PSYC Exam 1, PSYC Exam 2, Psych Midterm 3

Aggression

*intentional* behavior aimed at causing physical harm or psychological pain to another person*

What did Westen's studies of the brain and dissonance show?

- the reasoning areas of the brain virtually shut down when a person is confronted with dissonant information -the emotion circuits of the brain light up happily when consonance is restored

What is the "nurture" explanation for why women value economic resources in men?

- typically women have a lower status than men in society and need to rely on men to achieve economic security -Gangestad's correlations across countries found that women with more economic security valued physical attractiveness more because they didn't need a man for financial support

Emotional heuristic

-"if i feel good, i must have a positive attitude" -problem: we can misattribute feelings created by one source to another

How does alcohol increase aggressive behavior?

-*impairs* parts of the brain involved in planning and controlling behavior -when drinking you respond to most obvious parts of the situation and miss the subtleties -"think-drink" effect: when people expect alcohol to have certain effects on them, it often does (people think this gives them an excuse to behave aggressively)

Asch line-judgment studies

-1 participant, several confederates giving obviously wrong answer -76% of participants conformed and gave an obviously incorrect answer on at least one trial -fear of being the lone dissenter (even with strangers)

Rusbult's 4 types of behavior that occur in troubled relationships (and their ramifications)

-2 Destructive: 1. actively harming the relationship 2. passively allowing it to deteriorate -2 Constructive: 1. actively trying to improve the relationship 2. passively remaining loyal to it -Destructive behavior harms relationship a lot more than constructive helps it -When one partner acts destructively and the other responds constructively, the relationship is likely to continue -But if both act destructively, relationship typically ends

Experimental Method

EXPLAIN -only way to determine causation -researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions and then ensures that such conditions are identical except for an independent variable (the one thought to have causal effect)

the only method that can determine causation is ____

Experimental

Consensus Information

Extent to which other people behave the same way toward same stimulus as the actor does

Face and skin immune exp

Face- and skin-ratings study suggests a proximate evolutionary mechanism—the appeal of attractive men—for increasing the ultimate functionality of genetic fitness through strengthened immune function.

How can we combat the depletion effect?

-believe willpower is an unlimited resource -prayer (convincing people they have resources/willpower to keep going) -form specific implementation intentions in advance of a situation in which you will need to exert self-control

How can counterfactual thinking benefit an individual? how can it hurt them?

-benefit: if it focuses the person's attention on ways they can cope better in the future -harmful: if it results in rumination (repetitively focusing on negative things in one's life), this can contribute to depression

What are some keys to talking to someone you are angry with

-calmly stating you're angry -describing non-judgmentally what you think they did -don't cause the listener to get defensive/counterattack

Fatal attraction

-can be a cause of breakups- what you initially like about the person, you end up hating

How can helping be rewarding to the helper?

-can increase the likelihood that someone will help us in return -can relieve the personal distress of the bystander -can gain social approval from others and increased feelings of self-worth

Minority Influence

-case where a minority of group members influences the behavior or beliefs of th majority -keys: consistency (people with minority views must express the same views over time- dif members of the minority must agree with one another), ISI (can introduce new/unexpected information to the group - cause them to examine issues more carefully)

What are 3 ways we reduce dissonance?

-changing our behavior to bring it in line with the dissonant cognition -attempting to justify behavior by changing one of the dissonant cognitions -attempting to justify behavior by adding new cognitions

How can school environments be made safer, more pleasant and more humane?

-changing the negative, exclusionary atmosphere -building empathy among children

How do our self-concepts change as we age?

-child's self-concept is concrete- references to clear-cut observable characteristics like age, sex and hobbies -as we mature we place less emphasis on physical characteristics, and more on psychological states

Aronson and Carlsmith forbidden toy experiment

-children forbidden to play with a toy they originally ranked highly -some had threat of severe punishment, some had mild -nobody played with the toy -children with severe punishment ranked toy just as highly after (had ample external justification for their restraint) -children with mild punishment ranked toy lower after (lacked ample external justification and needed an internal justification to reduce their dissonance) -example of how self-justification leads to self-persuasion

What factors could make schemas accessible?

-chronically accessible due to past experience (if your family has a history of alcoholism, traits describing an alcoholic are likely to be chronically accessible to you) -related to a current goal (if you're studying for an abnormal psych test, mental illness may be temporarily accessible) -our recent experiences (PRIMED by something people have been thinking/doing before encountering an event)

Are soldiers more likely to experience dissonance/demean civilian victims or military ones? Why

-civilian because they can't retaliate -military ones are a "you or me" situation- if soldier hadn't killed the enemy the enemy might have killed him- provides external justification

If an attitude is cognitively based, it is best to fight it with ____. If it is affectively based, it is best to use ____.

-cog: rational arguments -affectively: emotional appeals

Halo effect

-cognitive bias by which we tend to assume that an individual with one positive characteristic also possesses other (even unrelated) positive characteristics -for attractiveness we tend to assume that "what is beautiful is good" -physical attractiveness has largest effect on attributions related to social competence (extroverted, sociable, popular, sexual, happier, more assertive) -halo effect for beauty operates across cultures but varies based on cultural values

What mental process occurs when one aggresses against an innocent victim?

-cognitive dissonance occurs between the cognition "I hurt an innocent person" and "I am a decent, kind person" -Justification by convincing yourself that the person is bad and they deserved it -Sets stage for further aggression because easier to aggress again now

How do collectivist and individualist societies' attractiveness halos differ

-collectivist: more generous, empathic -individualistic: more dominant, assertive

Face composite experiment

-composite of 32 faces rated to be more attractive than the individuals -because it had lost some of the atypical/asymmetrical variation that was present in the individual faces -in a later study, the composite of 60 highly attractive faces was rated more attractive than the composite of 60 average attractiveness faces by British and Japanese participants (so we still do value facial attractiveness cross-culturally)

Task-oriented leaders

-concerned more with getting the job done than with workers' feelings and relationships -do well in high-control situations (leaders' position is clearly perceived as powerful, work needed to be done is structured) and low-control (leader not perceived as powerful, work not well-defined)

Relationship-oriented leaders

-concerned more with workers' feelings and relationships -moderate-control: wheels are turning smoothly, but important work still needs to be done

What are limits of the correlational method?

-correlation can't prove causation

In order to change attitudes via fear-arousing communication what must you do?

-create a moderate amount of fear -give a message teaching how to reduce fear, then people are more likely to analyze message carefully and use the central route

looking glass self

-created by Cooley -we see ourselves and the social world through the eyes of others and often adopt those views -especially true when 2 people want to get along with each other

In what societies are just-world beliefs more common and why?

-cultures with extremes of wealth and poverty -because this can help people justify injustice, makes economic and social inequities seem "fair"

Cialdini littering experiment

-descriptive norm condition (seeing somebody litter)- many more people littered in the dirty than the clean environment -injunctive norm condition (seeing somebody pic up trash)- in both situations people very unlikely to litter -concluded that injunctive norms mor powerful than descriptive in producing desirable behavior

Shultz energy usage boomerang study

-descriptive plus injunctive message more successful than just descriptive at promoting desirable behavior- use of smiley faces/sad faces prevented people who were below avg energy use from boomeranging but still got people above avg to reduce their use

culture of honor

-develops in herding communities due to their emphasis on aggressiveness -even small disputes put a man's reputation for toughness on the lines, so he must respond aggressively to restore his status -increased rates of DV -men distrustful of government, think they themselves are the ones who need to retaliate/punish people

Why is normative conformity so powerful?

-deviant group members are often ridiculed/punished/rejected by other group members -i.e. in highly cohesive/group-oriented cultures such as Japan, bullying a student who is different can have tragic results- (hikikomori- teenagers who have withdrawn from all social interaction)

How do valued leadership qualities vary across cultures?

-dif cultures value dif traits in leaders (i.e. autonomous leadership more valued in European than Latin American countries) -universal agreement about the value of two leadership qualities: charisma and being team-oriented

If people have successfully reduced dissonance in the past, why are they unaware that they will do so in the future? (Why is there impact bias?)

-dissonance reduction is largely unconscious- it works better that way

Is the stereotype that beautiful people are socially gifted accurate?

-does have some research support -attractive people do develop good social interaction skills/have more satisfying social interactions than less attractive people -this is bc they receive a great deal of attention from a young age, helping them develop good social skills (self-fulfilling prophecy) -this self-fulfilling prophecy applies for both men and women

what are limits of the Observational Method?

-doesn't tell us much about the how, why or effects

learned helplessness

-dog schock exp -when negative events are attributed to internal, stable, global causes

Ekman's Facial Feedback Theory

-each basic emotion is associated with a facial expression -sensory feedback from the expression contributes to emotional feeling (holding pencil in mouth)

What are proximate causes of altruism?

-easing one's mind (Lincoln and piglets) -Feeling empathy (Batson's focus)

Jones and Harris Castro essay experiment

-even when participants were told that the author was forced to write either for or against castro, they still believed the author truly believed what he or she wrote -shows the FAE is persistent

Festinger/Carlsmith boring task experiment on counter attitudinal advocacy

-everyone had to do a boring task -half were paid $20 and half $1 to convince someone that it was interesting -those who got $20 had sufficient external justification and thus rated the tasks as boring -those who got $1 didn't have much external justification and thus convinced themselves that what they said was true- rated the tasks as much more interesting

Executioner example of how we offload personal responsibility when faced with prospect of acting unpleasantly

-executioners demonstrate more "moral disengagement" from their work than normal guards -justify with: "I'm just implementing orders," and by dehumanizing the prisoners- they are a threat to human society and need to be killed

Deutsch and Krauss trucking game

-exhibited how threats are not an effective means of reducing conflict -verbal communication only helps if it fosters trust

Deception Experiment

-experiment in which researchers mislead participants about the true purpose of a study/the events that transpire -scientists only use this if it is the only way in which they can test a hypothesis about social behavior

Debriefing

-explaining to participants at the end the true purpose of the study/what actually transpired

elaboration likelihood model

-explains 2 ways in which persuasive communications can cause attitude change: 1. centrally- people are motivated and have the ability to elaborate on a persuasive communication, listening carefully to and thinking about the arguments presented 2. peripherally- people don't pay attention to arguments and instead are swayed by surface characteristics

Informed consent

-explains nature of experiment to participants before it begins and asks for their permission to participate

How did a television character on the screen affect people's performance?

-favorite character: was as if a real person was in the room- social facilitation- people did better on a simple task and worse on a complex task -wasn't favorite character: performance unaffected -same results for real vs animated characters

companionate love

-feelings of intimacy and affection we have for someone that are not accompanied by passion/physiological arousal

What are the typical sexual scripts in America

-female's role is to resist the male's sexual advances and the male's role is to be persistent

Briñol and Petty headphones study

-focuses on body posture's effects on attitude change -head nodding while listening to a strong argument increased agreement with it -head nodding while listening to a weak argument decreased agreement with it because it gave people more confidence that the arguments they heard were in fact weak

Belief in a Just World

-form of defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people -big reason for victim blaming in rape and abuse cases- in this way the perceiver doesn't have to acknowledge that there is a randomness to becoming a victim

Primacy Effect

-from the Asch Keith vs. Kevin Study -what we learn first about another person colors how we see the info that we learn next -(we also have schemas about which traits tend to appear together in clusters)

How and why does social loafing vary across gender and culture?

-gender: tendency to loaf stronger in men, perhaps because women have higher relational interdependence (tendency to focus on/care about personal relationships with others) -Western cultures more likely to loaf than Asian ones, because Asians are more likely to have an interdependent view of the self

relational aggression

-girls/women more likely to commit this than men -harming another person though manipulation of relationships -average difference in relational aggression starts early (crayon experiment)

boomerang effect

-giving just a descriptive norm to people (i.e. the average student here has 3 drinks a night) will lead people above the avg to decrease their intake but will also lead people below it to increase theirs (they boomerang) to be more like everyone else

How do moods affect which method of persuasion gets to us?

-good mood: we relax and tend to be content with just heuristic cues like the credibility of the source -bad mood: puts us on alert, skepticism increases and we pay more attention to the message quality

Some researchers suggest that ____ evolved in order to regulate reciprocity. Why?

-gratitude -if someone helps us, the gratitude we feel motivates us to return the favor in the future

Under what preconditions is groupthink most likely to occur?

-group highly cohesive -isolated/insulated from contrary opinions -ruled by a directive leader who makes his/her wishes known -high stress -poor decision-making procedures -lack of standard methods (to consider alternatives)

Institutional Review Board

-group made up of at least one scientist, one nonscientist and one member not affiliated with the institution that reviews all psychological research at that institution and decides whether it meets ethical guidelines -all research must be approved by IRB before it is conducted

People in happy relationships tend to have what pattern of attributions for their partner? Unhappy relationships?

-happy: internal for positive behavior, external for negative -unhappy: external for positive behavior, internal for negative

How do you determine how to advertise for products for which attitudes are cognitively based?

-have to ask how personally relevant the issue is -if it is personally relevant: use logical fact-based arguments -if little personal relevance: use peripheral route (but this won't last long) -the trick is to MAKE the product personally relevant

Herding v. farming cultures and aggression

-herding cultures are more aggressive than farming ones -farming requires cooperation while herding is all about defending yourself -exemplifies "nurture" vs nature concept of aggression

Social cognition

-how people think about themselves and the social world -how people select, interpret, remember and use information to make judgments and decisions (accuracy motive behind construals)

What is the fundamental reason we conform to gain social acceptance? (NSI)

-human beings have a fundamental need for social companionship

Why do we behave aggressively when in pain?

-if an animal is in pain and cannot flee the scene it will almost invariably attack (same goes for humans)

What factors affect whether you notice an emergency event?

-if you're in a hurry you may not even notice -whether you're thinking about helping someone in need doesn't make a difference

self-handicapping

-impression management strategy -creating obstacles and excuses for yourself so fi you do poorly on a task you can avoid blaming yourself -2 types: behavioral: create obstacles to reduce likelihood of success so if you fail you can blame it on the obstacles rather than lack of ability (obstacles include drugs, alcohol, reduced effort and failure to prepare for an important event) (men more likely to engage in this type than women) -reported: devising read-made excuses in case you fail (blaming your bad test grade on not feeling well even though you pulled an all-nighter before it)

ingratiation

-impression management strategy -process whereby people fatter, praise and generally try to make themselves likable to another person, often of higher status -can backfire if the recipient senses you're insincere

How does dissonance vary across cultures?

-in collectivist societies, there is more behavior aimed at maintaining group harmony. This means less dissonance/justification for one's own personal misbehavior- but MORE dissonance when one's behavior shames or disappoints others -the reverse for individualist cultures such as USA

Dependent variable

-in experimental method, the outcome of interest/what the researcher measures

Independent variable

-in experimental method, the variable the researcher changes/varies to see if it has an effect on some other variable

What determines whether we help members of our in-groups or out-groups?

-in-group: we are more likely to feel empathy toward members of our in-group and this causes us to help them -out-group: we help them when there is something in it for us -reflects Batson's empathy-altruism theory

What are 3 detrimental effects of violent media?

-increase frequency of aggressive behavior -makes us numb to difficult/violent events -can make it easy for us to go from dehumanizing the virtual "enemy" to dehumanizing real people

weapons effect

-increase in aggression that can occur because of the mere presence of a gun or other weapon

How/why does aggressing affect your tendency to do so again in the future?

-increases tendency -aggressing the first time can reduce your inhibitions against doing it again- the aggression is legitimized

Internal vs External Attribution

-internal: cause of the behavior was something about the person such as attitude, character or personality -external: something in the situation caused the behavior, the assumption is that most people would respond the same way in that situation

What are criticisms of Milgram's study

-involved deception -not fully informed consent -psychological distress -not made clear that they had the right to withdraw at any time -experienced inflicted insight (they learned unpleasant things about themselves that they didn't agree to beforehand once the study was over)

What are symptoms of Groupthink

-invulnerability illusion -moral certainty -self-censorship -stereotyping outgroup -direct pressure on dissenters -unanimity illusion -mindguards (of leader's mind)

Similarity

-it is overwhelmingly similarity, not complementarity, that draws people together -opinions/personality -interests/experiences -appearance -genetics

all cultures dehumanize enemies (e.g. by calling them names ) in order to___

-justify cruelty/reduce dissonance -they deserve what they're getting because they aren't fully human like us (vermin, animals etc)-

What are the evolutionary motives for prosocial behavior?

-kin selection -reciprocity norm -group selection

What can groups and their leaders do to reduce groupthink?

-leader should remain impartial -foster open climate of discussion -seek outside opinions -assign everyone a "critical evaluator" role -create subgroups -seek anonymous opinions

Attribution trends in athletes

-less experienced athletes more likely to make self-serving attributions than experienced ones -solo sport athletes make more self serving attributions

What are signs of deceptive profiles?

-less use of "I" or "me" (distancing themselves psychologically) -use more negotiations/negative turns of phrase -include fewer words total

How can you get groups to focus on unshared information?

-longer discussions -not sharing initial individual preferences -assign different members to specific areas of expertise

Deindividuation

-loosening of normal constraints on behavior when people can't be identified (such as when they are in a crowd) (mob mentality) -recognizing reduced likelihood that any individual will be signed out and blamed leaves people feeling *less accountable* for their actions -deindividuation increases the extent to which people obey group norms (even if they conflict with societal ones) -leads to increase in impulsive and deviant acts

What is automatic thinking responsible for?

-lower-order mental processing (perception, memory) -learning -attention/selection -interpretation -evaluation -goal-setting

Reasons for self-serving attributions

-maintain self esteem -look good for others -what information is available to the individual

What is one reason it's hard for women to achieve leadership roles?

-many believe that good leaders have agentic traits (i.e. assertive, controlling, dominant, independent, self-confident) which are typically associated with men -women are typically expected to be more communal (warm, affectionate, concerned with welfare of others, helpful, kind)

4 causes of attraction

-mere exposure -propinquity -similarity -reciprocal liking

What did the NPR story on power tell us?

-mirror neuron system in the brain controls empathy -when people are powerless- MS boosted- empathy high -when people are powerful- MS lowered- empathy diminished -BUT powerful people can coach themselves to be compassionate

How does similarity relate to the seriousness of the relationship?

-more serious relationship- similarity is more important to us -more casual relationship- favor dissimilar partners

Describe size of typical groups

-most have 3-6 members -if group becomes too large you can't interact with all the members or meet and have interdependent goals with everyone

Milgram shock experiment

-most obeyed experimenter till the end -normative pressures (authority figure so insistent that we obey- makes it hard to say no) -when 1+ accomplice bucked the majority, only 10% of participants gave the max shock -ISI- ambiguous, crisis situation, and experimenter was an expert (when confederate was not "expert," much lower obedience rate) -when 2 experimenters disagreed on whether to continue all participants stopped shocking (because authority definition of the situation became unclear)

automatic thinking

-non-conscious, unintentional, involuntary, effortless

Symmetry and evolutionary reasons

-one aspect of beauty that is preferred in both men and women is symmetry -evolutionary psychologists suggest that we're attracted to symmetrical features because they serve as markers of good health/reproductive fitness (good genes)

Thought suppression

-one form of self-control that doesn't work very well -when we try to push thoughts out of our minds -better to go ahead and think about the thoughts while exerting willpower when it comes to acting on them

Counterfactual Thinking

-one instance in which we switch from automatic to controlled thinking -when we experience a negative event that was a "close call" -we will mentally change some aspect of the past to imagine what might have been -the easier it is to mentally undo an outcome the stronger our emotional reaction to it -this is why silver medalists are less happy than bronze medalists- silver winners can more easily imagine having won the event and therefore engage in more counterfactual reasoning

Field experiment

-one of the best ways to increase external validity -researchers study behavior outside the lab, in a natural setting -participants unaware that the events they experience are in fact an experiment

Where do attitudes come from?

-our genes (attitudes are related to our temperament and personality, which are directly related to our genes) -social experiences

Injunctive norms

-our perceptions about what behaviors are approved or disapproved of by others -motivate behavior by promising rewards/punishments for normative behavior or lack thereof

Descriptive norms

-our perceptions of the way people actually behave in a given situation, regardless of whether it is approved or disapproved by others -motivate behavior by informing people about what is effective/adaptive behavior

What is a potential pitfall of mandatory volunteerism?

-overjustification effect: people see their behavior as caused by compelling extrinsic reasons making them underestimate the extent to which their behavior was caused by intrinsic reasons -makes them less likely to volunteer freely in the future

Archival analysis

-part of the Observational Method: examining the accumulated documents (archives) of a culture

Pluralistic Ignorance

-people think that everyone else is interpreting a situation a certain way, when in fact they are not -can make it difficult to know if a situation is an emergency when there are many witnesses -Latané and Darley Smoke experiment

How is mindset type crucial to success?

-people with fixed mindset are more likely to give up after setbacks, less likely to work on and hone their skills -people with growth mindset view setbacks as opportunities to improve through hard work

Which groups are more likely to make self-serving attributions?

-people with mental illness -younger people -males

Why does product placement work so well?

-people's defenses are down- they do not always realize that someone is trying to influence their attitudes and behavior -we are focused on the character/show rather than the fact that someone is trying to change our attitudes, and so we don't generate counter-arguments

Theory of planned behavior

-people's intentions are the best predictors of their deliberate behaviors, which are determined by: -attitude toward specific behaviors -subjective norms -perceived behavioral control

What kind of things can affectively based attitudes stem from?

-people's values, a sensory reaction, an aesthetic reaction, or conditioning

Why does group polarization occur?

-persuasive arguments: each member presents arguments that other members have not considered (informational) -social comparison: members first evaluate how everyone else feels, then take a similar but slightly more extreme position in order to fit in/be liked (normative)

Diffusion of responsibility, and when is it particularly present?

-phenomenon wherein each bystander's sense of responsibility to help decreases as the number of witnesses increases -particularly present if people can't tell whether someone else has already intervened

To reduce dissonance, you remember selectively the ___ arguments agreeing with your own position and the ____ arguments agreeing with the opposition position

-plausible: your own -implausible: opposing

In the Prisoner's Dilemma Game, how could you increase cooperation (choosing Option X)? (And in regular problem-solving)

-playing with a friend or partner with whom they expect to interact in the future -changing the norms about what kind of behavior is expected (i.e. changing name of game from "Wall Street Game" to the "Community Game") -showing symbols of Chinese culture before the game (symbols of American culture made people more competitive) -tit-for-tat strategy -allow individuals rather than opposing sides to solve conflict

Why do groupthink decisions suffer?

-poor information research -incomplete survey of alternatives -inadequate consideration of risks of favored decision -inadequate attention to contingency plans

What are 2 other emotions researchers believe exist cross-culturally

-pride -shame (but individuals tend to hide this emotion in individualistic cultures where shame is a negative, stigmatized emotion)

social tuning

-process whereby people adopt another person's attitudes -can happen even when we meet someone for the first time, if we want to get along with that person

Punishment can indeed act as a deterrent for violent adult behavior if it is ____. Are these conditions present in the real world?

-prompt (following quickly after the aggression occurred) -certain (unavoidable) -in US court system these conditions are almost never met - thus severe punishment is not likely to deter violent crime

How were informative and normative factors at play in the Holocaust?

-propaganda introduced new "facts" about the Jews and new solutions to what the Nazis defined as the "Jewish question" - convinced Germans that Jews were a threat. Germans were also already in a crisis situation dealing with runaway inflation and economic collapse (informational conformity) -Nazi ideology permeated daily life and anyone may turn you in for going against it (normative)

Does religion affect rates of prosocial behavior?

-qualified yes- doesn't appear to be related to religion per se -religion binds people together and creates strong social bonds- thus religious people are more likely to help than others if the person in need of help shares their beliefs -likely just another example of in-group favoritism (feeling more empathy toward in-group members)

Mere exposure effect

-reason propinquity effect works -the more exposure we have to a stimulus, the more apt we are to like it -(except if the person has obvious negative qualities- then our dislike will increase)

What kind of deprivation creates anger and aggression?

-relative- NOT absolute- because people can see a discrepancy between what they have and what they expect to have

What situational/environmental factors can contribute to aggression?

-religiously sanctioned violence -in sports- it pays to be aggressive -seeing parents or other admired adults acting aggressively

Replications

-repeating a study, often with different subject populations or in different settings -ultimate test of an experiment's external validity

Snyder Self-fulfilling prophecy phone chat exp. Same for both genders?

-reserachers gave college men a photo and packet of info about a woman, then they had a phone convo -at random men were given photo of either an attractive or unattractive woman -because the man thought he was talking to an attractive woman he spoke to her in a way that brought out her best qualities -the men's beliefs about her appearance actually changed the reality of how the woman behaved -similar results when gender roles reversed -shows attraction-based self-fulfilling prophecy

Performance-contingent rewards

-rewards that are based on how well we perform a task -less likely to decrease intrinsic interest in a task- and may even increase interest because the earned reward conveys the message that you are good at the task -however can backfire by putting pressure on people an making them feel evaluated- makes it harder for them to do well and lowers intrinsic interest in the activity

How do bad moods relate to helping?

-sadness can lead to increase in helping because when people are sad, motivated to engage in activities that make them feel better -guilty people also more likely to help (acting on idea that good deeds cancel out bad ones)

Gestalt Psychology

-says we should study the subjective way an object appears in people's minds (the whole) rather than how the objective, physical attributes of the object combine (focus on the whole rather than the parts)

How does victim dehumanization cause an endless chain of violence?

-self justification (in the form of dehumanizing/blaming the victim), causes more violence and more dehumanization

what are the 4 functions of the self

-self-knowledge -self-control -impression management -self-esteem

Latané and Darley seizure exp

-showed bystander effect -when people believed they were only one listening to the student having the seizure, most of them (85%) helped within a minute, and by 2.5 min 100% helped -as number of others they believed were listening increased, the percentage who helped decreased

Masuda cartoon facial expressions study

-showed difference between Western analytic thinking style and East Asian Holistic one. -For American viewers the facial expressions of other members had little effect on ratings of central figure -For Japanese viewers the expressions of other members had a significant effect on ratings of central figure

Carol wheelchair exp

-showed empathy's effects on helping: empathy-altruism hypothesis -in high empathy condition, large amount of people agreed to help whether they were going to see her in class or not (people had Carol's interests in mind and not their own) -in low empathy condition, many more people helped when they thought they'd see her in class than when they didn't (when empathy is low, people social exchange concerns come into play)

Oishi trivia study

-showed that an increase in helping can arise very quickly, once a sense of *community* is formed -people in the stable community condition (had remained together for all 4 tasks) were more likely to help their struggling companion than in the transient group condition (switched to a new group after each task)

Bandura's Bobo Doll experiment

-showed that children are especially susceptible to observational learning- offers support for the social learning of aggressive behavior -Child watched an adult knock around Bobo doll and yell aggressive things at it -Kids then allowed to play with the doll -Kids imitated the aggressive adults and even came up with new ways of beating it up -Children who did not see the aggressive adult in action almost never unleashed any aggression against the doll

Self-fulfilling prophecy

-shows how sometimes our expectations about the social world interfere with us perceiving it accurately -you expect that you/another person will behave a certain way, so you act in ways to make your prediction come true -e.g. teachers giving the "bloomer" students more attention so that at the end of the year they did better

How can we increase the likelihood that bystanders will intervene in an emergency?

-simply being aware of barriers to helping can increase people's chances of overcoming them -listening to lecture on bystander interventions -reminding ourselves of times we overcame inhibitions

What makes an effective apology?

-sincerely given -perpetrator takes full responsibility

When will people conform to ISI? Give examples of each

-situation is ambiguous (e.g. military atrocities where most soldiers are young and inexperienced) -situation is a crisis (we need to act immediately, don't have time to stop and think about exactly what to do- again e.g. soldiers) -other people are experts: problem is that experts aren't always reliable sources of info (e.g. police in the War of the Worlds situation thought an alien invasion was really happening)

Door-in-the-face technique

-social influence strategy in which first asking people for a large request that they will probably refuse makes them more likely to agree later to a second, smaller request -bigger request makes the second "ask" seem less daunting by comparison -feelings of reciprocity

African American children self esteem experiment

-social psychologists bolstered African American children's self esteem by doing structured, self-affirming writing assignments -the self-affirmation raised their general self-esteem, reducing academic anxiety, resulting in better performance

Counterattitudinal advocacy

-stating an opinion or attitude that runs counter to one's private belief or attitude -"saying becomes believing" -when we do this with little external justification (without being motivated by something outside of ourselves), what we believe begins to conform more and more to the lie we told- method of internal justification

Yale Attitude Change Approach

-study of the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages, focusing on the source of the communication (how expert/attractive speaker is), the nature of the communication (quality of arguments/whether speaker presents both sides of the issue) and the nature of the audience (whether audience is hostile or friendly)

How do ads transmit cultural stereotypes? (give an example)

-subtly connect products with desired images, feelings and desires -several studies have found that women in ads have been more likely than men to be portrayed in dependent roles -causal connection between the way women are depicted in the media and women's feelings about their own bodies -men are beginning to come under the same pressure from media as women to achieve the ideal body

How can communication be used to reduced aggression?

-teach people techniques to: 1. communicate anger/criticism in constructive ways 2. negotiate/compromise 3. apologize when they need to

What is aggression like in close-knit cultures that depend on cooperation for survival?

Anger/aggression are considered dangerous and will be punished

How do the factors of attraction change when it comes to technology?

-tech decreases number of degrees of separation, changes conception of propinquity/attraction -similarity factor has value in tech-driven relationships (we tend to contact people on our same attractiveness level) -familiarity- people's ratings of a person may decrease after meeting them because they learn that some stuff on the profile was wrong

Describe diversity in groups

-tend to be alike in age, sex and beliefs because many groups attract people who are already similar before they join -groups tend to operate in ways that encourage similarity in members

Group polarization

-tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclinations of their members

what are 2 advantages of having high self esteem?

-terror management (less troubled about thoughts of your own mortality) -motivates us to persevere when the going gets rough (people with high self esteem try harder, persevere more in the face of failure and set higher goals than people with lower self esteem)

"don't be a cheater" vs "don't cheat" experiment

-the "don't be a cheater" group was far less likely to cheat because that would have created dissonance with their self-concept of being good and honest

Psychological realism (how can this be heightened?)

-the extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an experiment are similar to those in everyday life -this can be heightened with a cover story: a disguised version of the study's true purpose

How does number of witnesses play a role when it is ambiguous whether the event is an emergency?

-the greater the number of witnesses the less likely they are to know that it is an emergency -ISI- people look to each other for information, and see an apparent lack of concern on the part of everyone else- pluralistic ignorance

The closer people are to committing acts of cruelty (e.g. prison guard observing someone being tortured), ___

-the greater your need to reduce dissonance between "I am a good person" and "I am causing another human being to suffer" -easiest route is to blame the victim- he is guilty, it's his fault

What affects how susceptible you are to ISI?

-the more important it is to be accurate/"get things right" -for example when one's personal safety is involved/at risk, the need for information is acute and the behavior of others is very informative

What factors surrounding a decision affect the amount of dissonance we feel?

-the more important the decision, the greater the dissonance -the higher the irrevocability, the greater the dissonance

What are factors in a negotiation that affect trust?

-the more people have at stake in a negotiation, the more biased their opinion of the opponent (they distrust proposals by opponent, and overlook common interests) (reason for neutral mediators) -style of communication: more easy to establish trust in face-to-face negotiations over electronic ones

What is a potential risk of using ISI?

-the people you are relying on for information could be wrong -this is the reason police require multiple eyewitnesses and use individual interviews/lineups -for example: War of the Worlds radio show- people were scared, turned to others for information and became panicked- contagion

Perceptual salience

-the seeming importance of information that is the focus of people's attention -contributor to FAE, because people, not the situation, have perceptual salience for us (our eyes and ears notice the person)

What is the key assumption of the attachment theory?

-the style we learn in infancy becomes our working model/schema -securely attached individuals tend to have the most enduring romantic relationships of the 3 types -however important to note that you are not doomed- you can change from on attachment style to another based on what you learn in new relationships -some research suggests that the attachment style people display at any given time is the one called into play by their partner's behavior and type of relationship they've created as a couple

Under what conditions can people infer attitudes from their behavior?

-their initial attitude has to be weak or ambiguous -there can be no other plausible explanations available

Though affectively based attitudes come from many sources, why can we group them into one family?

-they don't result from a rational examination of issues -they aren't governed by logic -they are often linked to people's values, so efforts to change them challenge those values

Social facilitation

-when people are in the presence of others and their individual performance can be evaluated, the tendency to perform better on simple/well-learned tasks and worse on complex ones -when others are around we experience arousal- this makes it easier to perform a dominant response but harder to do something new/complex

What factors affect whether or not people want to stay friends

-women more likely to want to stay friends -higher investment means higher chance of wanting to stay friends after

Do scientists believe aggression is optional?

-yes- we are all born with capacity for it but whether we express it depends on circumstances/culture

Prisoner's Dilemma Game

-you have to choose Option X or Option Y without knowing what your friend will choose -lack of trust so that no one wins in the end

Kelley's Covariation Model

-you will examine multiple behaviors from different times and situations in order to decide whether to make an internal or external attribution (consensus, distinctiveness, consistency) -Internal: consensus/distinctiveness low, consistency high -External: All factors high -When consistency is low we can't make a clear internal or external attribution and resort to a special kind of external or situational attribution

Why might exposure to violence increase aggression in vulnerable media consumers?

1. If they can do it, so can I (seeing characters being violent weakens previously learned inhibitions against violence) 2. Oh, so that's how you do it (ideas for imitation) 3. Those feelings I am having must be real anger rather than merely my reaction to a stressful day (aggressive response to angry feelings may be more likely thru priming) 4. Ho-hum, another brutal beating (numbness- may make it easier to live with violence and act aggressively) 5. I better get him before he gets me! (make people think world is a dangerous place- that they need to be hostile to a stranger who approaches them on street)

investment model

Caryl Rusbult's theory that people's commitment to a relationship depends not only on their satisfaction with it but also on how much they have invested in it that would be lost by ending it -investments can be tangible: financial resources, property -or intangible: emotional welfare of children, time/emotional energy spent on building the relationship -the higher the investment, lower the likelihood of leaving

Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis

Batson: idea when we feel empathy for a person, we will attempt to help that person for purely altruistic reasons, regardless of what we have to gain

attitudes changed via which route tend to last longer?

Central

Changing social conditions in a given culture can do what to aggression? give an example

Change aggressive behavior- Iroquois became aggressive when their fur trade was threatened

What are the three components of attitudes?

Cognitive, affective, behavioral

What are 4 steps to problem solving from the UVA Mediation website?

1. clarify the issues 2. understand the other's position 3. generate solutions 4. develop a consensus that will work for both sides

How may global warming have an effect on violence/aggression?

1. direct physiological effects of heat on aggression 2. indirect effects on economic/social factors that put young people at risk for becoming violent (poverty, poor prenatal/childhood nutrition, broken families etc) 3. Rapid effects on populations whose livelihoods may be at risk due to droughts, flooding, famine and war

What is the biggest internet threat teens face?

Cyberbullying

When some black students were asked to think of 2 friends in the engineering program and others 8 friends, which group felt a greater sense of academic confidence?

-2, because they felt a greater sense of belonging in the program and thus greater academic confidence -because of availability heuristic -judgment based on how easily student could bring information (required number of friends) to mind

hypocrisy induction

-Aronson -arousal of dissonance by having people make statements that run counter to their behaviors, and then reminding them of the inconsistency between what they advocated and their behavior -meant to lead individuals to more responsible behavior

how does culture affect NSI

-Asch line-judgment studies in several countries showed higher rates of conformity for participants from collectivist cultures than individualistic ones -people in collectivist cultures value NSI because it promotes harmony and supportive relationships within the group

Basic v Applied Research

-Basic: goal is to find the best answer to the question of why people behave as they do -Applied: trying to solve a social problem- building a theory of behavior is usually secondary to solving the problem

self-perception theory

-Bem -under certain circumstances people don't know how they feel until they see how they behave -reason why there are behaviorally based attitudes

What did Akert find about the effect of the role people played in decision to breakup? (and gender)

-Breaker: feels least upset, stressed, pained, least negative physical symptoms -Breakee: miserable, high levels of anger, loneliness, depression, physical symptoms -Mutuals: not as upset as Breakees but more than Breakers -Women report somewhat more negative reactions to breaking up than men

What affect did changing the name of the game in Ross's experiment from Wall Street Game to Community Game have on the players' behavior?

-Cooperation increased greatly for both cooperative and competitive groups of people -showed that personality trait made no measurable difference on behavior

How does helping work in terms of DOR in a situation that is not an emergency?

-DOR still applies -however when request is addressed to an individual person, the person responds quickly regardless of group size

After we make a decision to behave immorally, what happens to our value system? What if we decide not to do the immoral thing?

-Do: as you justify this immoral act your attitude will change sharply in favor of it -Don't: as you justify not doing it, you will come to see this immoral act as awful and unacceptable -eg. cheating

Mentor letters study

-Experiment -Business schools and other lucrative fields had the most discriminatory mentors

How does group diversity relate to cohesiveness?

-Group similarity typically predicts cohesiveness -BUT more diverse groups tend to have better performance

Contagion

-Gustav le Bon -how emotions and behavior can spread rapidly through a crowd

How can self-persuasion apply outside of tangible rewards/punishments?

-If a good friend asks you to do something unpleasant you have sufficient external justification to do it and probably wont like it any better -If an acquaintance asks you to do something unpleasant you have little external justification and thus will adopt positive attitudes toward the action

What kind of causal attributions are most likely being made by a person who seems stuck in a helpless, pessimistic cycle?

-Internal, stable, global -People who generally tend to blame themselves for negative events, believe that such events will continue indefinitely, and let such events affect many aspects of their lives display what is called a pessimistic explanatory style

Social impact theory

-Latane -the likelihood that you will respond to social influence depends on 3 variables regarding the group in question: 1. strength- how important to you is the group? 2. immediacy- how close is the group to you in time and space during the attempt to influence you? 3. number- how many people are in the group?

Assessor/Locomotor experiment

-Locomotors: fastest -Assessors: most accurate -Mixed: best of both

Describe gender differences in types of prosocial behavior

-Men more likely to perform dramatic/heroic act i.e. saving someones life (due to gender norms- male sex role includes being chivalrous/heroic) -Women more likely to provide social support to friends/engage in volunteer work that involves helping others (expected to be nurturing and caring and to value close, long-term relationships)

Why do we prefer the actual obama image over the mirror one? What would he prefer?

-Mere exposure -he'd prefer mirror one because that's what he sees every day - we would also prefer mirror version of ourselves over a portrait

Urban Overload Hypothesis

-Milgram -people living in cities are constantly bombarded with stimulation, and they keep to themselves to avoid being overwhelmed by it (if you put people in a calmer, less stimulating environment, they would be as likely as anyone else to reach out to others)

What is the evidence like for subliminal messages encountered in everyday life or in the lab having influence on behavior?

-No evidence in everyday life -in the lab, researchers have to get everything right (i.e. illumination)- even still there is no evidence in the lab that subliminal messages can get people to act counter to wishes, values, or personalities

With whom we compare ourselves depends on what?

-Our goal: -if it is accuracy, we compare with those who have a similar background in the area in question -if it is to know what excellence is, we engage in upward social comparison- comparing self to people who are better -if it is to feel good about ourselves, we engage in downward social comparison- comparing ourselves to people who are worse than us. Or we compare our current performance with past performance

What are Ainsworth's 3 attachment styles?

-Secure: trust, lack of concern with being abandoned and the view that one is worthy and well-liked -Avoidant: difficulty developing intimate relationships because previous attempts to be intimate have been rebuffed -Anxious/Ambivalent: concern that others will not reciprocate one's desire for intimacy, resulting in higher-than-average levels of anxiety

Catharsis

-Sigmund Freud's notion that "blowing off steam" - by sublimating- behaving aggressively or watching others do so- relieves built up anger and aggressive energy and hence reduces the likelihood of further aggressive behavior -"hydraulic" idea of aggressive impulses -evidence does not support this hypothesis- in reality, when people commit/watch acts of aggression, it increases the tendency toward future aggression

what are 3 reasons why lowballing works?

-Signing a check for a down payment creates the illusion of irrevocability -The feeling of commitment triggered the anticipation of an exciting event: driving out with a new car (or another new item) -Although the final price is substantially higher than the customer thought it would be, it is probably only slightly higher than the price at another place

Numbing effect of exposure to violent media

-Violent media may make people numb to difficult, violent or unpleasant events -in one exp men who watched a lot of TV were unmoved by a brutal boxing match while those who watched little TV showed major physiological arousal -this numbness can also make us indifferent to real victims of violence who need our help

How does tendency toward FAE vary across cultures?

-Western cultures (more individualist) prefer internal attributions, thinking more like personality psychologists -East Asian cultures (collectivist) prefer external, thinking more like social psychologists -these tendencies are not inborn- they are shaped over time depending on what culture/environment we are in

How does self-serving bias vary across cultures?

-Western individualistic cultures have higher rates of self-serving bias (internal attribution for success, external for failure) -East Asian collectivist cultures have lower or even absent rates of self-serving bias (external attribution for success, internal for failure)

How do ad styles differ across cultures?

-Western shoe ad: "it's easy when you have the right shoes" (emphasize independence) -Korean shoe ad: "the shoe for your family" (interdependence)

How do the thinking styles of Western and East Asian cultures differ?

-Western: analytical thinking style- thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context -East Asian: holistic thinking style- focus on overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to each other -these differences come from different philosophical traditions and different environments

When is group cohesiveness good/bad?

-When the group is for social reasons, this is good -If the function is to solve problems, cohesiveness can get in the way of optimal performance if maintaining good relations becomes more important than finding good solutions to a problem

Do dating site users fudge information? if so is it intentional?

-Yes, they fudge some information intentionally/consciously -photos can also be inaccurate, however this is less conscious

How can one control anger?

-actively enabling it to dissipate (counting to 10, taking deep breaths, exercising, or even doing a good deed)

What things make decoding hard?

-affect blends -aspects of the same expression can have different implications based on context/other cues (i.e. ease of decoding varies based on eye gaze) -culture

Bush dissonance reduction example

-after he sent troops into Iraq to find WMD he later discovered that there were none- said "we are now liberating Iraq from a cruel dictator"

Gaze shift exp

-after hearing someone was interested in them, disparity in time of gaze shift for attractive/unattractive people disappeared -showed reciprocal liking's effect on attraction

What is the mental process when one aggresses against a person who isn't totally innocent?

-aggression won't 'get it out of our system' but will increase hostility -if our retaliation is greater than the victim's evilness, justification will occur

How does type of love vary across cultures?

-american couples value passionate love more than chinese couples, chinese couples value companionate love more than Americans -romantic love as a necessity for marriage is less emphasized in collectivistic societies -the concept of romantic love is culturally specific (we all love but not necessarily in the same way)

Ethnography

-an example of observational learning -researchers attempt to understand a group/culture by observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions they might have

pre-mortem

-an exercise conducted prior to making major decisions about new programs in order to deliberately consider anything that could possible go wrong, the consequences, and what could be done to prevent them -way to prevent groupthink

how does NSI change with the 3 components of social impact theory?

-as strength and immediacy increase, so does conformity -as size increases, so does conformity, but for each additional person there is less of an influencing effect (asch says once a group reaches 4-5 other people, conformity doesn't increase much)

Tit-for-Tat strategy

-at first acting cooperatively but then aways responding the way your opponent did on the previous trial

Evolutionary psychology

-attempt to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection

What technique can be used to combat more affectively based persuasion techniques such as peer pressure?

-attitude inoculation -ie role play to prepare kids for peer pressure related to smoking has reduced their likelihood of smoking later on

Often the choice of which goals to focus on is ___

-automatic (often depends on which goals have been recently activated or primed)

Glass cliff

-because women are perceived as more communal, they are thought to be better at managing crises -> more likely to be put in high-risk, precarious positions where it is difficult to succeed -> more likely to fail in leadership position

What physiological factors can increase aggression/lower the threshold for aggressive behavior?

-being drunk -being hot -being in considerable pain -humidity -air pollution -crowds -offensive odors

How does mood relate to helping

-being in a good mood can increase helping -manila folder exp- people who had just found a dime in the phone booth and were thus in a good mood helped much more than people who hadn't

Describe what affects our ability to pay attention to argumetns

-being tired, distracted, information too complex to understand -high ability >> central -unable >> peripheral

At around what age does human self-recognition develop?

18 to 24 months

Why does the presence of others cause arousal?

3 explanations: 1.makes us become particularly alert/vigilant resulting in mild arousal 2. they make us apprehensive about how we're being evaluated (*evaluation apprehension*)- according to this explanation it's not the mere presence of others but the presence of others who are evaluating us 3. they distract us from the task at hand- divided attention results in arousal

people who recalled a time of rejection estimated the room to be ____

5 degrees cooler

Observational method

DESCRIBE -researcher observes people and records measurements/impressions of their behavior -e.g. ethnography -need inter judge reliability in order to ensure that observations are objective

The internet is ideal terrain for _____, especially with anonymous commenting

Deindividuation

Which form of media is especially likely to increase feelings/acts of aggression?

Games that directly reward violence- active playing

Construal is rooted in ___ theory

Gestalt

The sexy cad = good dad study illustrated a ____ influence on romantic attraction

Internal environmental. Unconscious influence of chemical changes on an incredibly consequential judgment

The study with parents' explanations to children at museums draws what conclusion?

It SUGGESTS different construal as a function of gender

Why do evolutionary psychologists argue that aggression is physically programmed into men?

It enables them told defend their group and perpetuate their genes -males aggress to: 1. establish dominance over other males and secure the highest possible status 2. out of sexual jealousy to ensure their mate is not having sex with other men, thereby ensuring their own paternity

Research on cultures of honor suggests what about male aggression?

It is encouraged when it fulfills a powerful part of the male identity

Base rate information

Info about relative frequency of members of different categories in the population (people don't use this technique sufficiently- focus more on representativeness) -eg. state universities have more in-state students, so if we are at a New York state university the boy is more likely to be from NY

Groups tend to focus on what information?

Information they share (they ignore facts only known to some members)

___ tap into normative conformity, in that we conform because society reminds us that something is approved/disapproved of

Injunctive norms

What is an example of the availability heuristic?

Media coverage of certain, more unusual events/accidents and our corresponding knowledge of them results in distorted ideas of how frequently they occur, esp in comparison to less-covered events such as heart attacks

Men and women with apologies

Men have a higher threshold for what constitutes an offensive action warranting an apology

how does group unanimity affect NSI

NSI is most powerfully felt when everyone in the group says/believes the same thing-resisting is very difficult unless you have an ally

Which sex ends relationships more frequently?

Neither

Does frustration always produce aggression?

No- it produces anger/annoyance, and a readiness to aggress if other things in the situation are conducive to aggressive behavior -things that would be conducive are: 1. size/strength of the person responsible for your frustration and their ability to retaliate 2. if frustration is understandable, legitimate and unintentional, the tendency to aggress goes down

Are transactional and transformational leadership styles mutually exclusive?

No- the most effective leader adopts both

Mirror test

One way to test whether an animal has a sense of self. Chimps, orangutans, and possibly dolphins pass it.

Correlational Method

PREDICT -2 variables are systematically measured, and the relationship between them (i.e. how much one can be predicted from the other) is assessed -often used in surveys

What happens when children start getting rewards for reading?

Their reading, originally stemming from intrinsic motivation, is now also spurred by extrinsic motivation. -people who liked reading originally now assume they are reading only to get a reward -this leads to them losing interest in reading (overjustification effect)

What is the disparity between male and female aggression for less violent forms?

There is great overlap- pretty similar rates

Why didn't college students notice the new construction worker in the study?

They don't care about him- he is an other, they'll never see him again

What does social exchange theory have to say about altruism?

True altruism does not exist- people help when benefits outweigh costs

Group

Two or more people who interact and are interdependent in the sense that their needs and goals cause them to influence each other

Ultimate v Proximate Sexy Cad Explanations

Ultimate: Evidence that facial symmetry, masculinity, and social dominance indicate male genetic fitness So increased desire for such men tends to benefit offspring Proximate: Women more sexually attracted to such men when ovulating -Women perceive sexy cads differently when they're ovulating, as better fathers/more committed partners.

Ultimate v Proximate

Ultimate: Why did this behavior evolve? How does it function to increase survival/reproduction (pass on genes)? Proximate: What leads to the behavior in the moment? What's the mechanism?

What does Pinker have to say about aggression over time?

War, crime, torture and murder have been steadily declining over the centuries

When do we have the most willpower?

When we have plenty of energy while trying to control our actions -depletion effect: spending energy on 1 task limits the amount we can spend on another task -example: people have more self-control energy in the morning than the afternoon

Sexy Cad

Women near ovulation prefer Man-A types symmetrical and masculine faces socially dominant and competitive deeper voices And that such men more likely have short-term mating strategy more sexual partners, exploitative personality traits

What situation can increase frustration and thus the probability that aggression will occur?

Your closeness to the goal- if you are very close to it your frustration will be higher if you are prevented

Stanford Prison study and Abu Ghraib teach us that it is more about ____ than a few bad apples

a bad barrel

Propaganda

a deliberate, systematic attempt to advance a cause by manipulating mass attitudes and behaviors, often through misleading or emotionally charged information

self-persuasion

a long-lasting form of attitude change that results from attempts at self-justification -more permanent than direct attempts at persuasion because the persuasion takes place internally and not because of external pressure

Persuasive communication

a message advocating a particular side of an issue

External justification

a reason or explanation for dissonant personal behavior that resides outside the individual (e.g., to receive a large reward or avoid a severe punishment)

interdependent view of the self

a way of defining oneself in terms of one's relationships to other people, recognizing that one's behavior is often determinedly thoughts, feelings and actions of others (asian cultures and more settled east coast states)

what did Darwin say about facial expressions and primary emotions?

Primary emotions are universal- all humans express/encode and interpret/decode them the same way -facial expressions vestiges of physiological reactions (i.e. wrinkling nose for disgust so less air is breathed in) -he was right for 6 emotions- anger, happiness, surprise, fear, disgust and sadness (for the most part- some nuances exist between cultures)

____ can influence other types of social behavior, such as agreeing to go on a date with someone

Prosocial music and video games -Women who listened to love song more likely to give a man their number than women who listened to a neutral song about tea

What is this an example of? Maria believes that she should exercise more and feels guilty when she is sitting on her couch and notices that she had written in her agenda that she was going to exercise instead.

Self-awareness theory

What did the Dasgupta and Asgari study show about change in women's implicit leadership-is-male stereotype?

Showed that greater interaction with female faculty was related to weakening of the stereotype.

You can change someone's attitude by offering what kind of incentive to argue a certain way?

Small- that way there is less external justification and they needs to convince themselves that there is some truth in what they are saying

Cognitive dissonance

The discomfort that people feel when two cognitions (beliefs, attitudes) conflict, or when they behave in ways that are inconsistent with their conception of themselves

If people don't know what form of assistance to give to someone in an emergency, they won't ____

be able to help

Children who are physically punished tend to ___

become more aggressive/antisocial over time

cultural truisims

beliefs that most members of a society accept uncritically (i.e. idea that you should brush your teeth after every meal)

Empathy

ability to put oneself in the shoes of another person and to experience events and emotions the way that person experiences them

Thoughts have to be both ___ and ___ before they will act as primes

accessible, applicable

Split Cable Market tests

advertisers work with cable companies and grocery stores to measure advertising effectiveness -results indicate that advertising does work, particularly for new products

Hindsight bias

after people know something occurred, they exaggerate who much they could've predicted it before it occurred

Building empathy among people makes ____ more difficult to commit

aggressive acts

Some studies have shown that exposure to violence in media has strongest relationship in children who are ____

already predisposed to violence

Affectively based attitude

an attitude based more on people's feelings and values than on their beliefs about the nature of an attitude object -function of affective cognition is not so much to paint an accurate picture of the world but to express/validate one's basic value system

behaviorally based attitudes

an attitude based on observations of how one behaves toward an object -we use this because of self-perception theory

Cognitively based attitude

an attitude based primarily on people's beliefs about the properties of an attitude object

Propaganda is most successful when it taps into ____

an audience's pre-existing beliefs

Heuristic-systematic model of persuasion

an explanation of the 2 ways in which persuasive communications can cause attitude change: -either systematically processing the merits of the argument -or using mental shortcuts/heuristics

lowballing

an unscrupulous strategy whereby a salesperson induces a customer to agree to purchase a product at a low cost, subsequently claims it was an error, and then raises the price; frequently, the customer will agree to make the purchase at the inflated price

Downsides of attractiveness halo

assumed to be immodest, poor parents

How does women's mate preference change near ovulation?

at ovulation women exhibit greater preference for men with outward sings of reproductive fitness (symmetrical masculine face, muscular physique)

Evolutionary psychology

attempts to explain social behavior in terms of genetic factors that have evolved over time according to principles of natural selection

Body posture plays a role in the process of ____ change

attitude

Reasons-generated attitude change

attitude change resulting from thinking about the reasons for one's attitudes; people assume that their attitudes match the reasons that are plausible and easy to verbalize

implicit attitudes

attitudes that exist outside of conscious awareness (involuntary, uncontrollable) -more rooted in people's childhood experiences

explicit attitudes. what are they rooted in?

attitudes that we consciously endorse and can easily report -rooted in more recent experiences

our impressions of people will be very different depending on the type of ____ we make

attribution

Meta-analysis

averages the results of 2 or more studies to see if the effect of an independent variable is reliable

Harsh punishment only teaches us to ___

avoid getting caught

how can self-focus keep you out of trouble?

can remind you of your sense of right and wrong (when people are self-aware more likely to follow their moral standards)

Korsakov's Syndrome

can't produce schemas/lose ability to form new memories

Conformity

changing one's behavior due to the real or imagined influence of others

Narcissism

combination of excessive self-love and a lack of empathy toward others

Social dilemma

conflict in which the most beneficial action for an individual will, if chosen by most people, have harmful effects on everyone

public compliance

conforming publicly without necessarily believing in what the group is doing

Naive Realism

conviction that we perceive things "as they really are" and those who see them differently are biased

Display Rules

culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display -i.e. American culture discourages emotional displays in men such as crying -i.e. Japanese culture dictates that women shouldn't exhibit a wide uninhibited smile- they will often hide it behind their hands -other points of differentiation between cultures- eye contact, personal space, hand/arm gestures

Overall the prejudice against women leaders has ____

decreased

Evolutionary theory

developed by Darwin to explain how animals adapt to environments- central to the theory is natural selection

Ben Franklin asking a man who didn't like him to lend him a book and thus getting the man to like him exemplifies

dissonance theory's effects on how much we like a person as a result of our actions toward him/her (FITD)

Thin-Slicing

drawing meaningful, quick conclusions about another's personality or skills based on an extremely brief sample of behavior -i.e. showing the students the 10-second silent clips of professors and having them rate their competence

attitudes

evaluations of people, objects and ideas -important because they often determine what we do

Comparison level for alternatives

expectations about level of rewards and costs they would receive in an alternative relationship -high level- we will change things up and be on the market -low level- stay in a costly relationship because they don't think they can find better elsewhere

Self Serving attributions

explanations for ones successes that credit internal factors and explanations for ones failures that blame external situational factors

Overconfidence barrier

fact that people usually have too much confidence in the accuracy of their judgments

Not only do people have a strong need to belong to social groups, but they also have a need to ______

feel distinctive from those who do not belong to the same groups -(This explains why people are attracted to smaller groups within their college environments- such as Greek life)

Personality psychologists

generally focus on individual differences/traits

attitudes will predict spontaneous behaviors only when they are ____

highly accessible to people

hypocrisy paradigm

hypocrites judge others more harshly than people who haven't committed the same unethical acts, and present themselves as being more virtuous/ethical than everyone else

Great person theory and its accuracy

idea that certain key personality traits make a person a good leader, regardless of the situation -few personality traits correlate with leadership effectiveness, and the relationships that have been found tend to be small

group selection

idea that natural selection operates on the group level and the group made up of selfless individuals is more likely to survive than the one made of selfish ones

equity theory

idea that people are happiest/most stable with relationships in which rewards and costs experienced by both parties are roughly equal -both parties feel uneasy about an inequitable relationship, but under-benefited party should feel that it is more of a problem than the over-benefited party does

What is the goal of social psych?

identify properties of human nature that make almost everyone susceptible to social influence regardless of class or culture

social norms

implicit (and sometime explicit) rules for acceptable behaviors, values and beliefs -aspect of NSI

Positive psychology

in addition to focusing on what can go wrong with human functioning, we should seek to understand human strength, virtue and what can go right (would focus on person's *qualities* such as altruism and empathy to increase helping, not the situation)

What is the "nurture" explanation for women's higher pickiness than men? What study was related to this?

in society we tend to be the "approachees" - this gives us control and makes us feel like we have options, makes us feel in demand (Finkel and Eastwick speed dating study)

Interjudge reliability

in the Observational Method: level of agreement between 2 or more people who independently observe/code a set of data - used to ensure that observations are not the subjective, distorted impressions of 1 individual

how have rates of narcissism changed among college students and America at large in recent years (since 1982)?

increased steadily

Most experimental evidence demonstrates that watching violence _____

increases the frequency of aggression

Metaphors about the body and social judgments can ____

influence our decisions (i.e. if you smell a clean scent you are more likely to trust people)

consistency information

info about extent to which behavior between 1 actor and one stimulus is the same across time and circumstances

Distinctiveness Information

information about extent to which one particular actor behaves in the same way to different stimuli

Impression management strategies (just list them)

ingratiation, self-handicapping

which norms are more powerful in producing desirable behavior?

injunctive (Cialdini littering experiment)

Anything that highlights ___ norms can be used to create behavioral change, because they draw our attention to the relevant norm

injunctive norms

Transformational leaders

inspire followers to focus on common, long-term goals

Passionate Love

intense longing we feel for a person, accompanied by physiological arousal

Rewards will undermine interest in an activity/cause over justification effect only if ____

interest was initially high

Reciprocal attraction

just knowing a person likes us fuels our attraction to the individual

Internal Validity

keeping everything but the independent variable the same in an experiment

Groupthink

kind of decision process in which maintaining group cohesiveness and solidarity is more important than considering the facts in a realistic manner

Some kinds of aggressive behaviors don't need to be ____

learned (rats will attack a fellow rat introduced in their cage)

Inflicted insight

learning things about yourself at the end of an experiment that are upsetting

Behaviorism

maintains that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment (early behaviorists overlooked the importance of how people interpret their environments)

Attitude inoculation

making people immune to attempts to change their attitudes by initially exposing them to small doses of the arguments against their position -if people haven't thought much about the issue ahead of time (for example formed their attitude through the peripheral route), they're more susceptible to an attack on that attitude that uses logical appeals

electronic devices and apps have been engineered to ____

manipulate dopamine

What does the mirror test show?

many animals have a self-concept

prosecutor dissonance reduction example

many prosecutors are unwilling to accept when someone they convicted is later found innocent (think: "I'm a good guy, he's a bad guy")

What are the IRB's requirements in order to make an exception to informed consent

may approve a consent procedure which doesn't include informed consent if: 1. research involves no more than minimal risks to the subjects 2. will not adversely affect the rights and welfare of the subjects 3. couldn't be practicably carried out otherwise 4. subjects will be provided with additional pertinent information after participation

Empirical

means something can be figured out through experimentation or measurement rather than person opinion

Availability heuristic

mental shortcut in which you base a judgment on the ease with which you can bring something to mind -the issue is that sometimes what is easiest to remember is not typical of the overall picture, leading to faulty conclusions -eg. Doctor just read about a rare disease, then was able to correctly diagnose a girl with it because it came to mind easily

Representativeness heuristic

mental shortcut you use to clarify something according to how similar it is to a typical case -eg. Brian is blonde and tan so we classify him as Californian because he matches a common stereotype for that state

Judgmental heuristic

mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently

schemas

mental structures that organize our knowledge about the social world (eg. about ourselves, others, social roles and specific events) -these operate automatically

Rats Mozart/Schoenberg exp

mere exposure effect

____ is viewed as more central to the self-concept, more so than _____.

morality more central than cognitive processes/desires

People who have lived in 1 place for a long time are ____

more likely to help -residing in one place leads to greater attachment to the community, more interdependence with neighbors, greater concern for reputation

Random assignment condition

most important part of the Experimental Method- ensures that all participants have an equal chance of taking part in any condition of an experiment, so that characteristics are evenly distributed

How does testosterone relate to aggression?

most studies have been correlational, suggesting that causality flows in both directions (testosterone can slightly increase aggression but being in an aggressive situation can increase testosterone production)

Are transactional and transformational leadership styles closely connected with personality traits?

no

Which threat (gate) condition in the trucking game studies yielded the greatest amount of money earned?

no threat (then unilateral, then bilateral)

Emblems

nonverbal gestures that have well understood definitions within a given culture- these usually have direct verbal translations (i.e. the OK sign in the US)

How is the relationship between the social environment and the individual a two-way street?

not only does the situation influence people's behavior, but people's behavior also depends on their interpretation (construal) of their social environment

Affect blends

one part of the face registers one motion while the other registers a different one -can make decoding hard sometimes

We prefer faces that most resemble ___. What aspect of attraction is this?

our own (familiarity)

People are judged especially harshly when they appear to be doing something charitable _____

out of self-interest

Internal justification

reduction of dissonance by changing something about oneself (e.g., attitude or behavior)

Exchange relationships

relationships governed by the need for equity (i.e. for an equal ratio of rewards and costs) -common in interactions between new acquaintances

informational social influence

relying on other people as a source of information to guide our behavior -we conform because we believe that others' interpretation of an ambiguous situation is correct and can help us choose an appropriate course of action -can lead to private compliance

Cross-cultural research

research conducted with members of different cultures, to see whether the psychological processes of interest are present in both cultures or whether they are specific to the culture in which people were raised

If we were to reverse aggressive images for children and show nonaggressive models instead, children would _____

respond accordingly

Task-contingent rewards

rewards that are given for performing a task, regardless of how well it is done

Robert Zajonc's social facilitation experiment involved ____

roaches

Transactional leaders

set clear, short-term goals and reward people who meet them

sexual scripts

sets of implicit rules that specify proper sexual behavior for a person in a given situation, varying with the person's gender, age, religion, social status and peer group

Social roles

shared expectations in a group about how particular people are supposed to behave

Vohs and Schooler $1 test Study

showed that encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating -students that read the free will statement and neutral ones had same level of honesty, while determinism students cheated more

People in ___ are more likely to help others

small towns

____ are an example of people that are likely to experience dissonance and devise a number of techniques to reduce it

smokers

Foot-in-the-door technique

social influence strategy in which getting people to agree first to a small request makes them more likely to agree later to a second, larger request -i.e. Fraser "drive carefully" sign in yard and "be a safe driver" sign in car window

___ is the most significant risk factor for teenage suicide, despair and violence

social rejection

gender roles

societal beliefs about how men and women are expected to behave

Belief Perseverance

standing by initial conclusions even when subsequently learned information suggests we shouldnt

correlation coefficient

statistic that assesses how well you can predict one variable from another -positive: increase in 1 variable = increase in other variable -negative: increase in 1 variable = decrease in other variable

Probability level (p-value)

statistical number saying how likely it is that the experiment results occurred by chance and not because of the independent variable -In social psych we consider results SIGNIFICANT if the p value is less than 5 in 100 that results might be due to chance factors rather than the independent variables studied (p = .05 = marginally significant)

hostile aggression

stemming from feelings of anger and aimed at inflicting pain/injury

Schemas about types of people are known as ____

stereotypes

Social Perception

study of how we form impression of other people/make inferences about them

Attribution Theory

study of how we infer the causes of others' behavior

Students who develop greater empathetic ability ____

tend to have higher academic achievement (because roleplaying is just what students need to do when analyzing a piece of literature- empathy encourages cognitive flexibility)

Overjustification Effect

tendency for people to view their behavior as caused by compelling extrinsic reasons, making the person underestimate the extent to which it was caused by intrinsic reasons

Impact bias

tendency to overestimate the intensity and duration of your emotional reactions to future negative events (failing to realize that dissonance reduction will eventually save you from future anguish)

A longitudinal study with boys from kindergarten to when they turned 26 showed that boys can be trained not to have ____ when insulted

testosterone increases

Impression management

the attempt by people to get others to see them as they want to be seen

In the police chief/woman's college president study, when the individual in opposite gender position made a mistake, ____

the belief that their status was deserved decreased sharply

the theory of planned behavior holds that the more specific the attitude toward the behavior in question, __

the better the attitude can be expected to predict the behavior

Transactive memory

the combined memory of a group that is m ore efficient that the memory of individual members

The CONTENT of our schemas is influenced by ____

the culture in which we live

Extrinsic motivation

the desire to engage in an activity because of external rewards or pressures, not because we enjoy the task or find it interesting

Intrinsic motivation

the desire to engage in an activity because you enjoy it or find it interesting, not because of external rewards/pressures

Altruism

the desire to help another person even if it involves a cost to the helper

Insufficient punishment

the dissonance aroused when individuals lack sufficient external justification for having resisted a desired activity or object, usually resulting in individuals devaluing the forbidden activity or object (making up for the lack of ext. just. with internal justification)

Social influence

the effects that the words, actions or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes or behavior

Norm of reciprocity

the expectation that helping others will increase the likelihood that they will help us in the future

attachment styles

the expectations people develop about relationships with others based on the relationship they had with their primary caregiver when they were infants

External Validity

the extent to which results of an experimental study can be generalized to other situations and other people

Accessibility

the extent to which schemas/concepts are at the forefront of the mind and are thus likely to be used when making judgments about the social world

Bystander effect

the finding that the greater the number of bystanders who witness an emergency, the less likely any of them is to help

According to Milgram, the key to socially organized evil is ____

the fragmentation of responsibility

In-groups

the group with which an individual identifies as a member

Kin selection

the idea that behaviors that help a genetic relative are favored by natural selection -people are most likely to help in ways that ensure the survival of their own genes

Growth mindset

the idea that our abilities are malleable qualities that we can cultivate and grow

Fixed mindset

the idea that we have a set amount of ability that cannot change

Social comparison theory

the idea that we learn about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to others -we socially compare when there is no objective standard to measure ourselves against/when we are uncertain about ourselves in a particular area

self-awareness theory

the idea that when people focus their attention on themselves, they evaluate and compare their behavior to their internal standards and values

introspection

the process whereby people look inward and examine their own thoughts, feelings and motives

Altruistic personality

the qualities that cause an individual to help others in a wide variety of situations

Magazines and horoscopes that give generic feedback take advantage of our tendency toward ____

the representativeness heuristic

What were the results of the Burger's 2006 revamped version of Milgram's study?

the same as Milgram's

Social psychology

the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of others

Aronson showed that dissonance is most painful, and we are most motivated to reduce it, when on of the cognitions is about ____

the self

attitude accessibility

the strength of the association between an attitude object and a person's evaluation of that object, measured by the speed with which people can report how they feel about the object -attitudes will predict spontaneous behaviors only when they are highly accessible to people

Justification of Effort

the tendency for individuals to increase their liking for something they've worked hard to attain -if someone agrees to go through a demanding/unpleasant experience to attain some goal or object, the goal or object becomes more attractive

Fundamental Attribution Error

the tendency to explain our own and other people's behavior entirely in terms of personality traits, and to underestimate the power of social influence and the immediate situation

Bias Blind Spot

the tendency to think that other people are more susceptible to attributional biases in their thinking than we are

terror management

the theory that holds that self-esteem serves as a buffer, protecting people from terrifying thoughts about their own mortality

Nonverbal Communication

the way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words. -Include facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position and movement, use of touch and gaze

Construal

the way people perceive, comprehend and interpret the social world -has its roots in gestalt psychology

Causal theories

theories about the causes of one's own feelings and behaviors; often we learn such theories from our culture (e.g. absence makes the heart grow fonder)

studies of dissonance in primates show that ___

there is an evolutionary benefit to sticking with a tried-and-true option and rejecting a novel alternative (holding to a "win-stay" strategy)

What explains why human beings may do things that seem paradoxical

they are motivated to maintain a positive image of themselves in part by justifying their behavior (Oscar hazing example)

How do perceptions of what is attractive vary across cultures?

they are similar across cultures

Fear-arousing communication will fail at changing attitudes if ___

they are so strong that they overwhelm people (if people are very scared they become defensive, deny importance of threat and can't think rationally about it)

What is the best type of self esteem to have?

to feel good about ourselves but also to look out for and care about others

Why do females behave aggressively according to the evolutionary view?

to protect their offspring

One purpose of controlled thinking is ____

to provide checks and balances for automatic thinking

What is the motivation behind the majority of rampage killings?

to transform feelings of shame, humiliation and rejection into feelings of pride

Scientists say the best approach for decision making is ____

to utilize both automatic and controlled thinking

idiosyncrasy credits

tolerance a person earns over time, by conforming to group norms; if enough credits are earned, the person can occasionally deviate from the group without retribution

If you can't change your behavior, being in a state of self-awareness will be ___

uncomfortable because you will be confronted with disagreeable feedback about yourself (people turn to alcoholism, binge eating, sexual masochism, religious expression/spirituality to divert negative thoughts about oneself)

independent view of the self

way of defining oneself in terms of one's own internal thoughts, feelings and actions and not in terms of the thoughts, feelings and actions of other people (western cultures and more recently settles US states)

What did the Baron study show about importance and NSI?

when importance is high, participants conform less (but they still do conform sometimes!)

Social loafing:

when people are in the presence of others and individual performance cannot be evaluated, the tendency to perform worse on simple tasks and better on complex/important ones -in a group people become more relaxed- this impairs performance on simple tasks but can improve performance on complex tasks

reactance theory

when people feel their freedom to perform a certain behavior is threatened, an unpleasant state of resistance is aroused, which they can reduce by performing the prohibited behavior

Why don't people always reciprocate when provoked?

when we are convinced it was unintentional or if there are mitigating circumstances, most of us won't reciprocate

Self-awareness theory

when we focus our attention on ourselves, we evaluate and compare our current behavior to our internal standards and values.

What determines whether people take the central or peripheral route to persuasion?

whether people have the MOTIVATION and the ABILITY (nothing distracting) to pay attention to the facts

Our own behavior toward an individual affects ___

whether we like/dislike them

How do people in a social group respond to a deviant/non-conformist?

with attempts to convince them to conform, and if that doesn't work then punishment

subliminal messages

words/pictures that are not consciously received but may nevertheless influence judgments, attitudes and behaviors

If you can't talk to the person you're angry with about your feelings, it can help to ____

write your feelings in a journal

Integrative solution

parties make trade-offs on issues, with each side conceding the most on issues that are unimportant to it but important to the other side

What is a potential pitfall of social roles in a group?

people can get so far into a role that their personal identities/personalities get lost (e.g. Stanford prison experiment)

private compliance

people conform to behavior of others because they genuinely believe that these people are right -this occurs during ISI

Social-cognitive learning theory

people learn social behavior in large part through observation and imitation of others, and by cognitive processes such as plans, expectations and beliefs

Why are individuals more cooperative than groups?

people more likely to assume another individual is cooperative at heart but that groups will, if given the opportunity, stab us in the back

Who feels the greatest dissonance after doing something cruel, foolish or incompetent, and will work harder to reduce this dissonance?

people with higher self-esteem- because they have behaved in a way contrary to their high opinion of themselves

Subjective norms

people's beliefs about how others they care about will view the behavior in question

self-esteem

people's evaluations of their own self-worth- that is, the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent and decent

Comparison level

people's expectations about the level of rewards and costs they are likely to receive in a particular relationship -based on how past relationships went -bad past relationships = low comparison level

Social exchange theory

people's feelings about a relationship depend on their perception of its rewards and costs, the kind of relationship they deserve and their chances for having a better relationship with someone else (we "buy" the best relationship we can get) -the more social rewards we get from a person the more we like them -also says that we help when benefits outweigh costs

According to the theory of planned behavior, how does perceived behavioral control affect behavior?

people's intentions are influenced by the ease with which they believe they can perform a behavior -if people think it is hard to perform a behavior they will not form a strong intention to do so

Affective forecasts

people's predictions about how they will feel in response to a future emotional event

Communal relationships

people's primary concern is being responsive to the other person's needs -common in longer-term interactions between close friends, family members and romantic partners

_____ is more important than actual similarity when it comes to forming relationships

perceived similarity

fear-arousing communication

persuasive message that attempts to change people's attitudes by arousing their fears

classical conditioning

phenomenon whereby a stimulus that elicits an emotional response is repeatedly paired with a neutral stimulus that does not, until the neutral stimulus takes on the emotional properties of the first stimulus

Operant conditioning

phenomenon whereby behaviors we freely choose to perform become more or less frequent, depending on whether they are followed by a reward or punishment

Attitudes can sometimes be ____ of behavior

poor predictors

Self-affirmation

popular way or reducing dissonance -focusing on 1 or more of your good qualities to lessen the dissonant sting caused by doing something foolish

Priming

process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait or concept

Misattribution of arousal

process whereby people make mistaken inferences about what is causing them to feel the way they do -think: experiment where woman approached men while on a high suspension bridge vs after they had gotten off it- higher proportion of men on bridge telephoned her after vs. men who had been off of it/had time to rest -men on bridge attributed their fast beating heart, sweat and breathlessness to being attracted to the woman

Group cohesiveness

qualities of a group that bind members together and promote liking between them

dissonance reduction techniques explain why so much of human thinking is not rational, but ____

rationalizing

In many situations of relationship violence there is ____ abuse

reciprocal

Aggression frequently stems from the need to _____ after being provoked by aggressive behavior from another person

reciprocate

What does evolutionary psychology say about men's and women's agendas when it comes to mate selection?

-they have different ones due to their different roles in producing (and raising) offspring -females: reproduction is costly in terms of time, energy and effort --> they pair less frequently and only with carefully chosen males -women respond to a man who can supply resources and support necessary to raise a child (economic and career success) -males: reproduction is a low-cost, short-term investment, reproductive success measured by quantity of offspring --> pursue frequent pairings with many females -men respond to a woman who looks capable of reproducing successfully (physical appearance)

Aronson and Mettee cheating experiment w self esteem

-those given a boost to self-esteem less likely to cheat (if you think of yourself as a good honest person, cheating is dissonant with that self-concept)

Why do we form groups

-to accomplish things that would be harder to do individually -to help us define who we are -to fulfill many basic human needs -survival -defining reality (informational) -knowing how to behave (normative) -makes us happy

Basic Dilemma of the Social Psychologist

-tradeoff between internal and external validity -this is best resolved by not trying to figure everything out in one experiment

Contingency theory of leadership

-two types of leaders: task-oriented and relationship-oriented -the effectiveness of a leader depends both on how task-oriented and how relationship-oriented the leader is and on the amount of control the leader has over the group

What are surveys?

-used in correlational method -research in which a random sample of people are asked questions about their attitudes and behavior -surveys use a random selection of population to ensure the sample is representative -potential problems: if surveys fail to sample randomly they won't get a representative sample, also some people don't really know the answers to the questions- this leads to inaccuracy which means researchers aren't getting a representative sample

Varnum and Kitayama study

-used percentage of top-10 most popular baby names as an indicator of geographic variation across the U.S. in the degree of independent vs. interdependent self-concepts -more recently settled states like Oklahoma had smaller percentage of top-10 baby names (independent self-construal) -other, older states like Massachusetts and Connecticut had larger percentage of top-10 baby names (interdependent self-construal) -correlational study

Describe what affects our motivation to pay attention to arguments and when peripheral will have to come into play

-varies based on how personally relevant the topic is to the individual -very relevant >> motivation high>> central -not very relevant >> motivation low>> peripheral

Physical attraction's importance

-very important -equally important for men and women, although men may be more willing to admit that it's important to them

Controlled thinking

-voluntary, intentional, conscious, effortful -requires mental energy- you can only think about one thing at a time

How do rates of FAE differ when its yourself that you're evaluating?

-we are the "actor" and are more aware of situational influences than when we're the observer

Schachter's 2-Factor Theory of Emotion

-we first experience psychological arousal -then we seek an appropriate explanation for it

What are problems with self-handicapping?

-we may come to believe the excuses we prepare and hence exert less effort on the task -self-handicappers risk being disliked by their peers, especially women (who are less likely to engage in behavioral SH)

The Sinclair experiment with the likable/unlikable researcher either wearing or not wearing the antiracism shirt showed what?

-we tend to automatically adopt the views of people we like, and automatically reject the views of people we don't like

Abu Ghraib parallels to Stanford experiment

-weak leader -secrecy, no accountability -guards stressed, deprived, understaffed -free to set own interrogation rules -power of one (whistleblower) -cultural differences worsen (this isn't a parallel)

Conjunction fallacy

-when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one -prob that Linda is a bank teller and a feminist CANNOT be greater than the prob that she is a bank teller

What are some costs of helping that decrease its prevalence?

-when it would put us in physical danger -result in pain or embarrassment -would take too much time

Self-perception theory

-when our attitudes/feelings are uncertain/ambiguous, we infer them by observing our behavior and the situation in which it occurs -1. we infer our inner feelings from our behavior only when we are not sure how we feel -2. we judge whether our behavior really reflects how we feel or whether it was the situation that made us act a certain way

What 3 aspects made it particularly difficult to abandon the "obey authority" norm in the Milgram study

1. fast paced (participant couldn't stop and reflect) 2. asked to increase the shock in very small increments- had to justify each successive level of shock in their minds to reduce dissonance, increments made it easy to do 3. sometimes when you are the research participant/employee and the other person (i.e. researcher) is a legit authority figure you become the "puppet" and they're pulling the strings- they define what your'e supposed to do and thus are responsible for the results- you were simply following orders

Why can being in a good mood increase helping?

1. good moods make us look on the bright side of life- we give people the benefit of the doubt 2. helping is an excellent way of prolonging our good mood 3. good moods increase the amount of attention we pay to ourselves- makes us more likely to behave according to our values/ideals

What are the three basic motives underlying prosocial behavior?

1. helping is an instinctive reaction to promote the welfare of those genetically similar to us (evolutionary psych) 2. the rewards of helping often outweigh the costs, so helping is in our self-interest (social exchange theory) 3. under some conditions, powerful feeling of empathy and compassion for the victim prompt selfless giving (the empathy-altruism hypothesis)

To predict whether people will stay in a relationship, what 3 things do you need to know?

1. how satisfied they are with it 2. what they think of alternatives 3. how great their investment is

Why do prosocial music and video games make people more likely to help?

1. increase people's empathy toward someone in need of help 2. increase accessibility of thoughts about helping others

Duck's 4 stages of a dissolving relationship

1. intrapersonal: individual thinks about his/her dissatisfaction 2. dyadic: individual discusses breakup with partner 3. social: breakup announced to others 4. back to intrapersonal: individual recovers from the breakup and forms an internal count of how/why it happened

What are 2 ways to improve human thinking?

1. make people more humble about their reasoning abilities 2. teach basic statistical and methodological principles about how to reason correctly, in hopes that people will apply the principles in their everyday lives

Two-Step Attribution Process

1. making an internal attribution 2. attempting to adjust this attribution by considering the situation

Social psychology emphasizes what 2 motives behind our construals?

1. need to feel good about ourselves (self esteem motive) 2. need to be accurate (social cognition motive)

Latané and Darley's 5 Steps to Helping in an emergency

1. noticing an event 2. interpreting the event as an emergency 3. assuming responsibility 4. knowing how to help 5. deciding to implement help

Why do harsh punishments meant to reduce aggression usually backfire?

1. people may shout things they don't mean or out of frustration use severe methods to try to control behavior- target the likely to respond with anxiety/anger 2. the kid may actually want an angry reaction 3. puts children at risk for depression, low self-esteem, violent behavior etc 4. tells target what NOT to do, but doesn't say what they should do

What is the process of theory development?

1. theory developed 2. hypotheses derived from the theory are tested 3. theory is revised based on test results 4. new hypotheses formed

According to the text, self-perception theory is most closely related to which other theory in social psychology?

Attribution theory (e.g. consensus, distinctiveness, consistency)

In what way do we not have as much free will as we think?

Automatic/unconscious desires may lead to conscious/controlled thoughts

Ultimately, which of the following was true of the expressed beliefs of the top two engineers?

Disagreement with decision to launch

What is the take home from the Lappians and Niffians experiment?

Implicit attitude generalizationoccurs immediately; Explicit attitude generalization takes time

What did the Gilbert speed dating study show about affective forecasts?

Knowing what others think about something can be very useful in making predictions about how we'll feel (affective forecasts), even better than knowing a little about the actual thing

What is the problem with dismissing acts of violence as solely the result of mental illness? What did Aronson have to say about this relating to the Columbine shooting?

Leads us to ignore the power of the social situation which is very important -Aronson: Columbine shooters reacted in an *extreme manner* to a school atmosphere that creates an environment of *exclusion/mockery*, making life difficult for a sizable number of students

Why do we receive benefits from opening up about angry feelings?

NOT from venting- but from the insights and self-awareness that accompany self-disclosure

What are the two key questions to answer when predicting whether the mere presence of others will help or hurt someone's performance?

Task demands? Individual evaluation?

Prosocial behavior

any act performed with the goal of benefiting another person

Process loss and reasons

any aspect of group interaction that inhibits good problem solving -Reasons: 1. group doesn't know who is the most competent member 2. most competent members find it hard to disagree with other group members 3. communication problems (i.e. people don't listen to each other, one person is allowed to dominate the discussion while the others tune out)

Out-groups

any group with which an individual does not identify

Emotions are somewhat ___ depending on what the most plausible explanation of their arousal happens to be

arbitrary

post-decision dissonance

aroused after making a decision, typically reduced by enhancing the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and devaluating the rejected alternatives, so that we feel better about the choice we made

instrumental aggression

as a means to some goal other than causing pain (i.e. football)

what is a potential negative consequence of the strength factor of NSI?

can be dangerous to have policy decisions be made by highly cohesive groups because they have stronger normative pressures

What is the difference between personality/clinical and social psychologists (think- level of analysis)?

for personality/clinical, the level of analysis is the individual. For social, it is the individual in context of a social situation

What can be an effective tool against product placement

forewarning people that someone is about to try to change their attitude

Negotiation and limits to its success

form of communication between opposing sides in a conflict in which offers and counteroffers are made and a solution occurs only when both parties agree -one limit to success: people often assume that they are locked in a conflict in which only one party can come out ahead, don't realize that a solution favorable to both parties is available (for example an integrative solution)

Proper norms vary ___

from group to group

Frustration-aggression theory

frustration- the perception that you are being prevented from attaining a goal- increases the probability of an aggressive response

Normative social influence

going along with what others do in order to be liked/accepted by them- we publicly conform with the group's behaviors but don't always privately accept them

What happens to the brain in love?

greater action in dopamine-rich centers of pleasure, reward and motivation

To be effective, self-affirmation in an attempt to bolster self esteem must be ___

grounded in reality

Baron and colleagues studied conformity by asking participants to remember a man whose picture was shown to them either extremely briefly (difficult condition) or with more time (easy condition). Their task was to later pick this man out of a lineup of several men, and they were further led to believe one of two things about the importance of picking the right guy: (1) very important or (2) unimportant. Under which combination of conditions of difficulty and importance did participants conform more to the (incorrect) choices made by confederates of the experimenter?

hard/important

it's harder to harm a stranger if you ____

have made a personal connection with them -(participants in a Japanese study gave weaker shocks to victims who had revealed personal information about themselves)

The Donald experiment illustrated ____

the power of priming

Unlike previously held beliefs, competitive games ____

often make participants/observers more aggressive

The most powerful form of social influence is ___

obedience to social authority

Observational learning

observing others and imitating them (part of social-cognitive learning theory)

Berns's fMRI experiment showed what about NSI?

the mental discomfort we experience when disagreeing with the group

What makes attitudes accessible?

the more direct experience people have with the attitude object, more accesible the attitude will be

Propinquity effect

the more we see and interact with people, the more likely they are to become our friends -affected not only by physical distance but FUNCTIONAL distance- aspects of architecture design that determine which people you cross paths with most often

The more we believe we have free will, ____

the more willing we are to help others in need, and the less likely we are to engage in inmoral actions like cheating -people who believe they can control their actions exert more of an effort to do so

why do we often underestimate/deny the power of NSI?

the negative stereotypes associated with conforming

Self-concept

the overall set of belief that people have about their personal attributes