects (negative) and fruit (positive). Results: They found that African-American faces facilitated the recognition of both positive and negative stereotypical items, but not the nonstereotypical items, regardless of whether they were positive or negative.

Study: (Diener, 1976) the effect of Halloween on deindividuation

Background: They set up research stations in 27 homes throughout the city of Seattle and monitored the behavior of over 1,000 trick-or-treaters. At each participating house, the children were told they could take one piece of candy from a large bowl sitting on a table in the entrance to the house. Next to the bowl of candy was a bowl filled with coins. The experimenter then excused herself from the scene and covertly monitored the children's actions from afar. The investigators examined the influence of two variables connected to deindividuation. First, the children arrived either individually or in groups, and the investigators expected those in groups to feel more anonymous and therefore be more likely to transgress. Second, the experimenter purposely "individuated" a random sample of children arriving both alone and in groups; before departing, she asked each child his or her name and address and theme repeated this information aloud ofr emphasis. Individuating the children was predicted to inhibit any temptation to transgress. Results: Both variables had the anticipated effect. The children who arrived in groups were much more likely to transgress than those who were alone, regardless of whether they were anonymous or not. Children who were more anonymous were much more likely to transgress than those who were individuated, regardless of whether they were alone or in groups.

Experiment: (Epley, 2004) Your Perspective is my Perspective

Background: This experiment used the director's task, a quick version of the false belief test in which you have to represent another person's perspective that differs from your own. Participants see an array of objects including occluded objects that they know the director doesn't see on their side of the display. The direction asks the participant to locate objects within the array. The critical instruction from the director is to move the small truck to above the glue. The "small" truck is different from the participant's view, but they know that. Results: Adults are able to choose the correct one (their medium truck). Experimenters also measured eye movements to figure out how long is takes someone to figure it out. What was found is that the default is to look at things from your own perspective, and you must actively suppress your geocentricism. Takeaway: Your own perspective is at the forefront of your mind even when you're thinking about other people, which explains a lot of our biases.

Experiment: (Berry, 1987) reciprocity in doctor surveys

Background: To get doctors to complete a survey, experimenters incentivized them by giving them a check. - This check was given with either before or after they completed the survey. Results: By sending the check first (conceding something) was more effective in getting doctors to complete the survey. - Once they were given something, they wanted to give back.

Revised experiment on Darwin's universality hypothesis (Ekman, 1969)

Background: To respond to the criticism, the investigators had to find a culture that had little or no exposure to Westerners or to Western media To accomplish this, Ekman traveled to Papua New Guinea to study the Fore, an isolated hill tribe living in preindustrial, hunter-gatherer-like conditions. The Fore who participated in the study had seen no movies or magazines, didn't speak English or pidgin, had never lived in Western settlements, and had never worked for Westerners. After getting approval for his study from a local witch doctor, Ekman devised an emotion-appropriate story for each of the six emotions. Example: for sadness, the story was "The person's child had died, and he felt sad." For adult participants, he presented photos of three different expressions, along with a story that matched one of the expressions, and asked them to match the story to the appropriate expression. For children, they had to select from two photos to match an expression to a story Ekman also videotaped the posed expressions of Fore participants as they imagined being the person in the 6 emotion-specific stories, then presented these clips to American college students, who selected from 6 emotion terms the one that best matched the Fore's pose In Action: The Fore adults achieved accuracy rates from 68-92% in judging the 6 emotions; the children achieved accuracy rates from 81-98% For adults, the chance guessing would have yielded an accuracy rate of 33%; for children, 50% The college students labeled the posed expressions of the Fore with above-chance accuracy for each emotions except fear Conclusion: Over 90 subsequent studies have confirmed these results, finding that people from cultures that differ in religion, political structure, economic development, and independence versus interdependence nevertheless agree a great deal in how they label the photos depicting happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear

Experiment: (Torrance, 1955) the effect of expertise and status on conformity

Background: Torrance gave the members of navy bombing crews - pilor, mavigator, and gunner - a number of reasoning problems, such as this horse-trading problem: "A man bought a horse for $60 and then sold it for $70. He later repurchased the horse for $80 and then, changing his mind yet again, sold it for $90. How much money did she make on his series of transactions." - The crew then had to report one answer for the whole group. Results: Torrance monitored the group's deliberations and found that if the pilot (who generally held the highest status) originally came up with the correct solution, the group eventually reported it as their answer 91% of the time. If the navigator offered the correct answer, the group ended up reporting the correct answer 80% of the time. But if the lowly gunner offered the correct answer, the group offered it up only 63% of the time. Conclusion: The opinions of higher status individuals tend to carry more weight.

Experiment: Is social media good or bad for you (in terms of accessibility to compare one's self to others) (Verduyn, 2015)

Background: Verduyn and colleagues (2015) text-messaged participants 5 times a day over a 6-day period, prompting them to fill out a survey upon receiving each text. - The survey asked participants to make a series of ratings, including their current affective well-being (how positive or negative they felt), their amount of passive use of Facebook since the last text (scrolling through their news feed), their amount of active use of Facebook since the last text (posting and sharing links), and finally, in an effort to measure social comparison, their current feelings of envy. Conclusion: The findings suggest that passive (but not active) Facebook use makes one feel less upbeat and that this is due in part to feelings of envy, presumably triggered by comparing one's own life with the images of other people's lives. Commentary: Results like these point to social media as a potentially major social influence on construals and evaluations of the self.

Study: (D. Regan, 1971) the influence of the norm of reciprocity in getting someone to comply: offering of Coke

Background: Two people were asked to rate a number of paintings, supposedly as part of a study of aesthetics. - One was a real participant; the other was a confederate of the experimenter. In one condition, the confederate returned from a break with two sodas and offered one to the participant. "I asked (the experimenter) if I could get myself a Coke, and he said it was OK, so I bought one for you, too." - In another condition, the confederate returned empty-handed. - Later, the confederate asked the participant for a favor. - He explained that he was selling raffle tickets; the prize was a new car, and he'd win $50 if he sold the most tickets. - He then proceeded to ask if the participant was willing to buy any tickets for 25 cents apiece: "Any would help, the more the better." (To make sure all participants had the means to purch some ticks, they had already been paid - in quarters - for participating in the study.) Results: In a testament to the power of the norm of reciprocity, participants who earlier had been given a soda by the confederate bought twice as many raffle tickets as those who had not (or those who had been given a soda by the experimenter, to control for the possibility that simply receiving a soda, and perhaps being in a good mood as a result, is what had increased compliance). Conclusion: Doing a favor for someone creates an uninvited debt that the recipient is obligated to repay. Sometimes our hearts can sink when we see these gifts coming, and we often go to great lengths to avoid them, recognizing the obligations they bring.

Study: (Carter, 1991) does studying economics encourage people to act more selfishly?

Background: Undergraduate students majoring in economics and in a variety of other disciplines participated in a single-trial prisoner's dilemma game. - In a random sample of 1,000 professors in 23 disciplines, participants were asked how much money they gave annually to public television, the United Way, and other charitable causes. Results: 72% of the economics majors defected to their partners, whereas only 47% of those majoring in other disciplines defected. - The economists were twice as likely as all the others to take a free ride on the contributions of their fellow citizens - in other words, giving nothing to charity while presumably enjoying services such as public television to the same extent as everyone else. Conclusion: The subcultures in which people are immersed appear to powerfully influence their inclination to either cooperate with others or look only after themselves.

Experiment: (Chartrand, 1999) our tendency to reflexively mimic

Background: Undergraduate students took part in two 10-minute sessions in which each of them, along with another participant, described various photographs from popular magazines. The other participant was, in reality, a confederate of the experimenter, and there was a different confederate in each of the two sessions. The confederate in one session frequently rubbed his or her face, whereas the confederate in the other session continuously shook their foot. As the participant and confederate went about their business of describing the various photographs, the participant was secretly videotaped. The videotapes were taken of the participants only so the experimenters watching the tapes could not have been affected by knowledge of what movement the confederates were doing. Results: As predicted, the participants tended to mimic the behavior exhibited by the confederate. - Similarly, people who were imitated reported liking of the confederate more and better smoothness of conversation. - Also, the participant was more likely to act in a prosocial behavior after being mimicked. Theme: automatic conformity Conclusion: Mimicry facilitates smooth interactions and increases liking between interaction partners.

Experiment: (Higgins, 1977) How schemas influence how we construe information

Background: Using Donald (a fictitious man described) as the stimulus, students participated in what they thought were two unrelated experiments. In the first, they viewed a number of trait words projected on a screen as part of a perception experiment. Half the participants were shown the words adventurous, self-confident, independent, and persistent among a set of ten traits. The other half were shown the words reckless, conceited, aloof, and stubborn. After completing the ostensible perception experiment, the participants moved on to the second study on reading comprehension, in which they read the short paragraph about Donald and rated him on a number of trait scales. Results: Participants who had previously read adventurous, self-confident, independent, and persistent formed more favorable impressions of Donald than did those who were shown the less flattering words. Conclusion: Participants' schemas about personality traits like adventurousness and recklessness influenced the kind of inferences they made about Donald.

Study: (Walster, 2017) physical attractiveness

Background: Walster asked people on her campus if anyone had ever told them they were good-looking or told them they weren't. The researchers deliberately surveyed the least attractive and most attractive people they encountered. Results: All of the most unattractive people said there were people who thought they were good-looking, and all of the most attractive people said there were people who considered them ugly.

Experiment: (Mischel, 1989) How shifting one's construal changes how they control their impulses

Background: Walter Miscel and his colleagues left preschool children in a room with a tempting marshmallow and gave them one of two options: they could have the one marshmallow (small reward) immediately simply by ringing a bell to summon the experimenter, or they could have two marshmallows (big reward) if they waited for the experimenter to return 15 minutes later. Commentary: One way to exert self-control in such situations is to shift how you construe the tempting reward In Action: Some of the children resisted temptation by viewing the marshmallow in "cooler," less arousing terms, visualizing it as a cotton ball or cloud

Study: (Hodson, 2002) modern racism and college admissions

Background: White participants evaluated black and white applicants to college. - Participants all had scores on the Attitudes toward Blacks Scale that indicated that they were either high or low in explicit prejudice toward blacks. Results: All participants rated white and black applicants the same when the applicants either excelled on all relevant dimensions or were below average on all dimensions. But when the applicants excelled on certain dimensions and were below average on eithers, the ratings of prejudiced and unprejudiced participants diverged: the prejudiced participants rated the black applicants less favorable than did the unprejudiced participants. Conclusion: Here, prejudiced participants could defend their responses as nondiscriminatory by claiming that the dimensions in which the black applicants fell short were more important than those on which they excelled.

Study: (Duncan, 1976) how stereotypes influence construed details of events

Background: White participants watched a videotape of a heated discussion between two men, one black and one white, and were asked to code the behavior they were watching into one of several categories, such as "Gives information," "Playing around," or "Aggressive behavior". - At one point in the video, one of the men shoved the other. - For half the participants, a black man shoved the white man; for the other half, the white men did nothing. Results: The race of the person made a difference in how the action was interpreted. - When perpetrated by a white man, the incident tended to be coded as more benign (as "Playing around," for example). When perpetrated by a black man, it was coded as a more serious action (such as "Aggressive behavior").

Study: (Gaertner, 1977) modern racism and medical attention

Background: White participants were in a position to aid a white or black person in need of medical assistance. Results: If the participants thought they were the only one who could help, they came to the aid of the black person somewhat more often (94% of the time) than the white person (81%). But when they thought other people were present and their own inaction could be justified on nonracial grounds, they helped the black person much less often than the white person (38% v 75%). Conclusion: In situations such as this, the prejudice or discrimination is "masked," and the individual remains comfortably unaware of any racist impulses.

Study: (Word, 1974) self-fulfilling prophecies and stereotypes in interviews

Background: White undergraduates interviewed both black and white men pretending to be job applicants. - The interviews were monitored, and the researchers discovered that the students (the white interviewers) unwittingly treated black and white applicants differently. When the applicant was black, the interviewer tended to sit farther away, to be harder on them throughout the session, and to terminate the proceedings earlier than when the applicant was white. - In the second phase of the experiment, interviewers were trained to treat a new set of applicants, all of whom were white, the way that either the white or the black applications had been treated earlier. These new interviewers were tape-recorded and later rated by independent judges. Results: These new applicants, who had been interviewed in the way the black applicants had been interviewed earlier, were evaluated more negatively than those who'd been interviewed in the way the white applicants had been interviewed earlier. - By placing black applicants at a disadvantage by treating them differently, the white interviewers confirmed their negative stereotypes of blacks. - Similar results have been obtained in interview studies of gay and lesbian job applicants.

Experiment: (Fishback, 2003) the effects on short-term temptation on long-term goals

Background: You're trying to eat a healthier diet (long-term goal), but you're faced with a plate of freshly baked cookies (temptation) Findings: The cookies may actually make you rhino more about your goal to eat healthily. The idea is that temptations (unhealthy foods) may become linked in memory to your goal (eating well), so that when temptations are brought to mind, so, too, are thoughts of healthy eating. Further, bringing goals to mind first has the effect of diminishing thoughts about temptations. Nuances: The effects found in this research apply mainly to people for whom the goal is very important and who have had substantial past success resisting goal-interfering temptations

Study: (Zajonc, 1968) the mere exposure effect on people with words

Background: Zajonc created a stimulus set of Turkish words that were unfamiliar to his participants. - Different words within this set were then shown to participants 0, 1, 2, 5, 10, or 25 times. - Afterwards, the participants indicated the extent to which they thought each word referred to something good or bad. Results: The more times participants saw a given word, the more they assumed it referred to something good. Continuation: Zajonc replicated this experiment using college yearbook photos as stimuli and had the subject judge how much they thought they would like the person. - Within face-to-face and online social interactions, people become more attracted to strangers as they interact with them more frequently.

Experiment: (Lo, 2008) emoji use in signaling differences in emotional expression

Background: a team at Facebook designed a set of science-based emojis that express human emotions that have been studied in the recent scientific literature The emoji-like drawings were based on Darwin's descriptions of emotions as well as findings characterizing the facial and head movements that express emotions such as awe, love, and sympathy A design team then produced animated emojis from these sketches called Finch emoji In Action: Countries varied in which emotions they depicted more (representing focal emotions in their country?)

Experiment: (Bartz, 2016) the effect of oxytocin on humans and their relationships

Background: social psychologists have administered oxytocin via a nasal spray to some participants and a saline solution (the control) to others and compared the effects In Action: When administered oxytocin, people are more generous and cooperative, they look more consistently at other people's faces, and they score higher on tests of empathy Commentary: Other studies have shown that oxytocin largely promotes commitment and generosity toward one's own group, but can actually enhance biases against outgroups

Study: (Shelton, 2005) pluralistic ignorance within interactions between members of different ethnic groups

Background: the researchers predicted that people might worry that someone from another ethnic group would not be interested in talking to them. Initiating conversation would therefore seem risky, something they might want to avoid out of fear of being rejected. As a result, no opening gesture is made and no contact is established. Results: When the researchers asked students a series of focused questions to probe this issue, they found that although the students generally attributed their own failure to initiate contact to their fear of rejection, they assumed that the other person didn't initiate contact because of a lack of interest in establishing friendships across ethnic line.

Study: (Peterson, 1988) How explanatory style as a young adult affects physical health later in life

Background: the study in question took advantage of the fact that members of Harvard's graduating classes from 1942 to 1944 took part in a longitudinal study that required them to complete a questionnaire every year and submit medical records of periodic physical examinations. Using the medical records, judges scored each person's physical health on a 5-point scale where 1 means the person was in good health and 5 means the person was decreased. This was done for all participants when they reaches the ages of 25, 30, 35, and so on. The physical health of the men at each of these ages was then correlated with their explanatory style as young men, which was assessed by having judges score the descriptions they gave in 1946 of their most difficult experiences during World War II. Results: Optimistic explanatory style during young adulthood was a significant predictor of good physical health in later life Commentary: The optimistic tendency to make external, unstable, and specific attributions for failure presumably makes us less prone to despair and encourages more of a can-do outlook that promotes such behaviors as exercising regularly and visiting the doctor, behaviors that can lead to a longer, healthier life

Study: (Ainsworth, 1993) internal working models, classifying the attachment patterns of infants according to how they responded to separation and reunions with their caregivers, both in the lab and in the home.

Background:: Using an experimental procedure that came to be known as "the strange situation," Ainsworth had infants and their caregivers enter an unfamiliar room containing many interesting toys. The infant explored the room and began to play with some of the toys with the caregiver present. - Infants who were securely attached were comfortable moving away from their caregivers to explore a novel environment - with the occasional glance back at the caregiver to make sure things were okay. These children felt safe when the caregiver was present even though they weren't in contact with their caregivers. - After a few minutes, a stranger walked in. The stranger remained in the room, and the caregiver quietly left. Returning after 3 minutes, the caregiver greeted and comforted the infant if the infant was upset. - The separation typically caused all infants to be distressed. - But securely attached infants had caregivers who, as assessed by outside observers, responded quickly and reliably to their distress cries. Results: Infants who showed anxious attachment were generally distressed when placed in novel environments, even when their caregiver was in the room. - These caregivers weren't as reliable in their responses to their infants - sometimes intruding on the child's activities and sometimes not, in an unpredictable fashion. - Anxiously attached infants were less comforted by contact with their caregiver when the caregiver returned after an absence. - Caregivers who rejected their infants frequently generally had children with an avoidant attachment style. In a strange situation, the avoidant child tended to be the least inclined to seek out the caregiver and might even reject attention when it was offered.

experiment: do Southerners actually react more aggressively to an insult than Northerners?

Cohen and his colleagues had participants who had to take a questionnaire down a long, narrow hallways lined with filing cabinets and put it on a table at the end. As some participants walked down, another student stood in the hallways with a file drawer pulled out. For the participant to pass, the student how to push the drawer in. When the participant returned down the same hallway, the student had to move again, and he said "A**hole." Students in a control setting did not encounter the student. The student therefore had two independent variables: one involving a manipulated variable (insulted v control) and one involving a correlational variable (Northerner v Southerner). Participants were then asked to read a story in which a man made a pass at another man's fiance and provide an ending to the story. Participants were asked to walk down the narrow hallway again, this time someone tall and muscular was walking towards the participant. The dependent variable was how far away the participant was when he finally swerved out of the guy's way. Results: Southerns usually showed a flash of anger whereas Northerners were more likely to be amused. Southerners who had been insulted were more likely to provide a violent ending that Southerners who hadn't been insulted whereas Northerners were unaffected by the insult. The level of testosterone increased for Southerners who had been insulted, but not for the others. Insulted Southerners waited until the last movement to swerve, compared to 5 feet for Northerners insulted or not and 9 feet for uninsulated Southerners.

Experiment on the effects of culture on choice (Kim and Markus 1999)

Experimenters offered a pen as a gift for being in a study to Korean and American participants. All of the pens were of one color, except for one, which was of another color. Americans tended to choose the unique color and Koreans the common color.

Experiment: (Stern, 2014) on the effect of implementation intentions on social interactions

Findings: Forming implementation intentions for such interactions (intentions that specify an anxiety-reducing behavior when feeling uncomfortable) increased the likelihood of a successful interaction

How do jurors make decisions on punitive damage awards?

First consulting their sense of outrage at the defendant's behavior. - This sense of outrage tends to be affected by how recklessly the defendant behaved and how much malice seemed to be involved in the defendant's actions. - Jurors then translate their sense of outrage into punitive intent, which is also influenced by the amount of harm the plaintiff experienced and by the plaintiff's identity. The difficulty lies in the next step: translating one's sense of punitive intent into an actual dollar figure. - The good news is that people tend to agree about how outrages they are about a defendant's actions and their desire to punish. - The bad news is that the last step, translating punitive intent into an actual dollar amount, can be influenced by extraneous variables and therefore can be arbitrary. (In fact, research has shown that people can end up recommending stiffer penalties for harming appealing animals such as dolphins than for harming human beings.)

A positive mood tends to increase compliance for two main reasons:

First, our mood colors how we interpret events. - We're more likely to view requests for favors as less intrusive and less threatening when we're in a good mood. We're more inclined to give others the benefit of the doubt. Secondly, there's mood maintenance, which means that we want the feeling of goodness to last as long as possible, which can be achieved by doing something for another person.

When groups with a history of animosity and conflict have one-on-one contact with one another under conditions of equal status, interdependence, and supportive social norms, three important changes appear to take place that together reduce prejudice.

First, people begin to see members of the outgroup as individuals rather than as stereotyped, undifferentiated members of a social category, a process psychologists refer to as personalization. - Personalization makes it easier for people to empathize with outgroup members and to think of them as similar to themselves. Second, in this kind of one-on-one contact, a person's positive feelings for particular outgroup members starts to generalize to the outgroup as a whole. Finally, positive intergroup sentiments are solidified when members of both groups come to think of themselves as sharing a common identity.

Contact between different groups is likely to be more positive and more productive if certain conditions are met.

First, the groups need to have equal status. - If one group feels superior and the other resentful, then harmonious, productive interactions are not likely to be the norm. Second, as in the Robbers Cave study, productive intergroup interactions can occur if the different groups have a shared goal that requires mutual cooperation (a superordinate goal), thereby promoting a common ingroup identity. Third, community support is important: a community's broader social norms must support intergroup contact. - If children of different races, religions, and ethnicities go to school with one another but their parents send them begrudgingly and rarely miss an opportunity to speak ill of the "other" children, the students themselves are unlikely to reach out across group boundaries. Fourth, personal interaction

Experiment: (Sommerville, 2005) Your Actions are my Actions with Children and Goal Setting

Guiding question: What happens around 6/7 months that babies can begin to understand goals? Hypothesis: One of the big changes is that infants become coordinated enough to start reaching for themselves, so it's the baby's own experience with reaching that allows them to understand why other people might reach for an object. Experiment: Sommerville gave 3 mo. old baby velcro gloves so they could reach and grab things. After 20 minutes of this, the baby showed neural signs of understanding goals. Theme: simulation theory

Study: (McNeil, 1982) Positive and Negative Framing Effects on Medical Experts

In Action: Over 400 physicians were asked whether they would recommend surgery or radiation for patients diagnosed with a certain type of cancer. Some were told that of 100 previous patients who had the surgery, 90 lived through the postoperative period, 68 were still alive after a year, and 34 were still alive after 5 years. 82% of these physicians recommended surgery. Others were told that 10 died during surgery or the postoperative period, 32 had died by the end of the first year, and 66 had died by the end of 5 years. Only 56% of the physicians recommended surgery. Commentary: Because negative information tends to attract more attention and have greater psychological impact than positive information, information framed in negative terms tends to elicit a stronger response.

Experiment: Nirvana in the brain (Richard Davidson) through meditation

In one line of work, Richard Davidson studied practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, who spend as much as 4 or 5 hours a day quietly meditating. Upon scanning the brain of one monk, he found that his resting brain showed levels of activation in the left frontal lobes (regions of the brain involved in positive emotion) that were literally off the charts In another task, Davidson blasted the monk with a loud burst of white noise, which for most people activates an ancient and powerful startle response. The monk didn't even blink Davidson and colleagues had software engineers train in the techniques of mindfulness meditation, with the aim of developing the ability to accept without judgment their thoughts and feelings and the practice of loving kindness towards others Six weeks later, the participants showed increased activation in the left frontal lobes They also showed enhanced immune function, evident in the size of the immune response in the skin when given a flue shot

Study: Can prompting people to practice optimism lead to increased happiness?

In this intervention-oriented work, researchers translate abstract concepts such as optimism into everyday practices. - In one study, participants in an optimism-enhancing condition wrote about what their best possible future life would look like if everything were going well in their personal and professional lives. This act of practicism optimism led Western European college students to report greater happiness one month later (although this practice had no effect on East Asian students). - In related work, participants were asked to identify signature strengths they possess (courage, sense of justice, etc) and apply that strength to their daily lives during the ensuing week. In another condition, participants were asked each day to think about three good things in their lives. Thinking about a signature strength and reminding oneself of the good things in life each day are close cousins of developing an optimistic view of the future. These practices, compared to a control in which participants journaled each day for a week about their past, led to increased happiness and reduced depression over a period of 6 months.

Experiment seeing differences in employer responses to an applicant inquiry between the North and South

Social psychologists sent a letter to retail business owners across the Northern and Southern states as an applicant who was relocating to the potential employer's town. Among a set of appropriate qualifications listed, the applicant described why he was convicted of manslaughter (it was a crime of honor; a man made a pass at his fiancé and asked to fight him in front of everybody, so he did and he accidentally hit him too hard and killed him). If the employers provided a note, the researchers rated how sympathetic it seemed (how encouraging it was and whether it mentioned an appreciation for the applicant's candor). Results: Retailers from the South complied with the applicant's requests more than retailers from the North. The notes from Southern business owners were much warmer and sympathetic than those from the North.

Experiment in which Joe (separated corpus callosum) sees two words on screen (word on left is processed by right brain, word on right is processed by left brain, left brain also controls language)

Study: What happens when split brain patient sees visual display like this? ("Bell" on left side of screen and processed on right side of brain; "Music" on right side of screen and processed on left side of brain) Results: Joe picks picture of "Bell" when asked to match picture to word, but explains his choice in relation to the bell making music Explanation: Joe constructs best explanation for his behavior, but really has no insight into the thought processes that led to his behavior. The speaking left brain cannot access that his right brain saw "bell", so he doesn't know that that is why he pointed to the bell but said "music" - very good at coming up with an explanation for his choice; the left brain is considered an "interpreter" that explains the things that it sees Connection: What's to say that our explanations of behavior aren't completely wrong like Joe

Experiment: (Schkade, 1998) focalism

Study: When people from the Midwest were asked whether they'd be happier if they lived in sunny California, the average response was a big yes. But when survey researchers asked residents of California and the Midwest how happy they are, there's no noticeable difference Commentary: We think we'd be happier in California because we focus on the weather and the beaches, but most Californians spend little time at the beach, and it's hard to focus on the weather when your boss is making demands on you, your child is acting up in school, or a loved one had a worrisome X-ray result Theme: focalism

Study: (Bachorowski, 2001) are we more cooperative with people who behave or look a certain way?

Summary: A variety of studies suggest that we study others' nonverbal behavior in search of cues that signal that that individual is likely to cooperate; and once those cues are detected, they trigger cooperation on our part in turn. - For example, in situations like the prisoner's dilemma game, people are more likely to cooperate with another person who smiles in a friendly fashion, laughs warmly, has a trustworthy-looking face, listens to others attentively, and has a physical appearance that resembles their own appearance. - In a similar vein, people also trust and devote resources to other individuals who cooperate quickly and reflexively and in ways that seem spontaneous rather than calculated and strategic.

Study: (Diener, 1976) self-awareness on cheating

Summary: College students were asked to solve a series of anagrams and told to stop when a bell sounded. In the control condition, nearly ¾ of them judged a bit by continuing to work beyond the bell. In a condition that caused participants to be made self-aware by working in front of a mirror, fewer than 10% cheated.

Study: (Devine, 1989) controlled v automatic stereotyping

Summary: Devine selected groups of high- and low-prejudiced participants on the basis of their scores on the Modern Racism Scale. To show that these two groups don't differ in their automatic processing of stereotypical information—that is, that the same stereotypes are triggered in both high-prejudiced and low-prejudiced people—she presented each participant with a set of words, one at a time, so briefly that the words could not be consciously identified. - Some of them saw neutral words and others saw words stereotypically associated with blacks. - Devine hypothesized that although the stereotypical words were presented too briefly to be consciously recognized, they would nonetheless prime the participants' stereotypes of blacks. - To test this hypothesis, she presented the participants with a written description of an individual who acted in an ambiguously hostile manner (a feature of the African-American stereotype). Results: The results indicated that he was seen as more hostile—and more negative overall—by participants who had earlier been primed by words designed to activate stereotypes of blacks. This result was found equally for prejudiced and nonprejudiced participants. Because the words activated their stereotypes unconsciously, the nonprejudiced participants were unable to suppress the automatic processing of stereotypical information. - To demonstrate that prejudiced and nonprejudiced people differ primarily in their controlled cognitive processes, if not in their automatic cognitive processes, Devine next asked her participants to list characteristics of black Americans. As predicted, the prejudiced participants listed many more negative characteristics stereotypically associated with blacks than did nonprejudiced participants. - Thus, even though both prejudiced and nonprejudiced people may know the same negative stereotypes of black Americans, those who are prejudiced believe them and are sometimes willing to voice those beliefs, whereas those who are not prejudiced will reject them.

Study: (Sanchez-Burks, 2002) cultural responses to how business people treat an employee who has put in 15 good years of service, but over the past year had fallen down on the job and was unlikely to get back on track (communal v exchange relationships)

Summary: East Asians tended to feel that the company had an obligation to treat the employee more like a family member and keep him on the payroll. Western businessmen were more likely to feel that the relationship was contractual, or exchange-based, and thus the employee should be let go. - There are differences among Western nations, however: people from Catholic countries are more likely to take a communal stance than people from Protestant countries, and the same difference is found among Catholics and Protestants even within the United States.

Study: (Kassin, 1997) are confessions made under dubious circumstances taken at face value by jurors?

Summary: Experimenters presented mock jurors with an account of a murder trial. - In one condition, the suspect never admitted committing the crime, and the participants voted guilty 19% of the time. - In a second condition, it was reported that the suspect had confessed, and the conviction rate rose to 62%. - In a third condition, the suspect had confessed, but in a situation in which he was afraid and in pain while he was handcuffed behind his back. Although these participants generally recognised that the confession had been coerced, 50% of them voted for conviction anyway; they chose to believe the defendant's confession, even if it was forced and even when they were told that the judge ruled that it was inadmissible and should be ignored. Conclusion: Confessions make a huge difference, even under forced circumstances.

Study: (Klohnen, 1998) stability of attachment styles

Summary: In a 40-year longitudinal study of women who graduated from college in 1960, researchers found that those who classified themselves as avoidant at age 52 had also reported greater conflict in the home 31 years earlier at age 21. What's more, individuals classified as secure, avoidant, or anxious at age 1 tend to be similarly classified in early adulthood. Continuation: A more recent study showed that the observed quality of adolescents' interactions with their parents at age 15 predicted their self-reported attachment security 10 years later.

Study: (Taylor, 1983) how people live with serious diseases

Summary: In one study, she interviewed women who were being treated for breast cancer. - 1/7 women in the US and Canada suffer from breast cancer during the course of their lives. While the survival rates are improving every year, the psychological ramifications are complex. Upon being diagnosed, women often feel anxiety, fear, shame, and even hostility - just the kinds of emotions that trigger HPA axis activation and cortisol release, thereby causing stress and perhaps worsening the effects of the disease. Results: In studying the interviews, Taylor found that women with a breast cancer diagnosis did not necessarily accept their condition passively. Instead, they actively constructed narratives about this new dimension to their identity. Many of them found reasons to be grateful in surprising kinds of social comparisons.

Study: the bogus stranger

Summary: In these experiments, participants are given the responses to attitude or personality questionnaires supposedly filled out by someone else (but really created by the experimenter to show a given level of similarity to the participants' own responses). After reading the responses of the bogus stranger, the participants rated him or her on several dimensions, including their liking of the person in question. In study after study of this type, the more similar the stranger is to the participant, the more the participant likes that stranger.

Study: (Rand, 2013) are we more cooperative when we interact repeatedly with the same person, compared with a one-shot interaction?

Summary: Investigators have reviewed numerous studies that varied the number of rounds two people played during the prisoner's dilemma game. Results: The evidence is clear: as the likelihood of interacting with someone in the future rises, we become more cooperative.

Experiment: (Cialdini, 1975) reciprocal concessions technique

Summary: Members of his research team posed as representatives of the "County Youth Counseling Program" and approached students around campus. - They asked individual students if they would be willing to chaperone a group of juvenile delinquents on a trip to the zoo. - Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority, 83%, refused. But the response rate was much different for a second group of students who had first encountered a much larger request. - They were first asked whether they would be willing to counsel juvenile delinquents for 2 hours a week for the next two years. - Not surprisingly, all of them refused, at which point they were asked about chaperoning the trip to the zoo. - 50% of these students agreed to chaperone - triple the rate of the other group. Conclusion: The pressure participants felt to comply with what was perceived as a concession was responsible for the dramatic increase in compliance. Accordingly, this technique doesn't work when the two requests are made by different individuals. In that case, the second, smaller request isn't seen as a concession, but rather an entirely separate request by a different person, so the person being asked doesn't feel the same obligation.

Study: (Bartholow, 2006) when are we most likely to invoke stereotypes?

Summary: Participants were more likely to invoke stereotypes when tested at the low point of their circadian rhythm. - "Morning people," when tested at night, tended to invoke a common stereotype and conclude, for example, that a night person charged with cheating on an exam was guilty if he was an athlete. - "Night people," when tested in the morning, were more inclined to conclude that a person charged with dealing drugs was guilty if he was black. Conclusion: People are more likely to fall back on stereotypes when they lack mental energy.

Experiment: (Wells, 1980) embodied attitudes on real attitudes

Summary: Participants who listened to radio editorials while nodding their heads up and down expressed more agreement with the editorials compared with participants who were shaking their heads side to side while listening. - The idea behind this research is that nodding and shaking the head can affect attitudes because they are peripheral cues of agreement and disagreement. - But the self-validation hypothesis suggests another mechanism to account for findings like these: bodily movements can signal varying degrees of thought confidence, and it's this confidence that determines whether or not persuasion occurs.

Study: (Lepore, 1993) physiological stress with public speaking and supportive other people

Summary: People were required to give a public speech with very little time to prepare, which no doubt caused rattled nerves and elevated cortisol. Those who had a supportive person in the audience, compared with those who did not, had lower blood pressure during the course of the speech. Continuation: Participants made a presentation about why each of them would be a good candidate for an administrative job on campus, while two audience members looked on, expressionless, offering few signs of enthusiasm and a great deal of skepticism. Before and after the speech, participants' cortisol levels were measured. Those who reported having strong connections with others, a sense of autonomy, and healthy self-esteem showed less intense cortisol responses to the stressful speech.

Study: (Buss, 1989) asymmetry in mate selection in a survey

Summary: Respondents were from the West; industrialized regions in non-Western countries; and more rural societies. - Notably, when asked what they look for in a mate, both men and women in all cultures rated kindness and intelligence more highly than either physical attractiveness or earning potential, as do gay men and lesbians. - Nevertheless, just as evolutionary psychologists would predict, men in nearly every culture rated physical attractiveness as more desirable in a mate than women did. - And in every culture, men preferred marriage partners who were younger than they were. - Women consistently preferred partners who were older than they were and consistently assigned greater importance than men did to various indicators of a personal mate's ability to provide material resources.

Experiment: (Gelfand, 2011) tight v loose cultures

Summary: The Gelfand team examined a number of variables in 33 nations. They found that compared with loose nations, tight nations are more likely to have governments that are autocratic or dictatorial, to punish dissent, to have sharp controls on what can be said in the media, to have more laws and higher monitoring the ensure that the laws are obeyed, and to inflict more punishment for disobedience. - If a nation was tight on one of these dimensions, it tended to be tight on all; if it was loose on one, it tended to be loose on all. Gelfand and her colleagues surveyed people in each of the 33 countries, asking them about the appropriateness of arguing, crying, laughing, singing, flirting, reading a newspaper, and several other behaviors in each of 15 different social situations or places, such as a doctor's office, a restaurant, and a movie theater. - The tighter the nation's laws and norms, the fewer behaviors were allowed in these various situations. - Citizens in tighter nations pointed to tighter constraints. Why are some nations tight and some loose? - The Gelfand team found that tighter nations tend to have higher population densities, fewer natural resources, unreliable food supplies, less access to safe water, greater risk of natural disasters, more territorial threats from neighbors, and a higher prevalence of pathogens. - It appears, then, that behavioral constraints are associated with, and perhaps partly caused by, ecological constraints.

Experiment: (Crandall, 1988) the factors playing a role in the current epidemic of bulimia

Summary: The experimenter studied sorority women at a large university and found that the more bulimic a woman's friends were, the more bulimic she was likely to be. - This relationship wasn't because bulimic women discovered each other and became friends. - Early in the school year, when the students had known one another for only a short time, there was no association between the level of a woman's bulimia and that of her friends. But over the course of the year, women in established friendship groups (not different, newly formed groups) came to have similar levels of bulimia. - Crandall studied two sororities and found two slightly different patterns of influence. - In one sorority, women who differed in their level of bulimic activity from the average level in their sorority were less likely to be popular. - Crandall inferred from this that there was an "appropriate," or normative, level of bulimia in that sorority, and deviations from it in either direction were punished by rejection. - In the other sorority, more binge eating was associated with more popularity. - Crandall concluded there was pressure toward considerable binge eating, and those most inclined to binge were rewarded with acceptance and popularity. Conclusion: The lesson, once again, is that social influence is everywhere, even influencing whether or not we're likely to suffer from chronic medical conditions.

Experiment: (Freedman, 1966) foot-in-the-door technique

Summary: The investigators knocked on doors in a residential neighborhood and asked one group of homeowners if they would be willing to have a large billboard sign bearing the slogan "Drive Carefully" installed in their front yard for one week. - They were shown a picture of the sign: it was large and unattractive, so not surprisingly, only 17% agreed to the request. - Another group of residents was approached with a much smaller request - to display in a window of their home a 3-inch-square sign bearing the phrase "Be a Safe Driver." - Virtually all of them agreed with the request. - Two weeks later, when this group was asked to display the billboard in their yard (receiving the very same request as those in the first group), a staggering 76% of them agreed to do so.

Study: (Blair, 2005) psychopathic empathy

Summary: These researchers have found that psychopaths cognitively understand the emotions of others quite well. - For example, when shown photos of facial expressions of emotion, psychopaths do as well as appropriate comparison participants in identifying emotions from the face. - They also prove to be quite capable of assessing the mental states of other people; they can reliably infer what other people are thinking. - They do show empathic deficits in their responses to others' sadness, however. - Show a photo of a sad face to the average adult, and that person will respond with a galvanic skin response, a measure of the sweat response in the palms that indicates a physiological reaction to the other person's suffering. By contrast, psychopaths show no such physiological response to the sadness of others, but they do show such galvanic skin responses to other emotionally evocative images, such as images of guns. Conclusion: The results of the Blair research indicate that psychopaths understand quite well the emotions of mental states of others, but they lack any feeling for them, most notably their suffering.

Study: (Bezrukova, 2016) does diversity training work?

Summary: They did a meta-analysis of 260 diversity training studies and found medium overall effect sizes on the dimensions of cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral. The influencing factors were: - stronger effects with longer training - stronger effects with integrated trainings - only cognitive effects lated over time - who is in the training (people who are already egalitarian had biggest effects)

Study: (Nahemow, 1975) proximity on friendships when considering diversity

Summary: This study examined the patterns of friendships in a Manhattan housing project in which half the residents were black, one-third were white, and the rest were Puerto Rican and each ethnic group included people of all ages. Results: Proximity had strong effects on who befriended whom - 88% of those designated as a "best friend" lived in the same building as the respondent, and nearly half lived on the same floor. - Yet the effect of proximity was especially pronounced in friendships that developed across age and racial groups: 70% of the friendships between people of different ages and races involved people who lived on the same floor as each other, compared with only 40% of the same-age and same-race friendships generally. Conclusion: Similarity has a strong effect on friendships, as it appeared that people were willing to look beyond the immediate environment to find friends of their own age and race. But proximity is especially powerful across differences, as the friendships with people of a different age or race tended to be those that fell in the residents' laps.

Evolutionary psychologists have sought to understand these striking gender differences in aggression in terms of access to reproductive opportunities.

Their theorizing builds on the concept of parental investment. - According to this thinking, women invest more in their offspring than men and thus are less likely to desert their offspring and seek other reproductive opportunities. - Men, in contrast, are evolutionarily freer to go outside the primary relationship and compete with other men for access to mates. - Within this competition, high-status, more aggressive men are more successful than low-status men in terms of reproductive success, or number of offspring. - Throughout evolutionary history, the basic difference in reproductive opportunities led males to evolve characteristics and strategies for outcompeting other males for mates.

dancing plague of 1518

a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace, in the Holy Roman Empire in July 1518. Around 400 people took to dancing for days without rest and, over the period of about one month, some of those affected collapsed or even died of heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion takeaway: crowds are weird

Reciprocal concessions technique (door-in-the-face)

a compliance approach that involves asking someone for a very large favor that will certainly be refused and then following that request with one for a smaller favor (which tends to be seen as a concession the target feels compelled to honor) - The idea is that the drop in the size of the request will be seen as a concession; the person being asked will feel compelled to match that concession to honor the norm of reciprocity. The most available concession the person can make is to comply with the asker's second request.

Foot-in-the-door technique

a compliance approach that involves making an initial small request with which nearly everyone complies, followed by a larger request involving the real behavior of interest

Anxiety dimension of attachment:

a facet of attachment that captures the degree to which a person is worried about rejection and abandonment by relationship partners

attributional ambiguity

a phenomenon whereby members of stigmatized groups often can be uncertain whether negative experiences are based on their own actions and abilities or are the result of prejudice

Affect misattribution procedure (AMP)

a priming procedure designed to assess people's implicit associations to different stimuli, including their associations to various ethnic, racial, occupational, and lifestyle groups - It doesn't measure how quickly people respond to a stimulus after a given prime, but how people evaluate that stimulus. - In the AMP, subjects are shown a picture of a member of a particular target group which is immediately followed by a neutral or unfamiliar image. The key question is whether the feelings associated with the target group transfer to the subjects' evaluations of the subsequent, otherwise neutral image. - Responses on the AMP have been shown to be related to political attitudes, other measures of racial bias, and significant personal habits like smoking and drinking.

Implicit association test (IAT):

a technique for revealing nonconscious attitudes toward different stimuli, particularly groups of people - A series of words or pictures are presented on a computer screen, and the respondent presses a key with the left hand if the picture or word conforms to one rule and another key with the right hand if it conforms to another rule. - Researchers argued that respondents would be faster to press one key for members of a particular group and words stereotypically associated with that group than they would to press the same key for members of that group and words that contradict the stereotype associated with that group.

Self-awareness theory

a theory maintaining that when people focus their attention inward on themselves, they become concerned with self-evaluation and how their current behavior conforms to their internal standards and values

self-evaluation maintenance model (Abe Tesser)

a theory predicting under what conditions people are likely to react to the success of others with either pride or jealousy - if the activity is not relevant to ourselves, we are happier when a strong social connection succeeds, but if the activity is relevant to ourselves, we feel worse when a strong social connection succeeds

Realistic group conflict theory

a theory that group conflict, prejudice, and discrimination are likely to arise over competition between groups for limited resources - This theory predicts, correctly, that prejudice and discrimination should increase under conditions of economic difficulty, such as recessions and periods of high unemployment. When there's less to go around or when people are afraid of losing what they have, competition intensifies. - The theory also predicts that prejudice and discrimination should be strongest among groups that stand to lose the most from another groups' economic advance. - The theory has been expanded to address the fact that groups often compete not just for material resources, but over ideology and cultural supremacy as well.

Exchange relationships

a trade based and often short-term relationship, and the individuals feel no special responsibility for one another's well-being - Given and receiving are governed by concerns about equity (you get what you put into the relationship) and reciprocity (what you receive is about equal to what you give) - Examples are interactions with salespeople and bureaucrats or with workers and supervisors in a business organization

the ladder measure

a way to understand how lower-SES people may construe their lives in terms of occupying positive of subordinate status, which may damage their health - A person chooses where they fall on the ladder, and it has important health outcomes. With each jump up the ladder of the class hierarchy, people are likely to enjoy better health. - In a study of employees of the British Civil Service, those in the lowest-ranked positions (such as janitors) were three times more likely to die over a ten-year period than the highest-ranked administrators. - The experience of subordinate rank, even for people who have a good deal in life, leads to chronic activation of the HPA axis and the associated health problems.

persuasion

an active attempt to change another person's attitudes by means of a direct message or communication

implicit attitude measures

an indirect measure of attitudes that doesn't involve a self report, used when there is reason to believe that people may be unwilling or unable to report their true feelings or opinions

random assignment

assigning participants in experimental research to different groups randomly, so they are as likely to be assigned to one condition as to another this is where the power of experiments comes from it guarantees that, on average, except for the manipulation of the independent variable, there should be no systematic differences across experimental groups

instrumental aggression

behavior intended to harm another in the service of motives other than pure hostility (such as attracting attention, acquiring wealth, or advancing political or ideological causes)

Dissonance and The Seekers: Summary - Dissonance was caused by the discrepancy between the __ and the __. - Dissonance is an __ drive state and must be reduced. - The Seekers reduced their dissonance with very important, consonant cognition: They saved the world. By __ this cognition, they reduced their unpleasant drive state.

belief; disconfirmation; uncomfortable; adding

People are more likely to conform to a __ group.

bigger - The effect of group size levels off pretty quickly. - Research using Asch's paradigm has shown an increase in conformity as the size of the group increases, but only to a group size of three or four; after that, the amount of conformity levels off. - When we consider informational social influence, it makes sense that the larger the number of people who express a particular opinion, the more likely that opinion has merit as a source of information - but only to a certain point. - The validity of a consensus opinion increases only if the individual opinions are independent of one another. - The more people there are, the less likely that their views are independent; therefore, additional consenting opinions don't offer any additional real information. - As for normative social influence, it makes sense that the larger the group, the more people one stands to displease, so conformity is more likely. - But here, too, the impact of group size is seen only up to a point. A person can feel only so much embarrassment, and the difference between being viewed as odd, fooling, or difficult by 2 versus 4 people is psychologically much more powerful than the difference between being viewed that way by 12 versus 14 people.

three types of covariation information

consensus, distinctiveness, consistency

Affect value theory

emotions that promote cultural ideals are values and will tend to play a more prominent role in the social lives of individuals For example: in the US, excitement is greatly valued because it enables people to pursue a cultural ideal of independent action and self-expression In contrast, many East Asian cultures attach greater value to feelings of calmness and contentedness because these emotions make it easier for individuals to fit into harmonious relationships

Another way Milgram influences the rate of obedience was to strengthen or weaken the "signal" coming from the experimenter, thereby strengthening or weakening the forces __ participants to complete the experiment. In an experimenter-absent version, the experimenter gave the initial instructions alongside the participant, but then left the room and issued all subsequent orders over the telephone. - By physically removing himself from the scene, the experimenter __ much of his influence, and participants were less likely to obey. Another way to diminish the experimenter's power is to alter the experimenter's authority. - In one version, for example, instead of an authoritative experimenter, an "ordinary person" (seemingly another part, but in reality a confederate) was the one who delivered the orders to increase the shock level each time the learner made a mistake. In another version, two experimenters initially instructed the participant to shock the learner. At one point, however, one of the two experimenters announced that he found the proceedings objectionable and argued with the other experimenter, who continued to urge the participant to complete the experiment. As the experimenter became less salient and less of an authority in the participant's mind, it became __ for the participant to defy him, so the rate of obedience declined. This series of experiment variations had a more pronounced effect than the "tuning in the learner" series. Making it easier for participants to disobey (for example, by decreasing the authority or power of the experimenter) thus seems to be __ effective than increasing their desire to disobey (for example, but making the learner's protestations and pain more real).

encouraging; lost; easier; more

What is it about independent and interdependent cultures that creates differences in self-esteem? - A situationist hypothesis would be that people from Western cultures create social interactions that __ self-esteem - Studies have found that situations described by Japanese as common daily experiences are seen as __ conducive to high self-esteem that daily situations in the US - Example: Sushi chefs critique themselves in sessions with their peers; Americans are more often praised for their achievements that Japanese people are

enhance; less

What are interventions?

experiments that are ecologically valid where the outcome is meant to improve individual or social well-being experiment: have to manipulate the IV - usually a treatment group that receives the intervention and a control group that receives a similar treatment but is unrelated to the topic ecologically valid: naturalistic, translatable to the real-world - normally changes something in someone's daily life improve individual/social well-being: lasting increase in positive behavior or mental state - beneficial effects OUTSIDE of the lab/immediate point of intervention

subtyping

explaining away exceptions to a given stereotype by creating a subcategory of the stereotyped group that can be expected to differ from the group as a whole - Subtyping reflects a more general truth: people treat evidence that supports a stereotype differently from evidence that refutes it. People tend to accept supportive evidence at face value, whereas they often critically analyze and discount contradictory evidence. - One way they do this, in keeping with the self-serving attributional bias, is by attributing behavior consistent with a stereotype to the dispositions of the people involved and attributing behavior inconsistent with a stereotype to external causes.

Faces are special: - newborns prefer to look at __ than at other equally complex objects, signaling that even without visual __, faces are a highly significant visual stimuli - primate brains contain neurons that respond __ to faces - we are face experiments: extremely sensitive to __ differences in appearance - we form impressions of faces from extremely __ information

faces; experience; selectively; minor; little

What are emotions? __ __: People display and recognize emotions similar and dissimilarly across cultures __ __: biological and social functions __: a result of certain physiology changes in a certain context

facial displays; functional expressions; attributions

discrimination

favorable or unfavorable treatment (behavior) of individuals based on their membership in a particular group - It involves unfair treatment of others, based not on their individual character or abilities, but strictly on their group membership.

Although there is a __ deal of universality in how people express their emotions across cultures, there is cultural __ in emotional expressions.

great; variation

Cultures with scarcer resources find (lighter/heavier) women more attractive.

heavier

reciprocal altruism

helping others with the expectation that they will probably return the favor in the future

Pygmalion effect

higher expectations lead to an increase in performance

external validity

how well the results of a study generalize to contexts outside the conditions of the laboratory

life satisfaction

how well you think your life is going in general

The physiognomist promise is alive and well Primarily because we are all naive physiognomists: forming and acting on __ from faces impressions from faces are __ and compelling startups promising profiling personalities based on facial images alone scientific publications claiming to read criminal inclinations, sexual orientation, political orientation, and so on from facial images alone

impressions; immediate

independent variable

in experimental research, the variable that is manipulated; it is hypothesized to be the CAUSE of a particular outcome

dependent variable

in experimental research, the variable that measured (as opposed to manipulated); it is hypothesized to be AFFECTED BY manipulation of the independent variable

mirror agnosia

inability to understand mirrors; feel like the mirror represents another place - if researcher holds object in mirror, patient would try to reach into the mirror rather than behind them

Which part of a research paper do interventions fall under?

inferences/discussion

People make causal attributions because they need to draw __ about others (and themselves) in order to make __ about future behavior.

inferences; predictions

egocentric self: ego: self-positivity - want to think of ourselves as good, leader to self-___ centric: our focus in on the __ version of __

inflation; current; self

Just about every health problem is more prevalent in __-SES people. - People living in poorer neighborhoods are more often exposed to air and water pollution, pesticides, and hazardous wastes. - lower-SES neighborhoods have __ recreation spaces and parks, so residents have fewer opportunities to exercise, to be outdoors, to relax, or to calm down - Poorer neighborhoods also have higher incidence of violent crime, and residents experience more pervasive feelings of __ - Lower-SES individuals have fewer resources and more limited access to opportunities, and these play an important role in defining a person's __ in society - Researchers have learned that having __ status leads to chronic feelings of threat and stress, accompanied by activation of the HPA axis and elevated cortisol.

lower; fewer; threat; rank; subordinate

Milgram directed his initial efforts at increasing the forces that compelled people to want to terminate the experiment and stop hurting the learner. - These forces were all triggered by an awareness of the learner's suffering, so Milgram tried to increase them by making the learner more prominent - or, in his words, by "tuning in the learner." Participants spontaneously tried to do the __ - that is, to deal with their own discomfort by tuning out the learner, sometimes literally running away from him in the chair. - Remote-feedback version: the teacher (the participant) could neither see nor hear the learner (except for one episode of vigorous pounding) - Voice-feedback version: the learner was still not in view, but he and his vigorous protests were clearly audible, ann the teacher was constantly aware of him In subsequent variations of the experiment, Milgram introduced the proximity version, in which the learner received his shock in the same room where the teacher delivered it, from only 1.5 feet away. - Also introduced a touch-proximity version, in which the teacher was required to force the learner's hand onto the shock play (a sheet of insulation supposedly kept the teacher from being shocked, too). - As the learner became more and more present and "real," the teachers found it increasingly __ to deliver the shocks, and obedience rates diminished.

opposite; difficult

social facilitation: when the presence of others energizes us

presence of others > arousal > dominant response > (EITHER): performance improves on an easy task/declines on a hard task

Experiment examining that we often can't identify some of the crucial factors that affect our beliefs and behaviors (Bargh and Pietromonaco, 1982)

presented words on a computed screen for 1/10 of a second. Some participants were exposed to words with a hostile meaning and some to neutral words. They then read about a man named Donald, whose behavior was ambiguous as to hostile or not. After reading the paragraph, participants were unable to distinguish what words they had seen on the screen, yet participants exposed to the hostile words rated Donal as being more hostile than did participants exposed to the neutral words

Many persuasive messages fail because they can't overcome the target audience's __ __ There's also evidence that public commitments, declarations of one's attitude around a given issue in a public setting, make people __ attitude change.

previous commitments; resist

Attitude inoculation

small attacks on people's beliefs that engage their preexisting attitudes, prior commitments, and background knowledge, enabling them to counteract a subsequent larger attack and thus resist persuasion

3 motives at play in altruistic action:

social reward (selfish), personal distress (selfish), empathic concern

within-subjects experiment

the control group is the same set of subjects tested before alteration or treatment pros: each individual serves as their own control cons: could be 3rd variable, self-selected group, lots of outside variables, people change because they take same test twice, could be time-dependent

measurement validity

the correlation between some measure and some outcome the measure is supposed to predict

reliability

the degree to which a measure is stable and consistent over time example: If you take an IQ test twice, do you get roughly the same score (test-retest reliability)? Do two observers agree on how they rate the charisma of a world leader (inter-rater reliability)?

Self-enhancement

the desire to maintain, increase, or protect one's positive self-views

state self-esteem

the dynamic, changeable self-evaluations a person experiences as momentary feelings about the self

Fundamental Attribution Error

the failure to recognize the importance of situational influences on behavior, along with the corresponding tendency to overemphasize the importance of dispositions on behavior

fundamental attribution error (Lee Ross 1977)

the failure to recognize the importance of situational influences on behavior, and the corresponding tendency to overemphasize the importance of dispositions on behavior

Better-than-average effect - this happens because of how people __ what it means to be that trait - also happens because people tend to judge other people by the way they are on average, but define themselves in terms of how they behave when they're at their __

the finding that most people think they are above average on various personality trait and ability dimensions; interpret; best

Deterrence

the goal of which is to reduce the likelihood of future crimes committed by the criminal or by others - People guided by the motive of deterrence assume that punishments change the cost-benefit analyses of people thinking about committing crimes; they make more salient the costs of committing a crime, which should outweigh any potential benefits, thereby deterring people from committing criminal acts in the future.

Thought polarization hypothesis

the hypothesis that more extended thought about a particular issue tends to produce a more extreme, entrenched attitude But a caveat is necessary: increased thought about an attitude object can lead to more moderate attitudes for people who previously had little motivation to think about the issue or little preexisting knowledge about it.

precarious manhood hypothesis

the idea that a man's gender identity of strength and toughness is more easily lost in competition, and that such a loss can trigger aggressive behavior - According to this hypothesis, male gender identity is more vulnerable than women's gender identity, and as a result, men need to resort to risky and often aggressive actions to continually prove their manhood.

Social identity theory

the idea that a person's self-concept and self-esteem derive not only from person identity and accomplishments, but also from the status and accomplishments of the various groups to which the person belongs - Being a gang member, a professor, a film buff, or a surfer means that our identity and esteem are intimately tied up with the triumphs and shortcomings of our fellow gang members, academics, film buffs, and surfers. - Therein lies a powerful cause of ingroup favoritism: doing whatever we can to feel better about the ingroup leads us to feel better about ourselves. As expected, those who had been allowed to display ingroup favoritism had higher self-esteem than those who hadn't had a chance to boost their own group at the expense of another. - Other research has shown that people who take particularly strong pride in their group affiliations (such as feeling particularly proud of being an American) are more prone to ingroup favoritism when placed in a minimal group situation. - And people who are highly identified with a particular group react to criticism of the group as if it were criticism of the self.

Self-validation hypothesis

the idea that feeling confident about our thoughts serves as a form of validation for them, making it more likely that we'll be swayed in their direction - For example, we might have a number of arguments against posting the Ten Commandments in the city courthouse, but coming up with these counterarguments is so hard that we end up accepting the idea ("Maybe freedom of speech is more important than separation of church and state"). - We have greater confidence - and are thus more apt to be persuaded - when we perceive our thoughts to be easily brought to mind, accurate, and clear.

situationism

the idea that our social self changes across different contexts

self-affirmation theory

the idea that people can maintain an overall sense of self-worth following psychologically threatening information by affirming a valued aspect of themselves unrelated to the threat

social comparison theory

the idea that people compare themselves to other people to obtain an accurate assessment of their own opinions, abilities, and internal states

Negative state relief hypothesis

the idea that people engage in certain actions, such as agreeing to a request, to relieve their negative feelings and feel better about themselves

social intuitionist model of moral judgment

the idea that people first have fast, emotional reactions to morally relevant events, and then rely on reason to arrive at a judgment of right or wrong

Reactance theory

the idea that people reassert their prerogatives in response to the unpleasant state of arousal they experience when they believe their freedoms are threatened

Discounting principle

the idea that people should assign reduced weight to a particular cause of behavior if other plausible causes might have produced it

Augmentation principle

the idea that people will assign greater weight to a particular cause of behavior if other causes are present that normally would produce a different outcome

Framing effect

the influence of judgment resulting from the way information is presented, such as the order of presentation or the wording Asking survey respondents first about how many dates they've had recently frames the question about life in a way that highlights the importance of one's dating life to overall well-being Order effects are a type of "pure" framing effect: the frame of reference is changed by reordering the information, even though the content of the information remains exactly the same

Informational social influence

the influence of other people that results from taking their comments or actions as a source of information about what is correct, proper, or effective; when a person lacks knowledge and so looks to the group for answers AND BELIEVES IT - We're more likely to conform to others' views on subjects we have only vague ideas about than on familiar topics; we're also more likely to conform to what others are doing when in a foreign country than in a familiar environment - motive: understanding type of controlled conformity

Companionate love

the love we typically experience with friends and family members—people we generally trust, share activities and interests with, and like to be around

Social influence

the many ways people affect one another, including changes in attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and behavior resulting from the comments, actions, or even the mere presence of others - Effective interactions with others require knowing when to yield to their attempts to influence us and when/how to resist as well as exercising some skill in our own attempt to influence others

representative sampling

the people in the survey must be representative of the population as a whole, which is best achieved by selecting potential respondents randomly

illusory correlation

the perception of a relationship where none exists

Ideomotor action:

the phenomenon whereby merely thinking about a behavior makes performing it more likely - Example: the thought that we might type the wrong letter on the keyboard makes us more prone to typing that very letter - The principle of ideomotor action is based on the fact that the brain regions responsible for perception overlap with those responsible for action. - When this principle is applied to mimicry, it means that when we see others behave in a certain way, the idea of that behavior is brought to mind and makes us more likely to behave that way ourselves.

Voir dire

the portion of a trial in US courts in which prospective jurors are questions about potential biases and a jury is selected

open science

the practice of sharing one's data and materials freely so others can collaborate, use, and verify the results to increase the integrity and replicability of scientific research

psychological stress

the sense that your challenges and demands surpass your current capacities, resources, and energies - The obligations and expectations that threaten social identity and our connection to others are particularly likely to contribute to our stress levels.

Self-fulling prophecy

the tendency for people to act in ways that bring about the very thing they expect to happen

homophily

the tendency for people to associate disproportionately with people who are like them

own-race identification bias

the tendency for people to be more accurate at recognizing members of their own racial group than of other groups - This bias appears to result from the fact that people interact with members of their own race as individuals, without thinking about race, and so the individual features of the person in question are processed more deeply. When interacting with someone from another race, part of one's attention is drawn to the person's race, taking away from the processing of the person's individuating characteristics.

complementarity

the tendency for people to seek out others with characteristics that are different from, and complement, their own - The complementarity hypothesis really makes sense only for those traits for which one person's needs can be met by the other person's difference. People who are dependent can have their needs taken care of by a partner who is nurturing; someone who is a hard worker won't want to be with someone who is lazy.

immune neglect

the tendency for people to underestimate their capacity to be resilient in responding to difficult life events, which leads them to overestimate the extent to which life's problems will reduce their personal well-being

bad news bias

the tendency of the news media to focus on bad news rather than good news

Self-serving attributional bias

the tendency to attribute failure and other bad events to external circumstances, and to attribute success and other good events to oneself

self-handicapping

the tendency to engage in self-defeating behavior in order to have an excuse ready should one perform poorly or fail

self-monitoring

the tendency to monitor one's behavior to fit the current situation

false consensus effect

the tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors

rumination

the tendency to think about a stressful event repeatedly - Studies have shown that people who ruminate about a negative event experience prolonged stress compared with people who distract themselves from the event. - Through rumination, specific stresses become chronic ones.

cognitive perspective of prejudice

traces the origin of stereotyping to the same cognitive processes that enable people to categorize

How to avoid biases in collecting data: reproducibility: - reproducible research is fully __, which protects against mistakes - do this by using reliable and valid measurements as well as __ everything (consistent data collection protocol and detailed data management and analysis plan) - __ science movement allows you to publish data collection protocols, analyze code and data

transparent; documenting; open

shared attention and its effect on ELM

two people both attending to the same thing or event and sharing that experience - makes people inclined to process the stimulus more deeply, resulting in persuasion via the ELM's central route

When do interventions?

when experimenters have run enough experiments to be confident in the mechanism and they expect the effect to hold up in real world contexts can also use what they learned from interventions to do more psychological theory and improve the intervention

participant artifacts

when participants bias the results evaluation apprehension task demand WEIRD people

social influence

when someone's psychology actually changes by virtue of the fact that they are in a crowd; when being in a crowd actually changes who you are

subjective self-awareness

when your perception exists entirely of the world in front of you (excludes you)

Objective Self-Awareness (OSA)

when your perception of the world also includes you as the perceiver

Experiment: (Triplett, 1898) the effect of peoples' presence on speed of task

Background: 40 children turned a fishing reel as fast as they could. Each child did so on 6 trials. On 3 of the trials, the child was alone; on the other 3, another child was alongside doing the same thing. Results: The children tended to reel faster when in the presence of another child engaged in the same activity. Conclusion: The presence of others appeared to facilitate their performance. Continuations: The same effects were obtained when the others were not doing the same thing, but were merely present as an audience of passive observers. - The same effect was also observed in a vast number of animal species, indicating that the phenomenon is quite general and fundamental. - Animals have been shown to eat more when in the presence of other members of the same species than when alone.

Experiment: (Aronson, 1965) the "forbidden toy" paradigm

Background: A researcher showed nursery school children a set of five toys and asked them to say how much they liked each one. He then said he would have to leave the room for a bit, but would be back soon. In the meantime, each child was free to play with any of the toys except his or her second-favorite. Half the kids were put in the "mild threat" condition and were told not to play with the forbidden toy because the experimenter would "be annoyed" if they did. In the "severe threat" condition, if the kids played with the forbidden toy, the experimenter "would be very angry" and "would have to take all the toys and go home and never come back again". Logic: While the experimenter was gone, each child was covertly observed, and none played with the forbidden toy. The investigators predicted that not playing with the forbidden toy would produce dissonance, but only for the children in the mild threat condition. For all children, not playing with the toy would be inconsistent with the fact that it was highly desirable, but for those who receive the severe threat, the severity of the threat justified not playing with the toy. For children who received only a mild threat, there would be no such justification, producing dissonance, and they would likely resolve the inconsistency by devaluing the toy, convincing themselves it wasn't so great after all. Results: To find out whether these predictions were correct, the children had to reevaluate all five toys when the experimenter returned. As expected, those in the severe threat condition either didn't change their opinion of the forbidden toy or liked it even more than before. Many of those in the mild threat condition viewed the toy less favorably. Conclusion: The threat of severe punishment will keep children from doing something you don't want them to do; but they will still, later on, want to do it. The threat of mild punishment can bring about psychological change, such that they'll no longer be tempted to do what you don't want them to do. Theme: Induced compliance

Experiment: (Ben-Zeev, 2005) coacting v. mere presence for humans

Background: College students playing recreational pool were unobtrusively observed and deemed skilled or unskilled based on the performance. Then, the experimenters walked up to the pool tables and watched. Logic: Zajonc's theory predicts that the presence of an audience should make the skilled players perform better (for them, the task is easy) and the unskilled players perform worse (for them, the task is difficult). Results: The good players did even better than before, and the poor players did even worse. Theme: social facilitation, dominant response

Experiment: (Linder, 1967) the role of freedom of choice on cognitive dissonance - getting paid for essays

Background: College students were offered either $0.50 or $2.50 to write an essay in favor of a state law banning communists from speaking on college campuses. Because the law was at variance with the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech, nearly all students were opposed to it, and their essays thus conflicted with their true beliefs. For half the participants, their freedom to agree (or decline) to write such an essay was emphasized. For the other half, it was not. Results: There was no dissonance effect among participants for whom their freedom to agree or decline was not emphasized. Those who paid $2.50 later expressed attitudes more in favor of the ban than those paid $0.50 (presumably because writing the essay was associated with the good feelings that accompany the larger reward). If the free-choice group, the standard dissonance effect was obtained: those paid $0.50 changed their attitude more than those paid $2.50. Conclusion: If a person's behavior is justified by a powerful incentive of some sort, even behavior that dramatically conflicts with the person's beliefs won't produce dissonance. Those paid $2.50 for writing an essay that was inconsistent with their true beliefs felt no pressure to change their attitudes because their behavior was justified by the large cash payment. Those paid only $0.50 had no such justification and thus felt the full weight of their behavioral inconsistency.

Experiment: (Wilson, 1984) introspection on attitudes

Background: Experimenters asked students about the person they were dating. Participants in one group simply gave an overall evaluation of their relationship. Those in another group listed the reasons they felt the way they did and then gave an overall relationship evaluation. The researchers contacted the participants again nine months later and asked about the status of their relationship Results: The attitudes of participants in the first group, who evaluated the relationship without considering their reasons, were much more accurate predictors of their current relationship status than the attitudes of participants who had introspected about their reasons for liking a partner Conclusion: Thinking about why we like someone can mislead us in terms of our true, full attitude toward that person, making the attitude we report after generating reasons not a very good predictor of our subsequent behavior

Experiment: (Wells, 1980) the impact of bodily movements on attitude, nodding

Background: Experimenters had students ostensibly test a set of headphones by moving their heads up and down or side to side while listening to radio editorials. Results: When alter asked about the viewpoints advocated in the editorials, the students indicated that they agreed with more more if they'd listened to them while nodding their heads up and down than if they'd listened while shaking their heads from side to side.

Experiment: (Cooper, 1970) the role of negative consequences on dissonance

Background: Experimenters induced participants to tell someone (a confederate) that a boring experiment was very interesting by offering either a small or a large incentive for doing so. Half the time, the confederate appeared convinced that the boring task was doing to be interesting, and half the time the confederate clearly remained unconvinced. Logic: There were no negative consequences when the person appeared unconvinced: no one was deceived, So, if negative consequences are necessary for the arousal of dissonance, the standard dissonance effect should occur only when the person is convinced and the participant feels like a deceiver. Results: The boring task was rated more favorably only by participants who were offered little incentive to lie to another person and the person appeared to believe the lie.

Experiment: (Aronson, 1959) effort justification

Background: Female undergraduates signed up for an experiment thinking it involved the opportunity to join an ongoing discussion group about sex. When they arrived, however, the students were told that not everyone can speak freely and comfortably about such a topic, so potential participants had to pass a screening test to join the group. Those assigned to a control condition simply read aloud a list of innocuous words to the male experimenter. Those assigned to a "mild" initiation condition read aloud a list of mildly embarrassing words, such as prostitute, petting, and virgin. Those in a "severe" initiation group read aloud a list of obscene words and a passage from a novel describing sexual intercourse. All participants were then told that they had passed the screening test and could join the group. The group was meeting that very day, but participants were told that because everyone else in the discussion group had been given a reading assignment beforehand, it was best if they just listening in on the discussion. Then, through headphones in a nearby cubicle, they heard a very boring discussion of the sex life of invertebrates. Not only was the topic not what they had in mind when they signed up for a discussion group about sex, but the discussion group members "contradicted themselves and one another, started sentences that they never finished, and in general conducted one of the most worthless and uninteresting discussions imaginable". Results: The investigators predicted that the discussion would be boring and disappointing to all the participants, but that it would produce dissonance only for those who had undergone a severe initiation to join the group. The cognition "I suffered to get into this group" is inconsistent with the cognition "This group is worthless and boring." One way for the participants in the severe initiation condition to reduce dissonance would be to convince themselves that the group and the discussion aren't so boring after all. When the experimenters asked participants at the end of the study to rate the quality of the discussion they listened to, those in the severe initiation condition rated it more favorably than those in the other two conditions.

Experiment: (Landau, 2004) terror management theory and politics

Background: In the run-up to the 2004 US presidential election, survey respondents gave their opinions about either the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, or the incumbent Republican, George W. Bush. Some participants responded after their mortality was made salient, and other did so after writing about their experience with dental pain. Results: Respondents were more favorable to Bush and less favorable to Kerry after a mortality salience manipulation. Logic: Because Bush, as the incumbent president, was the head of the country and was seen by many as the leader of the fight against al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

Experiment: (Lepper, 1982) the overjustification effect on children's choice of activities in school

Background: Investigators showed two attractive drawing activities to elementary school children. In one condition, the researchers told the children they could first do one drawing activity and then the other. In a second condition, they were told they must do one activity in order to do the other. In both conditions, the experimenters counterbalanced which activity came first. For several days after this initial drawing session, the experimenters put out both drawing activities during the school's free-play period and covertly observed how long the children played with each activity Results: Those who earlier had simply drawn first with one and then the other played with both activities equally often. But those who earlier had used one in order to use the other tended to avoid the former. Their intrinsic interest in the first drawing activity had been undermined.

Experiment: (Festinger, 1959) induced (forced) compliance

Background: Participants in a control condition engaged in what can only be described as experimental drudgery for an hour (loading spools on a tray over and over, turner pegs on a pegboard one-quarter turn at a time). Immediately afterward, these participants were asked to rate how much they enjoyed the experiment. They gave quite low ratings. Participants in two other conditions also engaged in the boring task but were subsequently told that the experiment involved how performance on a task is influenced by expectations about it beforehand. These participants were then led to believe they were in control, "no expectation," condition, but that other subjects were told beforehand the study was either very interesting or boring. The experimenter then explained that the next participant was about to show up and needed to be told the study was interesting. Thus was usually done, the experimenter explained, but a confederate posing as a participant, but the confederate was absent, putting the experimenter in a bit of a jam. The experimenter then asked the participant to play the role of the confederate, offering the participant either $1 or $20 for doing so. Nearly every participant agreed to the request. In this "play within a plan," the true participants believed they were confederates. What was most important to the experiment, and what was readily apparent to the participants, was that they had just been induced to behave in a way that was inconsistent with their true attitude: they lied by saying that a mind-numbingly boring study was interesting. Results: The experimenters predicted that this act would produce dissonance for those participants paid only $1 for the assignment. Their words were inconsistent with their beliefs, and $1 wasn't enough to justify the lie. In contrast, those paid $20 would not have any need to rationalize because the reward was substantial and the lie was of little consequence. To reduce their dissonance, participants in the $1 condition would rationalize their behavior by changing their attitude about the task they had performed. If they convinced themselves the task was interesting after all, their lie wouldn't really be a lie. Consistent with these predictions, when participants in the $1 condition later evaluated their experience, they rated the monotonous tasks more favorable than those in the other conditions. Only the participants in the $1 condition rated the activities above the neutral point. Conclusion: Takeaway from induced compliance: if you want to persuade people to do something (take schoolwork seriously, protect the environment, etc) and you want them to internalize the broader message behind the behavior, you should use the smaller amount of incentive necessary to get them to do it. If the inducements are too big, people will justify their behavior accordingly and they won't have to rationalize their behavior by coming to believe in the broader purpose or philosophy behind it. But if the inducements are just barely sufficient, their need to rationalize will tend to produce attitude change in line with their behavior.

Experiment: (Arndt, 2003) terror management theory and self-esteem

Background: Participants in one condition read an essay stating the scientific consensus on reports of near-death experiences is that such sensations are expected, given the makeup of the brain, and they don't suggest in any way the existence of life after death. In another condition, they read an essay arguing that such reports point to the plausibility of some sort of life after death. Next, all participants received favorable feedback about themselves from unreliable sources, such as horoscopes, and then rated the source's validity. Results: Those who read the essay that cast doubt on life after death rated the feedback as more valid than those who read the essay that encouraged belief in an afterlife. In other words, if we can believe there is life after death, we needn't be so concerned with living on symbolically, so the need for self-esteem is reduced.

Experiment: (Li, 2011) physical state on emotional comprehension, global warming

Background: Participants were inside a laboratory where the thermostat was set to either 81 or 73. Results: Respondents in the warmer room expressed greater belief in global warming. The effect was strong enough that conservative in a warm room expressed the same concern about the problem as liberals in a cold room. In other words, the effect of the temperature of the room was comparable in magnitude to the effect of political attitudes.

Experiment: (Lord, 1984) our general attitude versus our specific attitude on people

Background: Researchers elicited from each student his stereotype of the "typical" gay man. Two months later, a different experimenter asked the participants if they'd be willing to show some visiting students around campus. One of the visitors, "John B.," was described in such a way that the participants would think he was gay. For half the participants, the rest of the description of John B. was crafted to fit their own individualized stereotype of a game man. For the other half, it wasn't. Results: The investigators found that the students' willingness to show John B. around campus - their behavior - was strongly predicted by their attitudes about gay men, but only if John B. matched their prototype of a gay individual. If John B. didn't fit their image of a gay man, their attitudes about gay people didn't predict their behavior. Conclusion: What most people usually think of as attitudes about different classes of people, places, things, and events are often expressions of attitudes about a prototypical example of a given category.

Experiment: (Knox, 1968) How people rationalize their decisions; cognitive dissonance theory

Background: Researchers interviewed bettors at a racetrack, some just before and some just after placing their bets. The investigators reasoned that the act of placing a bet and irrevocably choosing a particular horse would cause the bettors to reduce the dissonance associated with the chosen horse's negative features (doesn't do well on a wet track) and the positive features of the competing horses (the perfect distance for one horse, the best jockey on another). Dissonance reduction should be reflected in greater confidence on the part of those interviewed right after placing their bets, once rationalization has set in. Results: Bettors who were interviewed right before they placed their bets gave their horses, on average, a "fair" chance of winning; those interviewed after they had placed their bets gave their horses, on average, a "good" chance to win. Continuation: Similar findings have been reported in studies of elections: voters express greater confidence in their candidates when interviewed after they've bored than when interviewed right beforehand.

Study: (Fazio, 1986) responce latency

Background: Researchers measured how long it took participants to indicate their attitude toward Reagan five months before Reagan and Mondale squared off in the 1984 US presidential election asking the question "Do you approve of how the president is handling the economy?" Results: Those who responded quickly to the attitude question showed greater consistency between their attitude and how they ultimately voted compared with those who responded relatively slowly

Experiment: (Cottrell, 1968) testing for evaluation apprehension

Background: The investigators built "from scratch" a response hierarchy in their participants so they'd know exactly what the dominant and subordinate responses were. They gave the participants a list of ten nonsense words and had them pronounce two of the ten words once, two words twice, two words 5 times, two words 10 times, and two words 25 times. The participants were thus much more familiar with some of the words than with others. After this initial training phase of the experiment, the test phase began. Participants were told that these same words would be flashed on a screen very briefly (some so briefly they might not be visible) and that their task was to identify each word as it was shown. If they couldn't identify a word, they should guess. Unbeknownst to the participants, none of the target words was actually shown, and they were reduced to guessing on every trial (known as a pseudorecognition test). The participants performed this task either (1) alone, (2) in the presence of two other students who watched the proceedings attentively, or (3) in the presence of blindfolded "observers." The blindfolds in the latter, mere presence condition were supposedly to prepare the blindfolded individuals for an experiment in perception, but in reality their purpose was to make it clear to the participants that these individuals could not evaluate them. The researchers were interested in how often the participants gave a dominant response by guessing the most familiar word (those they had pronounced 25 times) and how this rate varies across the three conditions. Results: Participants performing in front of an evaluative audience made more dominant responses than those performing alone; those performing in front of a blindfolded audience did not. Conclusion: It's the concern about others as a source of evaluation, not their mere presence, that's responsible for social facilitation.

Experiment: (Ito, 1998) Are negative evaluations stronger than positive evaluations?

Background: They presented participants with positively valenced pictures and negatively valenced pictures. As they did so, they recorded the participants' brain activity on the scalp and studied brain regions known to be involved in evaluative responses to stimuli. Results: They discovered a clear negativity bias in evaluation: the negative stimuli generated greater brain activity than the positive or neutral stimuli. Conclusion: The bad is indeed stronger than the good.

Experiment: (Allport, 1920) social facilitation of students

Background: Undergraduate students were asked to refute philosophical arguments as best they could in a 5-minute period. Results: The students provided higher-quality refutations when working alone than when working in the presence of another student. Continuation: The presence of others has also been shown to inhibit performance on arithmetic problems, memory tasks, and maze learning.

Experiment: (Heine, 1997) Is dissonance universal?

Background: Using the free-choice, self-affirmation paradigm, researchers asked all the participants in a study to choose between two objects (CDs, in this case) to see if they would exhibit the dissonance effect by rationalizing their decision as the correct one. The researchers, however, first have some participants self-affirmation in the form of positive feedback on a personality test. The participants were Japanese and Canadian, and the researchers wanted to see if the dissonance effect was the same in people from these two different cultures. Results: The results for the Candians were similar to those in earlier studies: they showed a substantial dissonance affect in the control condition, finding previously unnoticed attractions in the chosen CD and previously unnoticed flaws in the unchosen one, but no dissonance effect if they had received positive feedback about their personalities. The Japanese participants, in contrast, were unaffected by the self-affirmation manipulation. They showed no dissonance effect in either condition, which led the researchers to conclude that dissonance might be a phenomenon unique to Westerners.

Experiment: (Markus, 1978) the mere presence of an individual on performance

Background: When participants arrived individually for the experiment, they were told to go into an adjoining room to wait for the other participants to arrive. While there, they had to put on the necessary attire for the experiment: take off their own shoes, put on a pair of lab socks over their own socks, put on a pair of oversized lab shoes, and put on an oversized lab coat. The participants did all this and waited, in vain, for the "other participants" to arrive. After 10 minutes, the experimenter reappeared and stated that the other participants were apparently not coming, and the experiment would have to be scratched. The participants were then instructed to change back into their own clothes. Unbeknownst to participants, all of this changing of clothes was surreptitiously observed and timed through a one-way mirror. Markus was interested in how quickly participants could perform the novel tasks of putting on and taking off the unfamiliar lab coat, socks, and shoes, as well as how quickly they could perform the well-learned tasks of taking off and putting on their own shoes. Participants did this in one of three conditions: alone, with another person watching attentively, or in the mere presence of a repairman working on a piece of apparatus with his back to the participant. Results: Even though the participants did not think they were "performing," they changed their own clothes faster and the novel clothes more slowly when in the mere presence of another person. Conclusion: When a true alone condition is included, an effect of mere presence of someone else can be observed. Evaluation apprehension can add to a person's arousal and thus intensify the effect of mere presence.

Experiment: (Zajonc, 1969) theory of mere presence

Background: Zajonc and his colleagues placed cockroaches in the start box on one of two mazes and then shone a light at the start box. Cockroaches instinctively flee from light and head toward a dark area; in this case, the cockroaches would try to reach the dark goal box. In the simple maze (a runway), getting to the darkened chamber was easy. The cockroach needed only to do what it does instinctively: run directly away from the light (its dominant response). In contrast, getting to the darkened chamber in the complex maze was more of a challenge: the cockroach had to do more than follow its instincts and flee from the light; it had to execute a turn. Two features of this setup were especially important. First, because cockroaches invariably run from light, doing so is clearly their dominant response. Second, Zajonc created two different conditions: in one, the dominant response led to the goal (the simple maze); in the other, it did not (the complex maze). Zajonc had the cockroaches run one of these two mazes either alone or with another cockroach. Results: Cockroaches running the simple maze together got to the goal box more quickly when together than when alone, but those running the complex maze together took longer to reach the chamber. Continuation: To show that the mere presence of another cockroach has these effects - as opposed to some other, more complex factor than the presence of others of the same species, such as competition - Zajonc added a condition in which the cockroach ran the maze not with another cockroach running alongside, but with other cockroaches merely present as a passive "audience." To create this condition, Zajonc built a set of Plexiglas boxes, or "grandstands," that flanked the two mazes and then filled them with observer cockroaches. As a result, the presence of the observing cockroaches facilitated performance on the simple maze but inhibited performance on the complex maze.

Experiment: (Hoshino-Brown, 2004) social priming choosing a CD for yourself or a friend.

Findings: Euro-Canadians, as well as Asian-Canadians who only weakly identified themselves as Asians, showed much larger dissonance effects when choosing for themselves than when choosing for a friend; but Asian-Canadians who strongly identified themselves as Asians showed much larger dissonance effects when choosing for a friend than when choosing for themselves

The three components of Zajonc's theory of mere presence:

First, the mere presence of others makes us more aroused Second, arousal tends to make us more rigid and narrowly focused, in the sense that we become even more inclined to do what we're already automatically inclined to do (dominant response) Third, the increase in dominant response tendencies leads to the facilitation of performance on simple tasks and the inhibition of performance on complex tasks

What type of person is often a leader?

Individuals who have the social skills to build strong, cooperative relations among group members also increase their chances of rising to positions of leadership - Even in our close primate relatives, the socially skilled chimpanzees and bonobos who build strong alliances, negotiate conflicts between subordinates, and ensure just allocations of resources are the ones who acquire and maintain elevated positions of rank in their primate hierarchies Someone who can provide rewards to the group is more likely to rise to a leadership role - Our tendency to grant authority to the more generous group members is another example of how leadership often comes to those whose traits and talents promise to benefit the group as a whole

Experiment: (Cacioppo, 1993) the impact of bodily movements on attitude, pushing and pulling

Logic: Because extending the arm is closely associated with negative stimuli (things we want to push away) and flexing the arm is associated with positive stimuli (things we want to pull toward us), being induced to make these bodily movements should have predictable effects on attitudes. Background: The experimenters showed colleges students a series of 24 Chinese ideographs while they were either pressing down on a table (arm extension) or lifting up on a table from underneath (arm flexion). Results: The students evaluated the ideographs presented while they flexed their arms more favorable than those presented while they extended their arms. Commentary: Effects like these challenge the idea that our attitudes, knowledge, and beliefs are stored as abstract propositions or representation in the brain. They support an alternative view that our attitudes and beliefs, and even the most abstract concepts, are partly "embodied" in the physical movements associated with those attitudes, beliefs, or concepts. Even our understanding of sentences like "He races down the corridor" is grounded in the physical act of running; when people read this sentence, motor regions associated with running become slightly activated. This explains why people who have had Botox injections have a harder time processing sentences containing emotion.

Experiment: (Kitayama, 2004) East Asians and dissonance effects

Logic: If East Asians exhibit dissonance effects in the induced-compliance paradigm because they question their actions when others are observing them, then they should also show dissonance effects in the free-choice paradigm if they are led to think about other people's possible reactions to their choice Background: Investigators had participants choose between two CDs under one of two circumstances. For some participants handing right in front of them at eye level was a poster used by the researchers to see whether the schematic faces in the poster might prime the concept of "social others," thereby prompting the Japanese participants to show a dissonance effect. Results: In the standard free-choice condition, the Japanese showed no evidence of dissonance reduction, but in the poster condition they did. American participants actually showed the same or even slightly less dissonance reduction in the poster condition than in the standard condition.

Experiment: (Cooper, 1971) the role of foreseeability on cognitive dissonance

Logic: Participants are induced to write an essay in favor of a position to which they are opposed (that the size of the freshman class at their university should be doubled). If any negative consequences of such an action (the essays will be shown to a university committee charged with deciding whether to implement the policy) are made known to the participants after the fact, there's no dissonance and hence no attitude change in the direction of the essay they wrote. But if the negative consequences were either foreseen (participants knew beforehand that their letters would be shown to the committee) or foreseeable (they knew ahead of time that their letters might be shown to such a committee), the standard dissonance effect was obtained.

Experiment: (Bem, 1967) self-perception theory

Summary: Ben showed that when observer-subjects (participants who only observe a situation versus actually experiencing it for themselves) read descriptions of dissonance experimenters and are asked what attitude a participant would have had, the observer-subjects replicate the attitudes of the actual participants. They assume, for example, that a person who was paid only $1 to say that working on a boring task was interesting would have more favorable attitudes toward the task than a person paid $20. Bem reasoned that if the observers come up with the same inferences about attitudes as the attitudes reported by the actual participants, there's no reason to assume the participants themselves arrived at their beliefs because they were motivated to reduce dissonance.

Study: (Moscovici, 1969) group polarization

Summary: French students expressed their opinions about President Charles de Gaulle (a French general during WWII) and about Americans, first individually and then again after having discussed them in groups. Their initially positive sentiments toward de Gaulle became even more positive, and their initially negative sentiments toward Americans became even more negative. We are more likely to hear "ugly American" from a group of foreigners than from a collection of individual foreigners.

Experiment: (Greene, 1976) the danger of overjustification for children

Summary: Researchers introduced a set of novel math games into the free-play portion of an elementary school curriculum. The children initially found the games interesting, as indicated by the amount of time they played with them at the outset of the experiment. Then, for several days afterward, the investigators instituted a "token-economy" program whereby children could earn points redeemable for prizes by playing with the math games. The more they played, the more points they earned. The token-economy program was effective in increasing how much the children played the games, but when the token-economy program was terminated, the children stopped playing.

Experiment: (Woolley, 2010) What groups processes make for smarter decision making? (avoiding groupthink)

Summary: Small groups of students engaged in a variety of well-tested decision-making tasks. The groups of participants reason through practical intelligence tasks, such as identifying what five things a person would need to survive alone in the desert. They tackled tasks requiring logical reasoning. They engaged in open-ended brainstorming. Each group's scores on these tasks were tallied to yield a score of the group's collective intelligence. What dynamics raised a group's collective intelligence? - One hypothesis might be that it just takes one really smart person to lift the intelligence of a group's decision making. This proved not to be the case; how well each individual did on decision-making tasks prior to the study had no influence on the collective intelligence of that person's group. - Groups that had more empathic individuals, as assessed in an emotion recognition task prior to the study, had higher collective intelligence scores. - Groups that practiced effective turn-taking as they deliberated, where each member had the chance to voice ideas freely, scored higher in their collective intelligence. - Groups led by one domineering person prone to monologues and decrees proved to be less intelligence. - As the proportion of women in the group rose, so too did the team's collective intelligence.

Consistent with the tenets of __, mortality salience manipulations have been shown to make people more hostile to those who criticize their country, more committed to their ingroups and more hostile to outgroups, more eager to punish those who challenge prevailing laws and established procedures, and more reluctant to use cultural artifacts for a mundane, utilitarian purpose

TMT

spreading of alternatives effect

Two equally attractive options. You have to choose one. Afterward, you like the one you picked more and the one you didn't pick less.

The "Persuasive Arguments" Account

When people are predisposed to favor one course of action in a given situation, they can think of more and better arguments for that action. Any one person in the group is unlikely to think of all the arguments in favor of one alternative or the other. So, when the issue is discussed by the group, each person is likely to be exposed to new arguments. This expanded pool of arguments, in turn, is likely to be skewed in favor of the action the people were predisposed to. The net result is that group discussion tends to expose the average person to even more arguments in favor of the position that the average person was already inclined to take.

When is introspection not harmful? When is it?

When the basis of an attitude is primarily cognitive, the search for reasons tends to yield the real reasons, and introspection isn't likely to mislead us about our true attitude or diminish the relationship between our attitude and behavior The contaminating effect of introspection is limited to those times when the true source of our attitude is hard to pin down, as when the basis of an attitude is largely affective (emotional)

Cognitive consistency theories

a collection of theories maintaining that the impact of behavior on attitudes reflects the powerful tendency we have to justify or rationalize our behavior and to minimize any inconsistencies between our attitudes and actions

At the core of our attitudes is a positive or negative response to an __ __.

attitude object

Dominance

behavior enacted with the goal of acquiring or demonstrating power

A dissonance story: 1956 - The "Seekers," a group of believers led by Mrs. Marion Keech, believes the world will end in a cataclysmic flood at midnight on Dec. 21st. - The observation that the world exists on 12/22 would be __ from their public prophecy that the world would end, which would cause __ __. - Thinking the world would end, they sold their possessions, divorced their spouses, and quit their jobs. The night of Dec. 21: - midnight arrives and no spaceship - 12:10 the Seekers re-set their watches - 12:30 the discovery of metal in one member's mouth - 3:00 the group sits in stunned silence - 3:30 tears and sobs - 4:45 Mrs. Keech receives a new message saying that by waiting, their group saved the world - 6:00 the group prepared leaflets and flyers to distribute

discrepant; cognitive dissonance

Which is true, dissonance theory or self-perception theory?

dissonance theory A consensus has emerged among social psychologists that dissonance reduction processes and self-perception processes both occur, and both of them influence people's attitudes and broader views of themselves Dissonance reduction processes are activated when behavior is inconsistent with preexisting attitudes that are clear-cut and of some importance; self-perception processes are invoked when behavior conflicts with attitudes that are relatively vague or of less importance

When are people inconsistent? - When we believe one thing and __ __. - When we make __ knowing that there are __ to have made a different choice. - When we __ to attain a __ goal. - When we __ an event to occur and it doesn't.

do another; choice; reasons; suffer; mediocre; expect

centrality of the attitude

researchers measure a variety of attitudes within a domain and calculate how strongly each one is linked to the others

Group polarization: As people seek out homogeneous social environments, they are increasingly exposed only to views that __ their own, which pushes their views further toward the __

resemble; extremes

Status

the outcome of an evaluation of attributes that produces differences in respect and prominence It's possible to have power without status (dictator, corrupt political) and to have status without power (religious leader in slow-moving line at the DMV)

Group polarization

the tendency for group decisions to be more extreme than those made by individuals' whatever way the group as a whole is leaning, group discussion tends to make it lean further in that direction

Overjustification effect

the tendency to devalue those activities we perform, even if they are pleasing, in order to get something else

Effort justification

the tendency to reduce dissonance by justifying the time, effort, or money devoted to something that turned out to be unpleasant or disappointing Example: Those who don't have pets often suspect that pet lovers exaggerate the pleasure they get from their animals to offset all the early morning walking, poop scooping, and furniture wrecking

System justification theory

the theory that people are motivated to see the existing sociopolitical system as desirable, fair, and legitimate Common observations that seem to support system justification theory are the fat that many women report that they deserve lower pay than men doing the same work and the fact that low-income groups in the United States don't necessarily support more egalitarian economic policies over the status quo

Self-perception theory

the theory that people come to know their own attitudes by looking at their behavior and the context in which it occurred and inferring what their attitudes must be Self-perception works just like social perception, people come to understand themselves and their attitudes in the same way that they come to understand others and their attitudes The account of dissonance effects if simple: people aren't troubled by any unpleasant state of arousal like dissonance, they merely engage in a rational inference process; They don't change their attitudes, they rather infer what their attitudes must be

Terror management theory (TMT)

the theory that people deal with the potentially crippling anxiety associated with the knowledge of the inevitability of death by striving for symbolic immortaity through preserving valued cultural worldviews and believing they have lived up to the culture's standards The most common approach denial of death - to maintain that it's only the physical body and this particular earthly existence that will come to an end; Beyond this common form of denial of death, people can derive some solace from believing that although they personally will cease to exist, many of the things they value will live on People try to achieve symbolic immortality by thinking of themselves as connected to a broader culture, worldview, and set of values

Does attitude influence behavior or does behavior influence attitude? Which is stronger?

they both influence each other; attitude influences behavior: Those with strong environment attitudes are more likely to vote Green than Republican; behavior influences attitude: Environmentally minded individuals who drive gas-guzzling cars tend to convince themselves that automobile exhaust contributes very little to air pollution. The influence of behavior on attitudes is much stronger than most people suspect

The cognitive dissonance that comes from making a decision: once the decision is made, every __ feature of the chosen alternative is discrepant and every __ feature of the unchosen alternative is discrepant. Ways to overcome: - __ cognitions - __ cognitions - change __ - spreading of alternatives

unwanted; wanted; change; add; importance

Social facilitation

when people tend to do better on simple tasks and worse on complex tasks when why are in the presence of others and their individual performance can be evaluated

Self-censorship

withholding information of opinions in group discussions