Psychology Chapter 14

Foot-in-the-door technique

A method for inducing compliance in which a small request is followed by a larger request. (harder to remove oneself from a situation once he or she has begun)

Groupthink

A process in which group members are influenced by cohesiveness and a dynamic leader to ignore external realities as they make decisions.

Social perception

A subfield of social psychology that studies the ways in which we form and modify impressions of others.

Evaluation apprehension

Concern that others are evaluating our behavior.

Central route

Inspires thoughtful consideration of arguments and evidence.

People with high self-esteem and low social anxiety are...

More likely to resist social pressure.

Conclusion of the Asch Study

Seventy five percent f the participants agreed with the majority's wrong answer at least once.

Commitment

The decision to maintain a relationship.

First-shift rule

The group tends to adopt the decision that reflects the first shift in opinion expressed by any group member.

Attribution

A belief concerning why people behave in a certain way.

Social cognitive theory

A cognitively oriented learning theory in which observational learning and person variables such as values and expectancies play major roles in individual differences.

Forewarning creates...

A kind of psychological immunity to arguments.

Fear appeal

A type of persuasive communication that influences behavior on the basis of arousing fear instead of rational analysis of the issues.

Parental investment model

A woman's appeal is more strongly connected with her age and health, both of which are markers of reproductive capacity. The value of men as reproducers is more intertwined with factors that contribute to a stable environment for child rearing such as, social standing and reliability.

Who discovered a way to make people pay attention to impressions occurring after the first encounter?

Abraham Luchins

Sigmund Freud's belief of aggression

Aggression is a natural and instinctive reaction to the frustrations of daily life.

Social-cognitive perspective of aggression

Aggressive skills are mainly acquired by observation of other people acting aggressively.

A more effective way to encourage others to embrace your views is by...

Agreement and praise.

What are the two way Luchins accomplished making people pay attention to more than the first encounter?

Allowing time to pass between presentations (recency effect) and asking participants to avoid making quick judgments and to weigh all the evidence.

Situational attribution

An assumption that a person's behavior is determined by external circumstances such as the social pressure found in a situation.

Dispositional attribution

An assumption that a person's behavior is determined by internal causes such as personal traits.

Prejudice

An attitude toward a group that leads people to evaluate members of that group negatively.

Romantic love

An intense, positive emotion that involves sexual attraction, feelings of caring, and the belief that one is in love.

Factors that lead to deindividuation

Anonymity, diffusion of responsibility, arousal due to noise and crowding, focus on emerging group norms rather than one's own values.

Truth-wins scheme

As more information is provided and opinions are discussed the group comes to recognize that one approach is objectively correct.

Peripheral route

Associates objects with positive or negative cues.

Attitude-discrepant behavior

Behavior consistent with an attitude that may have the effect of modifying an attitude.

Factors that increase the tendency to conform

Belonging to a collectivist rather than an individualistic society, the desire to be liked by other members of the group (unless you value being right more), low self-esteem, social shyness, lack of familiarity with the task.

Gustave Le Bon

Branded mobs and crowds as irrational, resembling a "beast with many heads."

Social learning

Children acquire some attitudes from other people, especially their parents.

Intimacy

Close acquaintance and familiarity; a characteristic of a relationship in which partners share their innermost feelings.

Selective exposure

Deliberately seeking and attending to information that is consistent with one's attitudes.

Why do groups tend to take greater risks?

Diffusion of responsibility (blame will not rest on one person).

What are the two types of attribution?

Dispositional and situational

What are the sources of prejudice?

Dissimilarity, social conflict, social learning, information processing, social categorization.

Selective avoidance

Diverting one's attention from information that is inconsistent with one's attitudes.

Attitudes

Enduring behavioral and cognitive tendencies that are expressed by evaluating particular people, places, or things with favor or disfavor.

Stereotyping

Erroneous assumptions that all members of a group share the same traits or characteristics.

Social loafing

Failure to make a significant effort because others have made or are making such an effort, when the person believes he or she will not be found out and held accountable.

Characteristics of Groupthink that contribute to flawed decisions

Feelings of invulnerability, group's belief in its rightness, discrediting information contrary to the group's decision, pressures on group members to conform, and stereotyping members of the out-group.

Most often conforming to social norms is...

Good because they promote comfort and survival.

Majority-wins scheme

Group arrives at the decision that was initially supported by the majority.

Factors that influence conformity

Group size and social support.

Attraction-similarity hypothesis

Holds that people tend to develop romantic relationships with people who are similar to themselves in physical attractiveness and other traits.

Discrimination

Hostile behavior directed against groups toward whom one is prejudiced.

Lack of social comparison

In Milgram's studies "teachers" did not have the opportunity to compare their ideas and feelings with others in the same situation.

Perception of legitimate authority

In Milgram's studies the experimenters appeared to be highly legitimate authority figures.

Effort justification

In cognitive-dissonance theory, the tendency to seek justification (acceptable reasons) for strenuous efforts.

Cognitive anchors

Initial attitudes act as this...

Why is the attribution theory important?

It leads us to perceive others either as purposeful actors or as victims of circumstances.

Two-thirds majority scheme

Juries tend to convict defendants when two-thirds of the jury initially favors conviction.

Implicit social norms

Known but not written.

When we are in a good mood we are...

Less likely to evaluate the situation carefully; therefore, increasing the likelihood of persuasion.

Explicit social norms

Made into rules.

Rules that govern group decision making

Majority-wins scheme, truth-wins scheme, two-thirds majority scheme, first-shift rule.

Factors involved in helping behavior

Observers more likely to help when in a good mood, people who are more empathetic are more likely to help, bystanders may not help unless they believe that an emergency exists, observers must assume the responsibility to act (crowds may experience diffusion of responsibility), observers must know what to do, observers more likely to help people they know, and observers are more likely to help people who are similar to themselves.

Inaccessibility of values

People are more likely to act in accordance with their attitudes when their attitudes are readily available, or accessible (not clouded by emotions of a situation).

Vested interest

People are more likely to act on their attitudes when they have a interest in the outcome.

Accessibility

People are more likely to behave in accord with their attitudes when they are accessible - that is, when they are brought to mind.

Milgram studies conclusion of aggression

People will act aggressively when influenced by other people to do so.

Solomon Asch (1950s)

Performed a conformity study.

Information processing

Prejudices act as cognitive filters through which we view the social world. Our feelings and reactions toward others may be biased by these perceptions.

What are the factors that contribute to social perception?

Primacy and recency effects and the attribution theory.

What is a reason people tend to have partners from the same background?

Propinquity. We tend to live among people who are similar to us in background, and we therefore come into contact with them more often.

Who established the Triangular Model of Love?

Robert Sternberg

Social decision schemes

Rules for predicting the final outcome of group decision making on the basis of the members' initial positions.

Why do people obey the commands of others even when they are required to perform immoral tasks?

Socialization, lack of social comparison, perception of legitimate authority, the foot-in-the-door technique, inaccessibility of values, buffers between the perpetrator and the victim.

What are factors that effect the likelihood that we can predict behavior from attitudes?

Specificity, strength of attitudes, vested interest, accessibility.

Strength of attitudes

Strong attitudes are more likely to determine behavior than weak attitudes.

Passion

Strong romantic and sexual feelings.

Polarization

Taking an extreme position.

Social influence

The area of social psychology that studies the ways in which people influence the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of others.

Fundamental attribution error

The assumption that others act predominantly on the basis of their dispositions, even when there is evidence suggesting the importance of their situations.

Social psychology

The field of psychology that studies the nature and causes of behavior and mental processes in social situations.

Consummate love

The ideal form of love within the triangular model of love, which combines passion, intimacy, and commitment.

A-B problem

The issue of how well we can predict behavior on the basis of attitudes.

What are the peripheral factors in persuasion?

The messenger, the context of the message, and the audience.

What is the central factor in persuasion?

The nature of the message.

Social facilitation

The process by which a person's performance is increased when other members of a group engage in similar behavior.

Deindividuation

The process by which group members may discontinue self-evaluation and adopt group norms and attitudes.

Attribution theory

The processes by which people draw conclusions about the factors that influence one another's behavior.

Diffusion of responsibility

The spreading or sharing of responsibility for a decision or behavior within a group.

Actor-observer effect

The tendency to attribute our own behavior to situation factors but to attribute the behavior of others to dispositional factors.

Bystander effect

The tendency to avoid helping other people in emergencies when other people are also present and apparently capable of helping.

Primacy effect

The tendency to evaluate others in terms of first impressions.

Audiences tend to believe arguments that appear to run counter to...

The vested interests of the communicator.

Elaboration likelihood model

The view that persuasive messages are evaluated (elaborated) on the basis of central and peripheral cues.

Cognitive-dissonance theory

The view that we are motivated to make our cognitions or beliefs consistent with each other and with our behavior.

Social conflict

There is often social and economic conflict between people of different races and religions.

Altruism

Unselfish concern for the welfare of others.

Triangular model of love

View that love involves combinations of three components: intimacy, passion, and commitment.

Dissimilarity

We are apt to like people who share our attitudes.

Social-cognitive theorists belief of aggression

We are not likely to act aggressively unless we believe that we are not likely to act aggressively unless we believe that aggression is appropriate under the circumstances and likely to be reinforced.

Socialization

We are socialized from early childhood to obey authority figures, such as parents and teachers.

Specificity

We can better predict specific behavior from specific attitudes than from global attitudes.

Reciprocity

We tend to be more open, warm, and helpful when we are interacting with people who seem to like us.

Social categorization

We tend to divide our social world into "us" and "them."

Buffers between the perpetrator and victim

When the person administering the punishment is in closer proximity to the victim the administrator is less likely to comply.

Conformity

When we change our behavior to adhere to social norms.

Social norms

Widely accepted expectations concerning social behavior.

Stanley Milgram

A Yale University psychologist who conducted a set of experiments known as the Milgram studies on obedience in which a teacher was believed to be administering painful shocks to a student while be observed by an experimenter with authority over the experiment.

Attraction

In social psychology, an attitude of liking or disliking (negative attraction).

Recency effect

The tendency to evaluate others in terms of the most recent impression.

Self-serving bias

The tendency to view one's successes as stemming from internal factors and on'e failures as stemming from external factors.