Social Psychology Exam 2
Forewarning
A method of increasing attitude strength. Giving people a chance to develop a resistance to persuasion by reminding them that they might someday receive a persuasive message and allowing them to practice how they will respond to influence attempts. Seems to be effective when the message that is expected to follow attacks an attitude that we care about
just-world hypothesis
A tendency to make attributions based on the belief that the world is fundamentally just. That the outcomes people experience are fair
Understand how punishments and rewards can impact attitudes.
Although giving rewards may in many cases lead us to perform an activity more frequently, rewards may not always increase our liking for the activity. Harsh punishments that controls the behaviors may not change the persons atttitudes. Providing less punishment is more likely to lead the child to actually change their beliefs about their behavior.
Key recipient characteristics: use of spontaneous vs. thoughtful processing, personal relevance
Both can be effective. The students were told either that the new exam would begin before they graduated (high personal relevance) or that it would not begin until after they had already graduated ( low personal relevance)
Be able to describe the 6 shortcuts to persuasion (video linked on p. 187) and how they relate to different persuasive techniques.
Commitment and consistency Reciprocity Social proof Authority Liking Scarcity
Use the covariation model to analyze the consistency, consensus, and distinctiveness of someone's behavior to determine whether it would be perceived as caused by the situation or the person's disposition.
Covariation model predicts that we will most likely make external attributions when consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency are all high.
Group attribution error
Describes a tendency to make attributions generalizations about entire outgrouos based on a very small number of observations of individual members.
group-serving bias
Describes a tendency to make internal attributions about our in groups successes and external attributions about their setbacks and to make the opposite pattern of attributions about our outgroups
cognitive dissonance
Discomfort that occurs when we behave in ways that we see as inconsistent such as when we fail to live up to our own expectations.
Contrast the beliefs an entity theorist would have about a person compared to an incremental theorist.
Entity- tend to believe that peoples traits are fundamentally stable and incapable of change Incremental- believes that personalities change a lot over time and are more likely to make situational attributions for events.
recency effect
Information that comes later is given more weight although much less common than primacy effects may occur.
Describe ways a person can avoid being persuaded
Is to help the person create a strong attitude. Such as forewarning and inoculation can help increase attitude strength and reside subsequent persuasion
Give examples and recognize ways someone can reduce cognitive dissonance.
Negative feelings we experience when there is inconsistency between our attitudes and our behavior especially when the behavior threatens our perceptions of ourselves as good people. Reduce- change behavior. 2- make negative behaviors seem less important 3- create a new consonant cognition to counteract the dissonant cognition. Changes beliefs to be more in line with behavior
Determine whether positive or negative information will be more rapidly processed - and why this is beneficial.
Negative. Begin with positive characteristics when meeting someone and bring up negatives later Negative info tends to elicit more physiological arousal, draw greater attention and exert greater impact on our judgments and impressions of people
Thoughtful processing (systematic processing)
Occurs when we think about how the message relates to our own beliefs and goals and involves our careful consideration of whether the persuasion attempt is valid or invalid Helps us develop strong attitudes
Understand when psychological reactance may happen and how, as a communicator, you could avoid this reaction.
Parents tell teen she cannot smoke. Teen may feel that they're not trusted and can make their own decisions. They experience reactance and are more likely to smoke.
Describe why it is difficult to figure out if someone is lying and what cues are most consistent in those who are lying.
People are only moderately good at detecting deception.
foot-in-the-door technique
Refers to a persuasion attempt in which we first get the target to accept a rather minor request and then we ask for a larger request.
need for cognition
Refers to the tendency to think carefully and fully about our experiences including the social situations we encounter. These people tend to process information more thoughtfully m
Contrast how high self-monitors and low self-monitors with the same attitude might react in a given social situation
Self-monitoring refers to individual differences in the tendency to attend to social cues and to adjust one's behavior to one's social environment. High self monitors are those who attempt to blend into the social situation in order to be liked. low self monitors are those who are less likely to do so.
Describe how self-perception can be influenced by behaviors (rather than behaviors being influenced by self-perception).
Social situation causes the behavior? Becoming more convinced about an argument you're making as you hear yourself making it.
Key message characteristics: one- vs. two-sided perspectives, fear appeal, call to action, message strength, source expertise
Source expertise- The message was supposedly prepared either by an expert source ( the Carnegie commission on higher education which was chaired by a professor of education at Princeton or by a non expert source( a class at a local high school) Message strength- the message contained either strong arguments (persuasive data and statistics about the positive effects of the exams at other universities) or weak arguments ( relying only on individual questions and personal options)
Determine how these interpretations may change if the success/failure was stable vs. unstable.
Success or failure can be seen as coming from either personal causes (ability and motivation) or situational causes (luck and task difficulty)
Attitude Strength
The importance of an attitude, as assessed by how quickly it comes to mind. Some strong attitudes may guide our actions completely out of our awareness. Attitude strength is determined by cognitive accesibilitity.
halo effect
The influence of a global positive evaluation of a person on perceptions of their specific traits. If we get an initially positive general impression of someone we often see their specific traits more positively.
casual attribution
The process of trying to determine the causes of people's behavior, with the goal of learning about their personalities
Sleeper effect
The sleeper effect occurs when we initially discount the message given by an untrustworthy or nonexpert communicator but, overtime we remember the content of the message and forget its source. The result is an attitude change in the direction of the initially discounted message. Attitude change that occurs over time.
psychological reactance
The strong emotional response that we experience when we feel that our freedom of choice is being taken away when we expect that we should have choice
self-serving bias
The tendency to attribute our successes to ourselves and our failures to others and the situation
Given the same situation, describe how you might attribute your own behaviors vs. someone else's (hint: think about fundamental attribution error vs. actor-observer bias).
We identify more with the perpetrator then our attributions of responsibility to the victim will increase
Understand how the order in which we receive information may impact our perceptions of others (hint: think primacy effect)
We pay more attention to information that comes first and also because initial information colors how we perceive information that comes later
Understand how verbal vs. nonverbal information impacts our perception of others
We rely on nonverbal behavior in our initial judgments of others
actor-observer bias
We tend to make more personal attributions for the behavior of others than we do for ourselves and to make more situational attributions for our own behavior than for the behavior of others
insufficient justification
When the social situation actually causes our behavior, but we do not realize that the social situation was the cause. Occurs when the threat or reward is actually sufficient to get the person to engage in or to avoid a behavior
Attrbution
Whenever we are curious about why people including ourselves behave in ways that they do. The process of assigning causes to our behaviors.
corresondence bias
Which occurs when we attribute behaviors to people's internal characteristics even in heavily constrained situations
Trait ascription bias
a tendency for people to view their own personality, beliefs, and behaviors as more variable than those of others
nonverbal behavior
any type of communication that does not involve speaking, including facial expressions, body language, touching, voice patterns, and interpersonal distance
Identify an attitude as well as an attitude object. Pay close attention to the definition of an attitude (hint: it is a consistent evaluation of an attitude object).
attitudes- evaluations including those about family, friends, political figures, abortion rights, terrorism, preferences for music and much more.
self-serving attributions
attributions that help us meet our desires to see ourselves positively
door-in-the-face technique
begins with a large request that is likely to be turned down, followed by a smaller request that is likely to be accepted
central traits
characteristics that have a very strong influence on our impressions of others. Leads us to make inferences about other traits that might not have been mentioned. 2- important central traits also color our perceptions of the other traits that surround them.
attitude consistency
for any given attitude object, the ABCs of affect, behavior, and cognition are normally in line with each other thus predicts that our attitudes are likely to guide behavior
Inoculation
involves building up defenses against persuasion by mildly attacking the attitude position(because everyone is doing it and it looks cool)
subliminal advertising
occurs when a message, such as an advertisement or another image of a brand, is presented to the consumer without the person being aware that a message has been presented
bait-and-switch technique
occurs when someone advertises a product at a very low price. When you visit to the store to buy the product, however, you learn that the product you wanted at the low price has been sold out
defensive attribution
occurs when we make attributions which defend ourselves from the notion that we could be the victim of an unfortunate outcome, and often also that we could be held responsible as the victim.
self-handicapping
occurs when we make statements or engage in behaviors that help us create a convenient external attribution for potential failure1- engaging in a form of preemptive self serving attribution all bias 2- to behave in ways that make success less likely
low-ball technique
persuasive technique in which the seller of a product starts by quoting a low sales price and then mentions all of the add-on costs once the customer has agreed to purchase the product. Backing out on a commitment seems wrong and may threaten self esteem even if the commitment was obtained in an unethical way.
Determine how favorably a message will be received depending on the following variables: 1) personal relevance of the listener, 2) expertise of the communicator, 3) argument strength of the communicator.
pursuassion occurs if the communicator induces
attitude
refers to our relatively enduring evaluation of something, where the something is called the attitude object which might be a person, a product or a social group
pre-giving technique
relies on the norm of reciprocity. In this case, a charitable organization might mail you a small, unsolicited gift, followed by a request for a monetary donation
postdecisional dissonance
the feeling of regret that may occur after we make an important decision. However the principles of dissonance predict that once you make your decision you will convince yourself it was right.
person perception
the process of learning about other people—and our brains are designed to help us judge others efficiently
primacy effect
the tendency for information that we learn first to be weighted more heavily than is information that we learn later
unrealistic optimism
the tendency to be overly positive about the likelihood that negative things will occur to us and that we will be able to effectively cope with them if they do
positive attributional style
ways of explaining events that are related to high self-esteem and a tendency to explain the negative events they experience by referring to external, unstable, and specific qualities
Spontaneous processing (Heuristic processing)
we accept a persuasion attempt because we focus on whatever is most obvious or enjoyable, without much attention to the message itself
situational attribution
when we decide that a person's behavior was caused by some temporary aspect of the situation in which it happened
personal attribution
when we decide that the behavior was caused primarily by the person
fundamental attribution error
when we tend to overestimate the role of person factors and overlook the impact of situations, we are making a mistake that social psychologists have called this term
self-perception
when we use our own behavior as a guide to help us determine our own thoughts and feelings Blaming the situation for the behavior allows a person to avoid blaming themselves.
Overjustification
when we view our behavior as caused by the situation, leading us to discount the extent to which our behavior was actually caused by our own interest in it
covariation principle
which states that a given behavior is more likely to have been caused by the situation if that behavior covaries (or changes) across situations.