psych ch 13

ingroup

According to social identity theory, people usually think of their own group favorably.

Affective

Attitudes are shaped by individual experiences (learning and conditioning), personality, temperament, and observation of others (social learning). Attitudes can be positive, negative, neutral, or ambiguous. These different evaluations are accompanied by different changes in facial muscles, brain activation, cognition, emotion, and behavior.

COGNITION

Attitudes can play an important role in how people process and remember perceptual information in the social world. Especially in ambiguous situations, people's attitudes help organize events and thus determine what information is attended to, processed, encoded, and remembered. This is one reason why people in the same social situation may later report different versions of what occurred.

BEHAVIOR

Attitudes influence, but do not always lead to, behavior consistent with them. Attitudes are more likely to affect behavior if they are strong; relatively stable; directly relevant to the behavior; important; easily accessed from memory; and based on direct, rather than indirect, experience can also affect attitudes. When people are asked repeatedly to assert an attitude on a given topic, it primes that attitude and makes it easier to access. As a result, they are more likely to behave in ways consistent with that attitude compared with people who do not express the same attitude. Repeatedly asserting an attitude can also make it more extreme.

persuasion

Efforts to change people's attitudes in response to information one provides This is the primary goal of advertising and political campaigning.

conformity (matching behavior to perceived social norms)

In general, people conform either because they want to be "right" (correct) in their behaviors and they are unsure of what to do in some situations OR because they want to be liked and accepted by the group they are conforming to.

social psychology

The area of psychology that focuses on how people think about other people, interact in relationships and groups, and are affected by their relationships with others. The study of the causes and consequences of sociality.

social facilitation

The presence of others appears to increase arousal, which then facilitates people's dominant responses in that situation. Usually the presence of others enhances performance only on well-learned simple tasks. On complicated, less well-learned tasks, the presence of others can hinder performance.

norms

The rules that implicitly or explicitly govern members of a group They are shared belief systems that are enforced through the group's use of sanctions or penalties. Norms pervade everyday experience, defining the behaviors that make people good members of a family, friends, neighbors, partners, employees, and employers.

stereotype

a belief or set of beliefs about people in a particular group or social category. may be positive, neutral, or negative. The assumption is every member of the group possesses the same simplified set of traits. They provide cognitive shortcuts for processing the information about the social world, which makes them prone to inaccuracies and cognitive errors... • People prefer ______-consistent information and process this information more quickly. People are less likely to attend to and, therefore, encode or remember information inconsistent with their ____ • People may deny the truth of information inconsistent with their ___ • Once is activated, people respond to a person's membership in a social category, not to the characteristics of the individual person. Thus, stereotypes overgeneralize and are overused.

frustration-aggression hypothesis

a principle stating that animals aggress when their goals are frustrated

Prosocial behavior

acting altruistically to benefit others at a cost to oneself, includes sharing, cooperating, comforting, and helping. A number of factors affect whether we help someone... • Characteristics of the helper: Prosocial behavior is more likely when people have a high need for approval, have a predisposition to feeling personal and social responsibility, have an empathic concern for others or are generally high on the personality dimension agreeableness, have a sense of empathy, have a belief in a just world, have an internal locus of control, and are less concerned for their own welfare. Group identity also plays a role in prosocial behavior - we are more likely to help and cooperate with other members of our own families and groups. People may also have been reinforced for helping or punished for not helping. • Characteristics of those being helped: People are more likely to help others that they view as similar to themselves, are friends with or like, and believe are not responsible for their predicaments or who give a socially acceptable justification for their plight. • Characteristics of the situation: We are more likely to help when the cost of helping seems relatively low, when the "rewards" of helping are relatively high, and when there appears to be an increased cost of not helping (such as a heightened sense of shame and guilt).

attitude

an overall evaluation (usually positive or negative) about some aspect of the world, such as people, issues, situations, or objects. This evaluation has three components, summarized by the acronym ABC: • Affective—one's feelings about the object or topic • Behavioral—one's predisposition to act in a particular way toward the object or topic • Cognitive—what you believe or know about the object or topic

Mutual interdependence

another way to decrease prejudice, has been used in many American classrooms. The "jigsaw classroom" is a cooperative learning technique that proceeds in the following way... • Integrated groups of five or six students are formed and given an assignment. Each member of the group researches a different aspect of the project. The members from each group researching the aspect of the topic then form a new, expert group. The expert groups meet to share information and rehearse presentations. The expert groups disband, and each member then writes a report. The members read that report to the original jigsaw groups. This way each group member is perceived as an expert. • This technique decreases prejudice by increasing contact between individuals from different "groups" and creating new, integrated groups that require mutual interdependence to achieve a superordinate goal.

Attributional biases

are cognitive shortcuts for determining attributions that occur outside our awareness (tendencies to make certain types of attributions). they lessen the cognitive load required to make sense of the world, but they can lead to errors.

Attributions

are our explanations for the causes of events or behaviors. They involve judgments that we are very quick to make. they affect how one perceives and treats the self and others.

roles

are the behaviors that members in different positions in a group are expected to perform. Groups often create different roles to fulfill different group functions. Sometimes they are filled formally (elections and appointments), whereas at other times they are filled informally (the "joker" among friends). Roles help a group delineate both responsibility within the group and responsibility to the group.

cooperation

behavior by two or more individuals that leads to mutual benefit

reciprocal altruism

behavior that benefits another with the expectation that those benefits will be returned in the future

aggression

behavior whose purpose is to harm another

ultrasocial species

depending on cooperative effort to survive and needing social acceptance and support. Social attachment is a basic biological need. Studies of brain activity in socially isolated and socially rejected individuals show patterns identical to the experience of physical pain.

Internal attributions (also called dispositional attributions)

explain a person's behavior in terms of that person's preferences, beliefs, goals, or other qualities and characteristics. We make these attributions when we decide that a person's behavior was caused by his or her relatively enduring tendency to think, feel, or act in a particular way.

External attributions (also called situational attributions)

explain a person's behavior in terms of the situation or environment. We make these attributions when we decide that a person's behavior was caused by some temporary aspect of the situation in which it happened.

Social learning theory

explains how a prejudicial attitude can be spread and passed through generations as a learned stereotype. Parents, peers, teachers, television, movies, and other aspects of culture provide models of prejudice and discrimination that children learn and imitate. When prejudice and discrimination are displayed, they may be reinforced.

prisoner's dilemma

illustrates the risk of cooperation. mutual cooperation leads to a moderate benefit to both players, but if one player cooperators and the other one doesn't, the cooperator gets no benefit and the non-cooperator gets a large benefit

Phillip Zimbardo conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment

in the early 1970'sto examine how roles can become reality. In the study, 24 male students were randomly assigned to be guards or prisoners. Student prisoners received uniforms, stayed in cells, and were referred to only by number. Guards were given uniforms, handcuffs, keys, whistles, and billy clubs. They had offices and were free to enter and leave as they pleased. Most guards wore mirrored sunglasses to prevent the prisoners from observing social cues. The student guards were not given any specific training or instructions other than to maintain "law and order" and to behave in a way that would command respect of the prisoners. The purpose of the experiment was to observe how relationships between prisoners and guards developed over time... • Very quickly, the prisoners behaved passively. The guards began to act as if they had genuine power over the prisoners and taunted and harassed them. The prisoners later staged a rebellion, which was responded to by the guards with force. • Zimbardo terminated the experiment early at six days rather than two weeks. He was surprised at how fast average middle-class students transformed into their assigned roles. Zimbardo attributes many of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004 to the same situational factors that were at work in his Stanford Prison Experiment: roles, norms, and status hierarchy.

The peripheral route (heuristic persuasion)

involves decisions based on the attractiveness and expertise of the source; the number of arguments exposed to (but NOT the strength or quality of the arguments- e.g., a politician with a bigger campaign budget can afford more commercial time); and information about how other people respond to the message (e.g., "people love this product", "1 in 3 doctors recommend this"). The peripheral route takes advantage of the mere exposure effect, which refers to how simply becoming familiar with something or someone can change your attitude toward it (generally to a more favorable view). The person is responding to non-message cues.

The central route (systematic persuasion)

involves decisions based on the content of the message. Typically this involves appeals to logic and reason. The person considers persuasive arguments carefully and thoughtfully.

Social categorization

is a cognitive operation that leads people to divide the world automatically into categories of "us" and "them," both consciously and unconsciously. According to social identity theory, people usually think of their own group (the ingroup) favorably. The other group (the outgroup) is usually disliked and assumed to possess more undesirable traits. People are more inclined to like, trust, help, and cooperate with ingroup members than with outgroup members. According to this theory, the psychological forces leading to ingroup favoritism are so powerful that creating even an arbitrary distinction between "us" and "them" can lead to unconscious prejudice and discriminatory behavior. This saves people the effort of paying close attention to others and actively processing observations of the others' behavior... we just "know" they will be a certain way. This may lead us to behave in ways that elicit behavior from the outgroup that is consistent with the stereotype. People then regard the outgroup members' behavior as proof of the validity of the prejudice.

Physical attraction

is a major factor in first impressions. Physical attraction may be influenced by stereotypes about attractive people (e.g., that they possess more desirable characteristics- smarter, happier, "better"). In general, we want to be around more attractive people. There also appears to be a basic biological standard of physical beauty involving facial and body symmetry that is universal to all cultures and recognized even by very young children.

Similarity

is another factor in the development of liking. The more similar a stranger's attitudes are to one's own attitudes, the more likely the two people are to be attracted. The greater the similarity, the more probable that liking will endure. Similarity can involve personalities, attitudes, beliefs, values, ambitions, and abilities (e.g., level of education, religious background, ethnicity, intelligence, socioeconomic status).

groupthink

is another means by which decision making can go awry. It refers to the tendency of people who try to solve problems together to accept one another's information and ideas without subjecting them to critical analysis. Decisions are made that are not questioned logically. Groups can make poor decisions because group members are so concerned with preserving group cohesiveness that they fail to challenge each other's ideas and suggestions. So concurrence is emphasized at the expense of critical thinking in group decision-making. Can and has led to small and large-scale disaster (1986 space shuttle explosion, Bay of Pigs invasion, "Bully" movie- South Florida murder of a teen peer). This is very likely in cohesive groups whose members share similar attitudes. The group is often NOT unanimous, but no one is willing to step forward and challenge the decision. Research suggests that leaders who withhold their own opinions until late in the discussion, and openly encourage differing opinions, can help prevent groupthink.

Obedience

is compliance with an order from an authority figure (the tendency to do what authorities tell us to do simply because they tell us to do it). The most famous study of obedience (one of the most famous of all psychological studies) was done by Stanley Milgram, who sought to test the hypothesis that Americans would not follow orders to inflict pain on others.

Companionate love

is marked by very close friendship, mutual caring, liking, respect, and attraction. More valued in Eastern (collectivistic) culture for marriage (why we see many more "arranged" marriages in these cultures).

Diffusion of responsibility

is the diminished sense of responsibility to help that each person feels as the number of bystanders grows

Passionate love

is the intense, often sudden feeling of being "in love." It involves sexual attraction, a desire for mutual love and physical closeness, arousal, and a fear that the relationship will end. Highly valued in Western (individualistic) culture for marriage.

Deindividuation

is the loss of the sense of self that occurs when people immersed in a group literally become anonymous—their identities are unknown to others in the group. This is often the situation in crowds. attention is focused on external events and a high level of arousal is experienced. The members of the temporary group respond to external cues and immediate feelings and act on them without monitoring the appropriateness of their behavior. Group members may share a sense that in this limited circumstance, certain behaviors are permissible that would not otherwise be acceptable (e.g., rioting).

Infidelity

is the major contributor to the end of romantic relationships. Depending on the survey, 35-75% of men and 25-70% report cheating on their partners. So this is not a one-sided problem as many assume. Sexual infidelity ends relationships characterized by passion more readily than those with intimacy and commitment.

Altruism

is the motivation to increase another person's welfare without expectation of personal gain

The fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias)

is the strong tendency to interpret other people's behavior as caused by internal rather than external causes, even when the behavior can be completely explained by the situation. This bias is the most common attributional bias and a frequent source of error. This helps perpetuate discrimination because fault is attributed to the person, not the circumstances. Once a person makes this error he or she is likely to ignore the context of future behavior from the individual. Why? • Situational causes of behavior are often invisible. Situations are not as tangible or visible as behaviors, so it is all too easy to ignore them. • Even when situations are too obvious to ignore, we find it difficult to use the information we have about them. Situational attributions tend to be more complex and require more time and attention, which means that they are less likely to be made, especially about others.

outgroup

is usually disliked and assumed to possess more undesirable traits

Social loafing

reduced motivation and effort shown by individuals working in a group, occurs when responsibility for an outcome is spread among members of the group and some group members let other members work harder than they do (applies to work, competition, normal everyday behavior such as tipping or cleaning, social interaction, and even helping behavior). Social loafing is weaker in collectivist cultures than individualist cultures. It can be reduced by establishing individual accountability (make individual contributions identifiable).

Recategorization

reduces prejudice by shifting the categories of "us" and "them" so that the two groups are no longer distinct entities. Make the outgroup part of the ingroup.

bystander effect

refers to the decrease in offers of assistance that occurs as the number of bystanders increases

group

regular interaction among members, some type of emotional connection among group members, a common frame of reference, and some type of interdependence (lab partners families student and fan groups nations religions). In a group, individuals may feel, think, and act less from an individual point of view and more from a group point of view.

Realistic conflict theory

suggests that competition for scarce resources, such as good housing, jobs, and schools is a reason why prejudice arises. A classic experiment, the Robber's Cave study, showed how prejudice can be created from competition... A set of 11-year-old boys was divided into two groups at an overnight camp called Robber's Cave. The two groups competed for valued prizes over a period of time. Competition led to conflict and quickly escalated into prejudice and discrimination. These effects ended when the two groups no longer competed but cooperated for larger, mutually beneficial goals.

belief in a just world

the assumption that people get what they deserve (good things happen to good people; bad things happen to bad people). This belief contrasts with the assumption that untoward events can happen randomly and justice may not always prevail. The belief in a just world can shape reactions to violent crime and contribute to the practice of blaming the victim. This belief maintains discriminatory behavior.

self-serving bias (actor-observer effect)

the inclination to attribute one's failures to external causes and one's own successes to internal factors, but to assume the opposite for others (failures are internal and successes are external). As a result, you consider the negative actions of others as arbitrary and unjustified, but perceive your own negative actions as understandable and justifiable.

group polarization

the tendency of group members to take more extreme positions (in the same direction as the group's majority initial opinion) after discussions. The majority attitude intensifies over time. After a bit of group discussion, an initial opinion of, "That's a pretty good idea," becomes, "This is the greatest idea we've ever had!" This outcome may be especially likely when an intellectual issue is at stake, if the group's goal is to make a "correct" or task-oriented decision, when the issue requires judgments, or when a group is focused on harmony. Applies commonly to juries.

evolutionary theory

those couples among our ancestors who were more closely bonded to each other and their children were more likely to have offspring who survived. Evolutionary theorists propose that humans today are genetically predisposed not only to search for sex but also to fall in love and tend to their children. There are many reasons why certain people are viewed as potential mates whereas others are not. The characteristics associated with reproduction are likely to have been shaped by natural selection. According to evolutionary theorists... • Men look for certain physical attributes that signal fertility and health, such as a well-proportioned body and symmetrical features. Men tend to focus on physical attractiveness. • Women look for men who appear able to protect and nourish them and their children (as evidenced by having good earning potential). Women tend to focus on wealth and power. • When asked to rank different characteristics in order of how important they are in ideal mates, men and women valued some characteristics (such as kindness and intelligence) similarly, but did not have identical desires at the top of their lists. It has been argued that women seek characteristics in men that would direct resources to their children, whereas men seek characteristics in women that indicate high fertility.

Repeated contact

usually leads to a more positive evaluation of someone over time (related to the mere exposure effect).

Solomon Asch

where subjects were asked to make unambiguous judgments, indicating which of three lines on a card matched an original standard. The task was easy, and 7 subjects were asked one at a time to make their judgments aloud. Only the 6th subject was a real subject, the others (confederates) gave wrong answers...Asch wanted to see how often people conformed, and gave an answer they knew was wrong, just because everyone else did. He found that 75% conformed on at least one trial. Participants recognized answer was wrong but said something they didn't believe to gain social approval. Conformity was increased by larger group size but was decreased by the presence of just one non-conformist (dissenter- no longer unanimous).

jealousy

which can severely strain relationships. Interestingly, there are gender differences in how jealousy is most readily initiated. Males become significantly jealous of sexual infidelity, while females are made more jealous by emotional infidelity.

prejudice

which is a generally negative attitude or prejudgment toward members of a group. Prejudice includes not only beliefs and expectations (cognitive component, basically a stereotype) about the group but also an emotional component. Simply thinking about members of a group one is prejudiced about can produce strong feelings about them.

cognitive dissonance

which is accompanied by heightened arousal, arises. When attitudes and behaviors are inconsistent, then dissonance theory predicts we will be unconsciously motivated to alter one in order to be consistent, typically the attitude. Since behaviors cannot be taken back, and are difficult to change, we are more likely to change our attitudes instead.

mere exposure effect

which refers to how simply becoming familiar with something or someone can change your attitude toward it (generally to a more favorable view). The person is responding to non-message cues.

contact hypothesis

which says that increased contact between different groups will decrease prejudice between them. Increased contact serves three purposes... • Groups become aware of their similarities, which can enhance mutual attraction. • When stereotype-related views are met with enough inconsistent information or exceptions, those views can change. • Increased contact can shatter the illusion that the outgroup is homogeneous. Increased contact works best in certain situations, such as when working toward a shared goal and when all participants are deemed to be equal.

Attachment style is another way of thinking about different kinds of love relationships. The attachment style shown with a partner stems from the interaction pattern developed between parent and child...

• Adults who seek closeness and interdependence in relationships and are not worried about the possibility of the loss of the relationship (about 60 percent of a U.S. sample) have a secure style of attachment. • Adults who are uncomfortable with intimacy and closeness (about 25 percent of a U.S. sample) have an avoidant style of attachment. They structure their daily lives so as to avoid closeness. • Adults who simultaneously fear and want a relationship (about 10 percent of Americans) have an anxious-ambivalent style of attachment. They may become clingy early in relationships or may stalk partners after the end of relationships.

Several issues should be kept in mind regarding deception in psychology...

• Many of the pioneering researchers did not expect to cause psychological distress or harm. For example, Milgram did not initially expect participants to be willing to shock learners at the highest "voltage" levels, so he was not prepared to address issues involving the realization that "I just killed someone". Zimbardo did not expect healthy well-adjusted college students to become violent toward one another in a known experiment on roles. • Some psychological phenomena are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to study if the participant knows the true nature of the experiment. • Deception always runs the risk of distress, but the intensity of the risk and of the distress level can be managed in an ethical way. • Deception is permitted now only if it is crystal clear that the participants will not be harmed and that important knowledge will be gained from the study.

discrimination

• When prejudice influences behavior, it is called - negative or unfair behavior towards individuals from a specific group that arises from unjustified negative attitudes about that group.

Stanley Milgram

• like many people, was troubled over the Nazi war criminal defense "I was just following orders." He designed a landmark experiment to determine how often ordinary people will obey an authority figure, even if it means hurting another person. • His experiment consisted of 40 men from the local community recruited to participate in a psychology experiment, supposedly on the effects of punishment on learning. The men were given the role of "teacher" in the experiment, while a confederate was given the role of "learner." The teacher was seated before an apparatus that had 30 switches ranging from 15 to 450 volts, with labels of slight shock, danger: severe shock, XXX , etc. Although the apparatus looked and sounded real, it was fake. The learner was never shocked but acted and protested as if he was. • Psychiatrists expected that only 2% of individuals on a "pathological fringe" would deliver the maximum shock but Milgram found that 65% of the men administered all 30 levels of the shock to the point where they believed to be causing mortal injury to the learner. Even though they displayed considerable distress at shocking the learner, they still did it under direct command. 80% shocked the confederate past the point of screaming, complaining, and pleading.