Social Psych Final

Self-awareness

A self-conscious state in which attention focuses on oneself, it makes people more sensitive to their own attitudes and dispositions (more likely to follow rules, changes behavior) ex. kids didn't take more candy than allowed when there was a mirror in front of them

Self-complexity

A person's perceived knowledge about themselves High self-complexity: more identities/domains with different self-concepts, stress doesn't predict illness because if something bad happens in one domain they can turn to other self-concepts (less weight on each domain and self-concept)

Interdependence in close relationships

A situation in which each person's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors influence those of other people Interdependence of behavior (interacting with and influencing each other), cognition (mutual understanding of close intimacy), affect (potential for strong feelings) Behavior: people divided money between themselves and a best friend, friendly acquaintance, or stranger, other person won't know their role in the division, more selfish with stranger (greater likelihood that you give more to friend than yourself), no effect of other person's knowledge (we treat close others as if their resources were to some extent our own) Cognition: rate traits for how well they describe self, spouse, and liked celebrity, when that trait came up later on in task they were faster to categorize it if it was something both them and their spouse were rated high on Affect: cycles of self-disclosure and empathic replies lead to feeling not just understood but accepted, valued, and esteemed, partner's esteem for you becomes like your own self-esteem, your own well-being comes to depend on your partner's well-being

Genes and natural selection

A unit of heredity which is transferred from a parent to her offspring, and determines some characteristic of the offspring Natural selection: the evolutionary process by which heritable traits that best enable organisms to survive and reproduce in particular environments are passed to ensuing generations Genes that are associated with greater individual fitness are expected to increase in frequency (people who exist in future generations are considered evolutionary successes)

Self-regulation

Ability to control or influence own behavior, thoughts, and feelings according to goals or standards, involves being able to set goals, monitoring one's behavior to ensure that it is in line with those goals, and having the willpower to persist until goals are reached (some people are motivated by failing or just give up) Ex. self-defining goal vs. non-self-defining goal (self-defining goal: goal that is related to an outcome of the self - be good psychologist vs. fix flat tire), if the first task is related to a self-defining goal and the second task is related to the same self-defining goal then the first failure is motivating for the second task (chance to redeem yourself), if the second task is related to a non-self-defining goal the person is still ruminating over the failure in the first task and this rumination impairs performance and persistence in the second task

Given that people are complex, why do we view them as consistent?

Accessibility: people remember things related to the core self and not everything at once, they don't recognize it Need for consistency: people expect others to be consistent, they reinterpret it to make sense Situational attribution: say that it was the situation that made them do it not their personality

Catharsis

Acting aggressively will reduce aggressive emotions Ex. punching bad + rumination, punching bag + fitness, control (no punching bag), administered loud noise back to someone, doing nothing at all more effectively reduced stress than did blowing off steam by hitting the bag (participants in rumination condition were angrier and most aggressive), expressing hostility online leads to more anger, more hostility after watching sporting event than before

How message is communicated (channel of communication)

Active experience or passive reception: mere repetition and rhyming increase fluency and believability, experience-based attitudes are more confident, more stable, and less vulnerable to attack (consumer-generated ads, viral videos, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds) If you want to persuade someone who disagrees with you it's better to speak to them, but messages are best comprehended and recalled when written (difficult messages were most persuasive when written) Personal vs. media influence: personal contact persuades people (people who saw pics of their friends voting on Facebook were more likely to vote), people who received personal contacts as well as the media campaign changed the most Two-step flow of communication: the process by which media influence often occurs through opinion leaders, who in turn influence others (doctors decide what drugs to favor through personal contact)

How can attitudes better predict behavior?

Aggregation: if you aggregate across attitudes then you can better predict behavior like in baseball with batting average Compatibility: how similar are the attitude and behavior measures (didn't ask if they were escorted with a white man and were wearing nice clothes, attitude toward birth control vs. birth control pills vs. birth control pill use during next 2 years) Recent reflection: talking about affirmative action/sex discrimination in jury trial Personal experience: lived in public housing Self-awareness: don't cheat/work past bell if there is a mirror in front of you Strength of attitude Individual differences: age, self-monitoring, need for cognition Situational constraints: (attitudes: need to use implicit measures or bogus pipeline, behavior: ability to carry out behavior - far from gym/don't have time even though you have certain attitudes towards health/fitness/going to the gym, attitudes and behavior: social norms)

Social learning theory

Aggression is learned not only by experiencing firsthand payoffs but also by watching others and observing the consequences of how aggression influences them Bandura's Bobo doll experiment: nursery school children, watched aggressive adult model, children taken to another room with attractive toys but after 2 minutes they are told they can't play with them (makes child frustrated), child taken to new room with many toys including Bobo doll and mallet, those not exposed to aggressive adult model rarely displayed aggressive play or talk, but those exposed to adult model picked up the mallet and attacked Bobo doll (same effects with filmed model or aggressive cartoon) Follow up: no consequence (nothing happened to adult in film), model rewarded (adult was rewarded by another adult in film), model punished (adult was punished by another adult in film), less aggression in model punished condition

Aversive racism

Anxiety about appearing prejudiced, apprehension about interacting with out-groups Ex. white college students were asked to make hiring recommendations for white vs. black job candidates, either had strong, weak, or marginal credentials, race bias only emerged when they have marginal credentials (blacks were recommended 20% less, when there is ambiguity this prejudice emerges), college admissions decisions: white and black applicants, grade and SAT scores, either were both good, both bad, or 1 good and 1 bad, only a race bias when 1 was good and 1 was bad (blacks were rejected more than whites, participants placed more weight on categories blacks didn't do well in to justify their decision)

How can persuasion be resisted?

Attitude inoculation: exposing people to weak attacks upon their attitudes so that when stronger attacks come, they will have refutations available Ex. 7th graders were taught to respond to advertisements with counterarguments (acted in role plays in which, after being called "chicken" for not taking a cigarette, they answered with statements like "I'd be a chicken if I smoked just to impress you), inoculated students were half as likely to begin smoking Ex. children fail to grasp persuasive intent of commercials, trust TV advertising indiscriminately, badger parents for advertised products, children were inoculated by viewing ads and discussing them (after viewing a toy ad, they were immediately given it and challenged to make it do what they had just seen in the commercial, breeding a more realistic understanding of commercials) Moral vs. practical arguments

Cialdini's 6 principles of persuasion

Authority (credibility), liking (celebrity endorsements, cognitive consistency to like things that are liked by people we like), social proof (allow others to validate how to think, feel, and act, McDonalds - all these people can't be wrong, everybody likes our product), scarcity (prize what's scarce - exclusive/one-time offer, selling fast), consistency (honor public commitments), reciprocity (obliged to repay in kind what they've received) Consistency ex. foot-in-the-door technique (first male small request and then make large one, more likely to allow men to go through house if preceded by asking about products, small sign saying be a safe driver and then large ugly billboard on lawn saying drive carefully, works with changing topics like petition favoring keeping California beautiful and then large ugly billboard), low balling technique (obtain agreement with a request but then increase the size of the request by revealing hidden costs, students agreed to participate in study but not informed that it took place at 7am, nobody backed out if told later), people try to behave consistently with their commitments (Gordon's restaurant in Chicago, top saying please call us if you change your plans and instead ask will you please call us if you change your plans, no-show rate dropped from 30% to 10%) Reciprocity ex. confederate behaves as likable vs. non-likable (brings you coke or not, then asks you to buy raffle tickets for him), effect of favor is stronger than effect of liking), that's-not-all technique (make request but before answer sweeten the deal like you are doing a favor so they need to repay you), door-in-the-face technique (real request proceed by unreasonably large request that is rejected, real request seems like a concession that needs to be repaid in kind - well will you at least do this)

Who is attractive?

Average faces are attractive: when you make composite faces (averaging across many faces/putting them together) the face gets more attractive, took unflattering pictures of beauty pageant finalists and averaging across all 22 led to attractive face (produces desirable features like symmetry and smooth skin, familiarity, not mere exposure effect because there was no difference if you have seen the face before or not) Liking leads to perceived attractiveness: teacher saw video taped interview, half of teachers in interview were warm, pleasant, agreeable, enthusiastic while other half were cold, rigid, intolerant, distrustful, rated likability, physical appearance, mannerisms, accent (the likable teacher was rated as more attractive)

Post-conscious automaticity

Aware of stimulus but not of the psychological effects Ex. self reference effect or use traits to make impression of someone (memorize traits and then read story, infer good or bad based on traits memorized before), good vs. bad picture puts you in a certain mood and that affects how you respond to someone asking rudely for paper, salience effects (who you say contributed/guided/led the convo more depends on where you sat)

Jigsaw classroom

Behavior affects attitudes Highly competitive school environment, blacks came from lower quality schools so they were doomed to fail, perpetuated stereotypes that blacks were lazy and stupid and that whites were teachers pets, showoffs, and assertive, made students in groups work together to complete a task and after 6 weeks they performed better and liked each other more

Why does media viewing affect behavior? How does aggression in the media affect our thinking?

Behavior: violent media arouses (interpret things differently), disinhibits (get used to violence so it isn't surprising anymore), evokes imitation Thinking: desensitization, altered perceptions/view of world (think violence is more likely), cognitive priming (interpret things differently, more hostile explanations for others' behaviors)

Self-monitoring

Being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and adjusting one's performance to create the desired impression High: have different friends across different domains, act differently for different groups of people/in different situations, aware of how others view them, have friends based on external features (looks, status), less consistent/more flexible, social adjustment function (not self-expressive or knowledge function) If asked to list their thoughts about gay couples, those low in self-monitoring simply express what they think, regardless of the attitudes of their anticipated audience High self-monitoring could result in dishonest behavior worthy of a con artist

Spotlight effect, illusion of transparency

Belief that others are paying more attention to our appearance and behavior than they really are Ex. American Eagle sweatshirt: 40% were sure the observers would remember what the shirt said, but only 10% actually did Illusion of transparency: the illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily read by others

Instinct for aggression

Believing aggression is a natural instinct Evolutionarily, aggression can be adaptive: helps animals gain resources, helps mothers defend offspring, help males intimidate/eliminate male rivals for reproduction Developmental perspective: 4-7 month olds show angry facial expressions, 1-3 year olds display physical aggression to obtain main goals (most people are more physically aggressive at this time in their lives), toddlers resort to physical aggression 25% of the time when aggravated, aggression decreases from early elementary years onwards Ex. sex differences emerge with age (preschool/elementary school: boys are physical, girls are verbal and indirect, early adolescence: boys are physical, girls are indirect, both are verbal, adulthood: early experiences predict adult aggression), in heterosexual relationships women are more likely to use physical aggression and men are more likely to inflict serious injury, but being provoked matters more than your sex Criticisms: doesn't explain why there are individual differences among people, doesn't account for variation across cultures (Iroquois before vs. after White invaders), circular (humans are aggressive because their aggressive instinct, and we know they have an aggressive instinct because they're so aggressive)

Self reference effect

Better memory if we think about words in terms of if they relate to us (self relevant, semantic/meaning, phonemic/rhyming, structural)

Gilbert's 3-stage model of attribution

Categorize behavior —> dispositional —> situational (controlled) Ex. rate how anxious the woman and situation is, either told they are talking about sexual topics or normal activities, under cognitive load or not, those not under cognitive load rated according to topic but those under high cognitive load made dispositional attributions This is actually goal-dependent not automatic Ex. either told they need to figure out how anxiety provoking the situation is or how anxious the person is, when under high cognitive load they rated based on their goals New: categorize behavior —> situational —> dispositional (controlled)

Two paths to persuasion

Central route: occurs when interested people focus on arguments and respond with favorable thoughts (careful examination of arguments) Peripheral route: occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues like attractiveness (use heuristics or rely on peripheral cues)

Processing faces vs. objects

Certain processes only work when faces are right side up, people may know they are being watched and thus act in a certain way that isn't true to how they would really act, people can react to you watching them, you can compare yourself to others and ask if you should be doing what they are doing, people have intentions, can't verify states or traits of people

Social influence

Change behavior based on social environment/conformity pressures Ex. Asch study: which of 3 lines matched the original line in length, 6/7 so other people answer before him, first 2 trials everyone answers the same, next 12 trials everyone says same wrong answer, nobody conformed on all 12 trials, 26% never conformed, 74% conformed on at least 1 trial, the average person conformed on 32% of trials, adding a dissenter decreased conformity, adding more people increased conformity (increases until 7 and then is steady and then decreases around 15)

Do attitudes predict behavior?

Chinese couple go to restaurants/hotels with white man and gets seated, call later to ask if they would accept Chinese guests and only 1 said yes, people say cheating is bad and yet do it People were presented with an appealing task with a possible $30 prize and a dull task with no rewards, they had to do one of the tasks and assign a second participant to the other, only 1/20 believed that assigning the appealing task with the reward to themselves was the more moral thing to do, yet 80% did so A man that was anti-abortion changed his behavior when an unintended pregnancy affected him

How attitudes are learned

Classical conditioning (Pavlov's dog - pair a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus that has a unconditioned response so that the neutral stimulus becomes conditioned and leads to conditioned response: food —> saliva, bell —> saliva) Ex. can condition fear: pair shock with rat so seeing rat leads to fear, parent's negative attitude toward minority —> child upset, minority —> child upset Mere exposure: liking increased with more exposure to Chinese character (increased for both positive and negative primed faces) Instrumental conditioning: reward and punishment Social learning: agree with opinions of people you admire like celebrities, person hits Bobo doll and is either punished, rewarded, or nothing happens, they only don't do it if they were punished Self-perception: inferring your feelings/attitudes based on external cues/behaviors if internal cues are ambiguous, eating means you are hungry, smiling means you found it funny/are happy

Self-esteem

Confidence in one's worth/abilities Those with low self-esteem are slower and less confident in choosing self-descriptive adjectives, uncertain about themselves (slower/hesitant to describe personality) Can help improve performance (if you think you are good at math then you will most likely do well in it), but those whose self-esteem was boosted did worse on exams (if I am great then why study) Those with low self-esteem take joy in others' misfortunes (when someone sang out of tune on talent show) People with low self-esteem are more likely to blame themselves or give up rather than blame something else/the situation Those with low self-esteem were more likely to be depressed Those with high self-esteem are more likely to be obnoxious, interrupt, and talk at people rather than with them (can cross into narcissism - aggressive after receiving negative feedback, faster to associate positive words with themselves)

Controlled vs. automatic processing

Controlled: intentional, effortful, explicit, conscious, reflective Automatic: unintentional, effortful, implicit, without awareness, involuntary, uncontrollable

Correlational vs. experimental research

Correlational: shows relationship between two variables (those with low self-esteem were more likely to be depressed, disgust = less aggression) Experimental: infers causality (IV is what you are manipulating like video game type - violent or non-violent, DV is what you are measuring like aggression or how helpful someone is)

Group definition and types

Definitions don't always converge, but there are common qualities in them: 2 or more individuals and they have some relationship among them Primary: intimate (family) Social groups: public settings, socially oriented (teams, greek life) Associations (concerts, other spontaneous gatherings) Social categories (gender, ethnicity, religion, son, brother, catholic)

Self-discrepancy theory

Different emotions are expressed based on what aspects of one's self-knowledge are salient, actual self (how you actually are), ideal self (who you desire to be), ought self (who you should be, responsibilities, duties), can change emotions by making one more salient Actual-ought discrepancy makes you sad in a high energy kind of way (stress, anxious) Actual-ideal discrepancy makes you sad in a low energy kind of way (dejected, upset)

Attitude measurements

Direct: self-report (social desirability or may not want to reveal), bogus pipeline (pretend lie detector test to get them to tell the truth) Indirect: physiological measures (skin response, EEG, EMG), subtle behaviors (eye contact, how many floor tiles have been changed to find out most popular exhibit), latency measures (reaction time - faster to categorize a word as good when it follows a good word and same with bad words, primed by word cancer = faster to say that crime is a bad thing and slower to say that candy is a good thing, picture of black person preceded by asking if crime is good or bad = perceive black as bad if faster to say crime is bad), IAT

Attitudes functions

Ego defensive: allows us to put someone else down so we feel better Value expressive: allows us to express our values and identities Knowledge: allows us to have stable coherent attitudes about the world Social adjustment: allows us to form relationships Utilitarian/instrumental: reward and punishment for how we should behave (run from predators) Ex. high self-monitors who serve social adjustment functions are more persuaded by image advertisements rather than informational

Goal-dependent automaticity

Mental action is uncontrollable, involuntary, effortless, but it only happens if we have conscious intention/have a goal in mind Ex. typing or driving, spontaneous trait inference (need to have the goal of reading the sentence, when given cue about trait, verb, actor, or no cue, you better remember the sentence from the train because we automatically make trait inferences)

How behavior affects attitudes: competing theories

Ex. saying becomes believing, dislike those we hurt (harming an innocent victim leads to justifying the cruel behavior), desegregation led to changing attitudes, after students acted repeatedly as if they were the targets of a Russian attack, they came to fear the Russians, prisoners persuade themselves of what they did wrong Self-presentation theory = assumes that for strategic reasons we express attitudes that make us appear consistent Cognitive dissonance theory: when attitude and behavior don't match up you want to resolve this dissonance/inconsistency Ex. $1 isn't enough to lie so you change your attitude to match behavior, mild threat to not play with toy so you don't but you don't think a mild threat is enough justification to make you stop playing so you think it was your own idea to stop playing with the toy Effort justification paradigm: women recruited to talk about uncomfortable sexual topics, had to go through trial first where they talked with a man about sexual topics, then they had a group discussion where they discussed animal sex which wasn't uncomfortable, because they had to go through the trial though they said they liked the group discussion more, didn't go through that for nothing Free choice paradigm: justify your choice between two similarly ranked objects by putting the one you rejected further down on list and putting the one you got further up on list (attitude change, occurs when attitudes are strong initially) Self-perception theory: we infer our attitudes from our behavior (not attitude change, occurs when attitudes are weak initially) Ex. people answered questions that either highlighted their introverted or extroverted aspects, those asked questions about their extraverted behavior rated themselves as more extraverted (behavior influencing attitudes), sat closer to confederate and talked more Over-justification effect: if you have an extrinsic reward for doing something you intrinsically love to do (play with magic markers, play baseball) then that reduces the intrinsic motivation to do it, they think they are doing it because of the extrinsic motivation not their attitudes

Message learning approach

Explain the difference between effective and ineffective communication by applying principles of learning and memory Attend to message —> comprehend it —> accept it —> attitude change occurs Factors: communicator (who), message (what), channel (how), audience (to whom) Criticisms: better at describing conditions when attitudes change more than why they change, model portrayed people as too passive

Pre-conscious automaticity

Mental action is unintentional, effortless, involuntary, without awareness, uncontrollable Ex. increased exposure to Chinese character increases liking, increased liking for those who "saw" flash of happy face, more hostility when you have to redo the experiment when you "saw" flash of African American face

Why are people sensitive to social environments?

People have large brains, social consequences include shorter gestation periods and longer infant dependency/helplessness, leads to division of labor, attachment, group defense against predators, hunter gatherers who didn't bring food/resources back to family were cut out of gene pool, the ability to process social motivations/pressures requires larger brains (selecting gradient/cycle)

How can aggression be reduced?

Social learning: reduced aggression in children when caregivers ignore their aggressive behaviors and reinforce their non-aggressive behaviors National level: most murders in US result from impulsive emotional outbursts, death penalty hasn't resulted in fewer homicides (impulsive), little to no risk calculation (train people to have more self-control rather than give longer/harsher sentences)

Measuring prejudice

Explicit: old-fashioned racism scale (ask directly), modern racism scale (less obvious that you are trying to get at their prejudice), symbolic racism scale (focuses on social values) Behavior: white college students took modern racism scale, competitive reaction time task, opponent was white or black, on winning trials they chose intensity of noise (3 levels of provocation: low, medium, high/how provoked they were by intensity of noise), overt: asked how hostile they were going to be to opponent, when provoked high modern racists delivered louder noises but did not discriminate between white and black competitors (no racial bias when overtly asked), covert: how long they actually delivered the noise for, when provoked high modern racists delivered loud noises for longer durations toward black competitors Economic negotiations: proposers and responders, all participants were responders, proposer made offer to split $10, responder can accept or reject, accept: both players get proposed split, reject: both players get nothing, participants accepted more offers from White proposers, participants were more sensitive to small changes in fairness from blacks Implicit: sequential priming task (see white or black face and then shown positive or negative word, look at time it takes them to categorize target word as pleasant or not), weapons identification task (black or white face and then tool or gun shown, participants were faster to categorize guns following a black face and made more errors by mis-categorizing tools as guns), decision to shoot (blacks were shot at incorrectly more often than whites, subjects had greater difficulty distinguishing weapons from harmless objects when they were held by blacks, faster to shoot black criminals with guns compared to white criminals with guns), police vs. community (both have reaction time bias/faster to shoot black with gun, officers are less trigger happy than the public - public shot blacks more and officers shot whites more), IAT (white and positive on one side and black and negative on other side of screen, when flipped this would be incompatible, reaction time task, whites are faster on white/good and black/bad pairings)

False consensus effect, false uniqueness effect

False consensus effect: the tendency to overestimate the commonality of one's opinions and one's undesirable or unsuccessful behaviors Ex. when California college students thought about their favorite celebrity they significantly underestimated how much others would express dislike for their idolized star, if we cheat on our income taxes, smoke, or enhance our appearance we are likely to overestimate the number of other people who do likewise False uniqueness effect: the tendency to underestimate the commonality/overestimate the uniqueness of one's abilities and one's desirable or successful behaviors Ex. female college students who choose a designated driver underestimated how many other women take the same precaution

Attitudes

Feelings that predispose us to act favorably or unfavorably towards people, events, or objects Explicit: attitudes that we express to others consciously Implicit: attitudes that are unconscious and activated automatically

Relationship development

From exchange relationships to communal relationships (all relationships have benefits and costs but relationships differ in extent to which people care to keep close track, exchange: transactional, I did you a favor so you owe me, communal: rewarding partners out of direct concern and caring, as relationship deepen they shift from exchange to communal relationships) Increasing self-disclosure: toward intimacy (we like people who share themselves, your self-disclosure elicits self-disclosure from other person) - goes into interdependence

Frustration-aggression hypothesis

Frustration: anything that blocks us from attaining a goal, frustration grows when motivation to achieve a goal is very strong, when we expect gratification, and when the blocking is complete (vending machine), frustration triggers readiness to aggress Displacement: the redirection of aggression to a target other than the source of the frustration (unleashing frustration with vending machine onto roommate) Criticisms: frustrated groups are more aggressive to everyone, frustrating events lead to a lot of frustration but seldom aggression Revised: frustration only produces anger when people become upset, anger results in aggression when there are aggression cues (if someone doesn't hear what you said because their hearing piece fell out, frustration may not turn into aggression there because you understand - no anger) Relative deprivation: the perception that one is less well off than others with whom one compares oneself (happiness tends to be lower and crime rates higher in countries with greater income inequality)

Cognitive explanations for prejudice

Illusory correlation: perceiving a relationship between 2 variables when no such relationship exists or the relationship is not as strong as perceived Ex. groups A and B (told about 2 groups, no real stake in these groups/no motivation, no influence of group processes/bias for in-groups), distinctive event 1: group B is presented a lot less so they are the minority, distinctive event 2: negative behaviors are presented less than positive behaviors, people create a correlation between minority and negative events even though there is no real evidence for this bias (rate group B as having more undesirable qualities) Out-group homogeneity: own group perceived as more varied and complex than other groups, faces of one's own race are better remembered than faces of other races (experience explanation: we grow up among in-group members so become experts in processing in-group faces and remember them better, categorization process: we categorize out-group faces but individuate in-group faces)

Fundamental attribution error vs. self-serving bias

Fundamental attribution error/correspondence bias: overemphasize the situation and underemphasize the disposition in others' behaviors Ex. students on debate team had to write essays pro or against Castro and even if people knew they had no choice they still attributed arguments to their dispositions rather than the situation (occurs because of lack of awareness of situational constraints/don't realize how the debate coach forced her to be pro Castro, have unrealistic expectations for behavior/if we were anti Castro you wouldn't have done the speech, inflated categorization of behavior/view the speech as especially pro Castro making you assume she must really feel that way) Self-serving bias: attribute positive behavior to our disposition and negative behavior to our situation Ex. in explaining their victories athletes commonly credit themselves, but they attribute losses to something else like bad breaks, bad referee calls, or the other team's super effort or dirty play, when you lose Scrabble it is because you had a hard letter and couldn't win that way, managers often blame poor performance on workers' lack of ability/effort while workers blame external factors like excessive workload or difficult co-workers

Group polarization

Group interaction tends to intensify the opinions of group members (opposed = less opposed, support = more support) Ex. a Republican appointee sitting with other Republicans votes more conservatively than when the same judge sits with at least one Democratic appointee, when people believed they were watching an online video of a political speech at the same time as other viewer, their judgments of the speech were more extreme, if some individuals dislike you, together they may dislike you more, as people in terrorist organizations interact in isolation from moderating influences, they become progressively more extreme, the violence is enabled and escalated by the killers egging one another on

Individual—intergroup discontinuity

Groups tend to be more aggressive than individuals, more competition between groups, reduced trust between groups Ex. 4 ethnic groups, individual or group condition, told purpose was about telepathy between different ethnic groups and shock them if they get it wrong, were asked to picture the mental image together, groups administered more shocks Ex. groups or individuals paired with other groups or individuals, they were given a certain amount of hot sauce and then they have to allocate an amount to them, groups gave and received more, could be because of reduced trust and more competition between groups, in Prisoner's Game Dilemma groups were more competitive with each other and group on one and one on group were more competitive than one on one

Who is the message communicated to (audience)

How old are they: generational explanation (attitudes do not change, older people largely hold onto the attitudes they adopted when they were young and because these attitudes are different from those being adopted by young people, a generation gap develops) What are they thinking: if you know someone is going to try to persuade you that breeds counter-argument (you might develop a list of arguments to counter every argument they might make, and you'd then be less likely to be persuaded by them) Distraction prevents counter-arguments: participants who read a message while also watching a video were less likely to counter-argue (political ads: words promote the candidate, visual images keep us occupied so we don't analyze the words) Need for cognition: analytical people enjoy thinking carefully and prefer central routes (people who like to conserve their mental resources are quicker to respond to peripheral cues)

Inter-group contact theory

How to reduce inter-group hostility: equal status (groups must engage equally in the relationship, have similar backgrounds, qualities, etc.), common goals (must have a problem/task in common), inter-group cooperation (work together by pooling their efforts and resources), support of authorities, laws, or customs (acknowledge some authority that supports the contact and interaction between groups) Ex. robbers cave studies: 11-12 year old boys at summer camp, divided into 2 teams (researchers encouraged competition and cooperation between them), competition led to greater group cohesiveness and inter-group hostility, shared goals/cooperation led to decreased tensions and increased liking of the other group (gave them tasks that could only be completed if groups worked together) Ex. Violence intervention: participants were gang members, talked with members of community whom they respected about their violence, led to reduction in shootings across Chicago violent neighborhoods (leveraged power of leadership and respect, came to believe their own violence would hurt those they cared about/were trying to protect)

When can group influence be good?

Idea generation: when group is small you tend to get more and better ideas, best if followed by individual brainstorming More accurate eyewitness reporting (several heads are better than one) Information transfer/informational social influence: the influence of other people that results from taking their comments or actions as source of information about what is correct, proper, or effective (see what group is eating, effective way to gather info about real world to inform our decisions about what is safe to eat)

Misinformation effect

Incorporating misinformation into one's memory of the event after witnessing an event and receiving misleading information about it Ex. students talked with someone, those who were later informed that this person liked them recalled the person's behavior as relaxed, comfortable, and happy, but those who heard the person disliked them recalled the person as nervous, uncomfortable, and not so happy Rosy retrospection: people recall mildly pleasant events more favorably than they experienced them Ex. students who were still in love had a tendency to overestimate their first impressions, while those who had broken up were more likely to underestimate their earlier liking Reconstructing past behavior: students who read a message about the benefits of toothbrushing recalled brushing their teeth more often during the past 2 weeks than did students who had not heard the message

Theories of aggression

Instinct for aggression, frustration-aggression hypothesis, social learning theory

Eliminating prejudice

Inter-group contact: most effective under Allport's conditions, but not all these conditions are necessary Associations: presented positive words with black faces, exposure to these pairings reduced implicit racial prejudice Long-term prejudice reduction: 12 week long study, training sessions making people aware of their bias and provided strategies for reducing bias (stereotype replacement, individuation, perspective taking), the most motivated people to reduce discrimination and use the strategies benefitted most

Social psychology

Involves using the scientific method to explore how an individual's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by others' presence, the scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another (method: scientific, level of analysis: individual or group, subject matter: social influence)

Problem with IAT

Is it really measuring attitudes or associations, it could have to do with familiarity, is it measuring 1 attitude or 2 (may be in-group favoritism), predictive validity (implicit-explicit measures don't always agree and don't always affect behavior), temporal stability (implicit attitudes haven't always shown stability over time)

Deindividuation

Loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension, occurs in group situations that foster responsiveness to group norms, good or bad Group size: a group has the power to render its members unidentifiable (the snarling crowd hides the snarling basketball fan, the bigger the mob the more its members lose self-awareness and become willing to commit atrocities) Anonymity: women wearing identical white coats and hoods asked to deliver electric shocks to a woman pressed the shock button twice as long as those who were unconcealed and wearing large name tags, wearing sunglasses increases people's willingness to cheat or behave selfishly, those who were relatively anonymous in their cars honked one-third sooner and twice as often for nearly twice as long, children in groups were more than twice as likely to take extra candy than were solo children Arousing and distracting activities: aggressive outbursts by large groups are often preceded by minor actions that arouse and divert people's attention (reduces self-consciousness), there is a self-reinforcing pleasure in acting impulsively while seeing others do likewise, impulsive group action absorbs our attention

Liking vs. love

Liking: feelings of respect and admiration Love: feelings of intimacy and interdependence (attachment, caring/concern for other's well-being, intimacy/sharing of closeness and understanding) Those in arranged marriages feel more love after 5 years (cools down in marriages that begin with love) We love our romantic partners much more than our friends, we like our romantic partners only a little more than our friends, overall there is a low correlation between liking and loving Passionate love: state of intense longing for union with one another, preoccupies the lover with thoughts of the other involving the same reward pathways in the brain as addictions to substances Companionate love: affection you feel with whom our lives are deeply intertwined, unlike the wild emotions of passionate love companionate love is lower key/it's a deep affectionate attachment (the cooling of passionate love and the growing importance of other factors like shared values) Features of love as highest ratings: companionate love, features of lowest ratings: passionate love

Physical attractiveness

Mate preferences: natural selection process, fitness is measured by reproductive success, people who were attracted to and mated with young, healthy, fertile mates produced more offspring, so people evolved to be attracted to good looks because they are a sign of health and fertility Males and females face different challenges: reproduction is costly (time, energy, effort, rely on others for food and help in raising offspring) so women seek men who can and want to provide support, men have few costs but paternity is uncertain (have sex with many partners to control one partner's sexuality) Reflects well on oneself to be around attractive people (indirect benefits by association with attractive partner) Attractive people tend to be more socially skilled Social comparison: men who recently gazed at centerfolds see average women or even their own wives as less attractive, viewing pornographic films simulating passionate sex similarly decreases satisfaction with one's own partner

Heuristics

Mental strategies used to make judgements fast/efficiently Representativeness heuristic: the tendency to presume that someone or something belongs to a particular group if resembling a typical member Ex. think a random coin toss is more likely than getting mostly heads but really they are equally likely, misperception of randomness: people see a random pattern but don't think it is random (German bombings in London showed a certain area not getting bombed so they thought that was where German soldiers were but really it was random), base rate: if something is representative of a group then we place it in that group, engineer or lawyer based on descriptions and you are told it is 70% engineers (people say lawyer even though it is more likely for them to be an engineer), make judgments about what a nerdy guy is majoring in based on stereotypes but you should say he is in the largest major, conjunction error: bank teller or bank teller and feminist based on description even though bank teller alone is more likely Illusory correlation: perception of a relationship where none exists or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists Ex. gambling: people act as if they can predict or control chance events (dice players may throw softly for low numbers and hard for high numbers, the illusion of control breeds overconfidence and frequently losses), regression towards the average: most students who get high scores on an exam will get lower scores on the next exam and those who earn low scores on the first exam are likely to improve, if those who scored lowest go for tutoring after the first exam the tutors are likely to feel effective when the student improves even if the tutoring had no effect Availability heuristic: a cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory (if instances of something come readily to mind, we presume it to be commonplace) Ex. think planes are more common/dangerous than cars, if people hear a list of famous women intermixed with an equal-size list of un-famous men the famous names will later be more cognitively available and people will believe they heard more women's names

Elaboration likelihood model

Motivation and ability to think determine which route you take to persuasion (lacking motivation or ability = peripheral route, attitude change is temporary and susceptible to later change vs. motivation and ability = central route, attitude change is long-lasting and resistant to change) Motivation to think: situational factors (personal relevance or involvement, accountability), personality factors (need for cognition) Ability to think: situational factors (time pressure, distraction, message repetition/not conducive to your understanding), personal factors (knowledge, fatigue) Ex. undergrad students heard message about all seniors needing to pass an exam to graduate, personal relevance: exam is either introduced in 1 or 5 years (nobody or everybody is affected), low personal relevance: only the number of arguments matter (3 vs. 9), did not distinguish between strong and weak arguments, high personal relevance: both number and strength of arguments matter (strong arguments with more arguments leads to attitude change, weak arguments with more arguments = doing too much/trying too hard)

Who Am I 20 statements

Not how people actually organize their self-knowledge Material self (body, possessions), spiritual self (fears, hopes, interests), social self (relationships, roles), collective self (groups, identities)

Hindsight bias

Once people know what happens/what the answer is it seems obvious but in foresight it isn't Ex. people read Indian war story and are either told what happened or not, rated % probability that different things could happen, those who were told always put the highest % for what actually happened even when told to pretend they didn't know or pretend they were someone else who didn't know what happened

Message factors

Order of presentation: read both sides of civil case and respond immediately = no order effect, read both sides and respond a week later = primacy effect, read one side and return a week later to read the other side and respond right after that = recency effect (problem for learning and memory approach: memory for content and attitudes are lowly correlated - more to persuasion than just learning and recalling the message) Effect of discrepancy depends on communicator's credibility: if message is discrepant from initial opinion then there is less room for attitude change/rejected unless communicator is extremely credible (subjects read different poetry stanzas, ranked stanzas, read essay talking about stanza that was ranked least, argued that it was of average quality or was better than all but 2 stanzas or was the best example of liberation - written by T.S. Elliot or student, highly credible source = opinion change increases with discrepancy increase, large/small discrepancies for lowly credible source = rejected message, opinion changed for minor discrepancy) One sided vs. two sided arguments: initially opposed to message = more opinion change for two-sided (will counter-argue a one-sided source, two-sided message counter-argues their counter-arguments/it anticipates it), initially agree with message = more opinion change for one-sided (one is enough) Good feelings: messages become more persuasive (munching food or hearing pleasant music, receiving money or free samples induces people to donate money or buy something, products associated with humor were liked more and chosen more often) Scare tactics: sometimes fear-arousing messages work better and sometimes work worse (if scare tactic makes you upset that you can't listen to the message then the message doesn't get through, if message gets through then you may be more willing to accept it)

Fundamental need to belong

Ostracism treats a person as if she doesn't exist at all (worse than bullying), self-defeating behavior (procrastinating), less behavior regulation (eat more), more likely to act aggressively (cyber-ostracism has the same effects) Ostracism hurts even when it comes from a despised group (KKK), is expected, and is online (participants received a low number of likes, reported same negative mood and lack of meaning as those excluded during the online ball-toss game - stopped getting thrown ball) Social pain mimics physical pain: the pain of social rejection is so real in the brain that Tylenol can reduce hurt feelings (feeling love activates brain reward systems, when looking at their beloved's picture, students feel markedly less pain when immersing their hands in cold water)

Why social psych focuses on social context over personality?

Overemphasize personalities: favor political candidates who are nice and likable rather than how they will handle situations they will face Underemphasize situations: dime in phone booth vs. not, help person who dropped papers or not Personality psychology should be its own subfield (complex measurement) Personality on its own is incomplete (not every situation will make people react in the same way - depends on personality, not everyone with same personality/who is helpful will be helpful - depends on situation)

Cognitive response approach

People remember their cognitive responses better than actual info presented (better at remembering our thoughts during an argument rather than the actual argument) Helps explain why sleeper effect is less likely if low credible source is revealed before message (counter-argue right away), order of presentation (evaluations/own thoughts and not message drives attitude change), predicts new interactions (distracting people during message delivery, if message is simple enough then you get more persuasion because people can't counter-argue - effects of cognitive load) Criticism: portrays people as always trying to think carefully about the information

Aggression

Physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone Physical: hurting someone else's body Social: hurting someone else's feelings or threatening relationships Hostile: springs from anger, it's goal is to injure, impulsive, unplanned, spontaneous, uncontrollable, consequences are given little consideration, information processing is automatic Instrumental: aims to injure but only as a means to some other end (fighting to get people to like you at school, get into wars because we have a larger goal like territory or financial reasons), anger is absent, premeditated, planned, reasoned, calculation of costs and benefits, information processing is controlled

Prejudice, stereotype, discrimination

Prejudice (affect): a preconceived negative judgement of a group and its individual members (don't like rich people) Stereotype (cognition): a belief about the personal attributes of a group of people (Asians are good at math), strong stereotypes and ambiguous info can color judgements (people people introduced to Hannah as high SES said she showed high ability and later recalled her getting most questions right, but those introduced to her as low SES judged her ability as below grade level and recalled her missing almost half the questions) Discrimination (behavior): unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members (job hiring, callbacks were much less likely to the gay-associated applicants)

Terror management theory

Proposes that people exhibit self-protective emotional and cognitive responses including adhering more strongly to their cultural world views and prejudices when confronted with reminders of their mortality, defensive human thinking and behavior that stems from an awareness and fear of death Self-esteem can combat this fear (put others down)

Group theory explanations for prejudice

Realistic group conflict theory: prejudice arises from competition between groups for scarce resources (kids divided into groups, resource scarcity, disliked each other) Symbolic threat theory: prejudice arises from conflicting values and beliefs (perceived vs. actual threat, gay people are destroying our families) Social identity theory: prejudice arises from the "we" aspect of our self-concept (take pride in and derive self-esteem from our groups, we make status comparisons) Ex. in a competition, people felt best when negative events happened to out-group target and felt worst when positive events happened to out-group target (no social interaction, no shared goals, the thinnest of pretexts, but still feel favoritism) - minimal group paradigm (merely being categorized into groups led people to show more favorable attitudes/behavior towards in-group members)

Minority influence

Refers to minority opinions, determinants: consistency, self-confidence, and defection Consistency: a minority that sticks to its position is more influential, minority slowness effect (tendency for people with minority views to express those views less quickly than do people in the majority, being a minority in a group can be unpleasant), even when people in the majority know the disagreeing person is factually or morally right they may still dislike the person Self-confidence: consistency/persistence convey self-confidence, any behavior by a minority that conveys self-confidence tends to raise self-doubts among the majority Defection from majority: a persistent minority punctures any illusion of unanimity, when a minority consistently doubts the majority wisdom majority members become freer to express their own doubts and may even switch to the minority position, a person who had defected from the majority was even more persuasive than a consistent minority voice

Preventing aggression

Reward and model cooperative and empathetic behavior from early age School violence prevention programs: problem-solving skills, emotional control strategies, conflict resolution techniques (violent behavior and disruption dropped by nearly half) Convince school children to reduce TV and video game consumption: classroom lessons, consumption decreased and children's aggressive behavior dropped (told them how media affects their behavior, made them more aware) Sensitivity with disgust is correlated with less aggression (highlight disgusting factors in media) People who see moral rules as negotiable are more aggressive (cheating is fine because nobody gets hurt, can lead to justifications for other things as well), teaching non-negotiable rules/moral reasoning may reduce aggressive behavior

Misattribution of arousal

Scary suspension bridge that tilts vs. low solid bridge, male subjects approached by attractive female experimenter or male experimenter, as they came off those on the suspension bridge were aroused by fear (asked to tell story about ambiguous picture, given experimenter's phone number, high bridge subjects approached by woman led to more sexual imagery and made more phone calls after - misattributed arousal as attraction for the woman) Criticism: different kind of person chooses to go onto high vs. low bridge (follow-up: everyone on high bridge, approached in middle of bridge or later in parking lot, got same results)

How is self-knowledge organized?

Schema: mental concept or template that guides perceptions and interpretations Ex. if you read an excerpt about sorting laundry but you weren't told what is was about then you wouldn't understand it, better comprehension if you know before you read it because you have a schema about laundry which helps guide your interpretation Self-schema is a schema about the self, people are more knowledge in certain domains (expert in behavior in that domain, some domains are more important than others to identity) Ex. if a schema about athletics is important to your identity then you may judge others by that schema, dichotic listening task (if a schema congruent trait is mentioned then that seeps through your unattended ear), interdependent schematics endorsed more and were faster to endorse interdependent/schema congruent traits, were able to give more examples and explanations for choosing self descriptive adjectives

Attachment styles in adult relationships

Secure: trust, lack of concern with being abandoned Avoidant: defensive distance, suppresses attachment needs, difficulty developing intimate relationships, less satisfied and supported in their relationships, experienced more relationship conflict Anxious: conflicted, desire love and acceptance but anxious about rejection (needy and possessive) The most difficult pairing appears to be an anxious woman and an avoidant man (seeks closeness vs. distances himself) Study: securely attached are in relationships longer, more friendships and trust, avoidantly attached have high fear of closeness, anxiously attached have extreme emotion and high jealousy Behavior study: secure women (the more upset sought more support), secure men (gave more support to women who appeared more upset), avoidant women (the more upset sought less support), avoidant men (the more fear a woman displayed the less support offered)

Motives for the self

Self-enhancement (feel good), self-improvement (get better), self-verification (get confirmation on something you already believe), self-assessment (get accurate info) These can conflict: can work with 1 of 2 people, told one likes you and one doesn't, those with low self-esteem choose the one that doesn't like them, self-verification beats self-enhancement

Self-esteem vs. self-efficacy

Self-esteem: a person's overall self-evaluation or sense of self-worth People with low self-esteem are more vulnerable to anxiety, loneliness, and eating disorders, and experience more problems in life (make less money, abuse drugs, and are more likely to be depressed) People with high self-esteem are more likely to savor/sustain the good feelings (high self-esteem fosters initiative, resilience, and pleasant feelings), are more likely to be obnoxious, to interrupt, and to talk at people rather than with them Self-efficacy: a sense that one is competent and effective (a sharpshooter in the military might feel high self-efficacy and low self-esteem, if I work hard I can swim fast vs. I am a great swimmer) People with strong feelings of self-efficacy are more persistent, less anxious, and less depressed

Motivational explanations for prejudice

Self-esteem: comparisons to less competent others boost our self-esteem, we derogate others when we are motivated to reaffirm this self-esteem Social dominance orientation: a motivation to have one's group dominate other social groups (this desire to be on top leads people high in social dominance to embrace prejudice and support political positions that justify prejudice) Ethnocentric: believing in the superiority of one's own ethnic and cultural group, and having a corresponding disdain for all other groups Ex. participants took an IQ test, received positive or negative feedback, then rated Jewish vs. Italian applicants, positive feedback led to no discrimination between 2 groups, negative feedback led to lower ratings of Jews' personality (when they experienced a threat to their self-esteem participants were more likely to exhibit prejudice and when they did their self-esteem increased more)

Sources of self-knowledge

Self-perception (interpreting how you feel based on external cues, if I am eating then I must be hungry, pen between teeth or lips watch cartoon and those smiling found it funnier and liked it more, if I smoke I am a smoker) Social comparison: evaluating one's opinions and abilities by comparing oneself with others (compare to someone similar to you if you want accurate info, compare downwards if you want to feel better/it could be worse, compare upwards for motivation, ex. more money doesn't always lead to more happiness but having more money than those around you can, those who gave up Facebook for a week ended the week happier than those who kept using Facebook - online comparisons can be incomplete) Social feedback (looking glass self: viewing yourself based on how you perceive others to view you) Introspection problems: explaining behavior (likable teacher rated as more attractive but they denied that being the reason, the second group actually argued it was the opposite), predicting behavior (people who said they would buy daffodil didn't), predicting feelings (happy with good or bad dorm)

What is beautiful is good stereotype

Shown picture and then rate in terms intelligence, happiness, confidence, friendliness, success (stereotype shows that physically attractive people possess these other socially desirable traits) Is it true: parts of it related to popularity and interpersonal skills (more dates, active sex life, opposite-sex friends), men talk on phone for 5 minutes with different women and rated them for social skills and likability (the more highly rated women were more attractive) Attractive people get better treatment: based on yearbook pictures they rated attractiveness and surveyed students to find out what their starting salaries were, 1 point increment in attractiveness was correlated with increase in $2600 in annual pay for men and $2150 for women, attractive defendants get lower bails and fines (severity of crime = higher bails and fines but attractiveness in each case leads to lower ones) Consequences: men and women spoke over the phone and men's perception of women's attractiveness was manipulated (either shown picture of attractive or unattractive woman, women were more friendly, sociable, and socially skilled when men believed the women were attractive - self-fulfilling prophecy)

Similarity and complementarity

Similarity in age, race, eduction, income, IQ, religion, family background could be a side effect of proximity (live in places where people are similar in these areas) Similarity of attitudes: 2 groups of male undergrads lived rent free in exchange for providing weekly data, attitudes measured, attraction measured, if initial attitudes were in close agreement 58% ended up friends, if initial attitudes were not in close agreement only 33% ended up good friends (attitudes promote liking/friendship) Complementarity: no strong evidence that opposites attract on personality, attitudes, or demographics, some evidence for behavior (dominance/submissiveness, beauty and status/resources trade), some complementarity of roles may evolve after couples are together, but overall couples tend to be more similar to each other than to other people Dissimilarity is a turnoff, reassuring and validating to share attitudes, shared attitudes reaffirm mutual group membership (if we agree we must be an "us," need to belong), anticipate greater mutual attraction,dissimilar attitudes depress liking more than similar attitudes enhance it (people in one political party are more disdainful of the opposition than they are fond of fellow party members) Made judgements about a person, as similar attitudes increase your liking for the other person increases, but your inference as to how you think they will like you also increases (we expect to be liked by similar others, the correlation between similarity and liking depended entirely on the stranger's inferred liking)

What factors influence aggression?

Situational factors: pain (hand in cold water leads to irritation, more likely to administer loud noises), heat (crime increases with hotter temperatures), arousal (injected men with adrenalin, either told about its influences before injection or not, placed them in company of hostile or euphoric other, forewarned: attributed arousal to drug, not warned: attributed arousal to other person - angry with hostile other and amused with euphoric person), presence of weapons (participants shocked, put in room with shotgun and revolver or non-weapons, angered participants who saw the weapons delivered higher number of shocks) Dispositional factors: personality (primed with aggressive words, reaction-time game and decided on intensity of sound to play to losing opponent, participants low in agreeableness in aggression condition set the noise level high but set it low in neutral condition, those high in agreeableness set the noise level about equal in both conditions, follow-up: had to categorize word as antisocial or prosocial, found that aggression-related primes increased prosocial thoughts for individuals with agreeable affect, those high in agreeable affect were faster at categorizing prosocial word when it followed an antisocial prime) Biochemical influences: alcohol (interferes with aggression inhibition, reduces self-awareness, focuses attention on aggravations, predisposes people to interpret ambiguous events as aggravations), testosterone (higher levels among violent criminals than non-violent criminals, participants exposed to high doses during prenatal development led to higher levels of aggression in males than females), poor diet (prisoners who got extra nutrition were involved in fewer violent incidents, students who drank more than 5 cans of non-diet soda a week were more likely to have been violent and carrying a weapon, men and women who consumed more trans fat were more aggressive), serotonin (as serotonin decreases aggression increases) Neural influences: brain systems facilitate aggression, less activity in PFC (important for self-regulation, when scientists activate these brain areas, hostility increases) Genetic influences: identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins in aggressive behavior, MAOA-L gene linked to less activity in PFC (this gene linked with increased aggressive behavior when combined with childhood maltreatment) Environmental factors: group influence (groups amplify aggression by diffusing responsibility, as group-identity develops conformity pressures and deindividuation increase), mass media (61% of TV shows include at least 1 violent act, those who watched the aggressive film were more aggressive to an innocent person, more negative evaluations of confederate), violent video games (increase aggressive behaviors, thoughts, feelings, likelihood of carrying a weapon, and antisocial behavior, increases hostile attribution bias: likelihood of expecting others to act aggressively when provoked, the greater this bias the more aggressively the gamers themselves acted), porn (viewing a man overpowering and arousing a woman can distort men's perceptions of how women actually respond to sexual coercion and increase men's aggression against women, distorted perceptions of sexual reality: those who saw the films with mild sexual violence were more accepting of violence against women, become less bothered by rape the more they watch it, expressed less sympathy for domestic violence victims, and rated the victims' injuries as less severe, aggression against women: watching violent sexual content led to increased sexual aggression toward others, men who watched the rape film administered markedly stronger shock particularly to women and when angered)

Theories of group behavior

Social facilitation theory: presence of others increased arousal and thus increased the dominant response (easy tasks = performance enhanced, hard tasks = performance worsened) Why are we aroused in the presence of others: evaluation apprehension (concern for how others are evaluating us), distraction (we become distracted when we wonder how co-actors are doing or how an audience is reacting, both paying attention to others and to the task overloads our cognitive system, causing arousal), mere presence (don't need evaluation apprehension, most runners are energized when running with someone else even if they don't compete or evaluate, rowing team members tolerate more pain after rowing together than when solo) Ex. cyclists were faster in races with others than when riding alone, reel fishing rods faster when others were present (the presence of others enhances performance), skilled and unskilled players at pool (above average players improved but below average players did worse) Ex. if you already know the material you may benefit from presence of others (study with others) but if you don't know the material well then it may cause you to do worse (better to study alone) Social loafing theory: tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool their efforts toward a common goal than when they are individually accountable, occurs because of less evaluation apprehension, lack of motivation/individual effort may not be appreciated, less individual reward/difficult to identify who is responsible for success, decrease social loafing by making individual efforts more identifiable (employees produced more when their individual performance was posted, football coaches do this by filming and evaluating each player individually), ensure task is complex or appealing (when swimming the last leg of a relay race with a medal at stake swimmers tend to swim even faster than in individual competition), make groups small and cohesive Can lead to free riders/people who benefit from the group but give little in return (still get reward even if they don't help - not individually monitored or rewarded) Ex. pulling rope, clapping or shouting in a crowd, people in collectivistic cultures exhibit less social loafing than those in individualistic cultures

Communicator factors

Source credibility: highly credible sources elicit more attitude change (message about prescription drugs from biology and medicine journal vs. magazine), includes speaking style (speak confidently and fluently, juries can be swayed by how a witness speaks), perceived trustworthiness (believe article shared by a trusted friend, prefer product from a consumer protection board rather than a company promoting its product after a recall, attractiveness (having qualities that appeal to an audience, often someone similar to the audience), physical attractiveness (arguments, especially emotional ones, are often more influential, young adults were more persuaded by ads for e-cigs when the products were endorsed by celebrities), similarity (we tend to like people who are like us, consumer-generated ads can be persuasive) Retention of opinion change: more attitude change for highly credible source when asking people right after communication, but if you wait 4 weeks the high credibility source goes down and the low credibility source goes up, consistent with the learning and memory approach (maybe memory is fading) Follow-up: reminding people of message/source reinstated the difference between high and low credibility sources Sleeper effect: delayed impact of message that occurs when an initially discounted message becomes effective (increase for low credibility source immediately after is because of this - forget who credibility source is) But it is delicate and depends upon exact conditions (source and then message = no sleeper effect because you are counter-arguing from the beginning before hearing the message)

Proximity/functional distance

Student housing at MIT, asked who their top 3 friends were: apartments (65% of friends lived in same building, of top choices 41% were next door neighbors, 22% lived 2 doors down, 10% lived on opposite end of halls, if you live near stairwell you report more second floor friends than other first floor residents), houses (if house faced toward street away from courtyard you less often made friends) Easier to get to know people who are nearby, motivated to like people you have to see often Merely anticipating an interaction with someone promotes liking (wishful thinking): women were told they would meet with someone and have a discussion on proper standards for sexual behavior in dating relationships, given info about partner and non partner and rate liking for them, you liked your partner more Mere exposure: 4 similar looking women confederates showed up to class a different amount of times, no interaction with students, students rated them on several dimensions including attractiveness and familiarity (the more times they showed up the higher they rated them as attractive, familiarity didn't show a clear pattern, exposure effect on liking), stronger effect when receive stimuli without awareness (woman liked music she previously heard best even though she didn't remember, amnesia patients prefer faces they saw recently)

Effects of prejudice

Subtle and explicit discrimination (medical health and wellness, employment and promotion, law enforcement) Victim blaming (just-world phenomenon: people believe the world is just so people get what they deserve), ex. rape victims must have behaved seductively, poor people don't deserve better, sick people are responsible for their illnesses Self-perpetuating prejudgements (you behave as expected so you confirmed I was right), sub-typing: you surprised me so you are an exception/a subgroup (high-prejudice people tend to subtype positive out-group members, low-prejudice people more often subtype negative out-group members) Ex. those who expected a man to be unfriendly went out of their way to be friendly, their friendly behavior elicited a warm response but they attributed this reciprocal friendliness to their own treatment of him, they afterward expressed more mistrust and dislike for the person and rated his behavior as less friendly Attribution errors (fundamental attribution error, ultimate attribution error: tendency to overemphasize dispositional attributes when explaining an out-group's negative behavior, tendency to make situational attributions when explaining an out-group's positive behavior, opposite for in-group behavior) Stereotype threat: psychological threat when a negative stereotype about group applies (black and white students took verbal section of GRE, either told it was diagnostic or non-diagnostic of intellectual ability, blacks in diagnostic condition had more thoughts related to negative stereotypes about in-group/more likely to complete word fragments using relevant negative stereotypes, performed worse than whites) Ex. When told that there was a gender difference the women dramatically confirmed the stereotype, blacks did worse than usual when a golf task was framed as a test of sports intelligence, and whites did worse when it was a test of natural athletic ability Stereotype lift: boost in performance when think about positive stereotypes (Asian American women took math test, primed to think about gender or racial identity, did worse when activating gender identity and did better when activating racial/ethnic identity) Self-fulfilling prophecies: beliefs/expectations that leads to their own fulfillment/return a confirming response/behavior from someone else (white undergrads interviewed white and black job applicants, with blacks they allowed shorter interviews, treated them with less urgency, higher rate of error, another study had confederates interview whites, when subjected to interview style that blacks received they performed worse - leads targets of this behavior to produce confirming behaviors) Ex. students whose teachers expected them to perform well did, if led to believe that their bank is about to crash customers race to withdraw their money leading to their false perceptions creating reality, people who speak on the phone to attractive women act in a way that makes them more comfortable leading to them being nicer/warmer

Why are groups important?

Survival: group living is costly (increased competition for resources, competition for mates, disease transmission, risk for misdirected parental care, visibility to predators), but it persists because the benefits of living together outweigh the costs (threat protection, provides strength in numbers/group defense, food acquisition since searching for/capturing food requires energy and time, infant care - in groups parents can have breaks to obtain food/resources by having others help, division of labor - less risk by distributing responsibilities) Belonging: humans are social animals with an innate need to form social bonds (groups offer potential to establish social connections/ meaningful relationships), signals of social rejection/exclusion make people less willing to exert behaviors that decrease self-regulatory behaviors, impact of social stress has a greater impact than non-social stress (negatively impacts health and mortality) Ex. social rejection impacting self-regulation belonging/accepted condition, alone/rejected condition, misfortune control condition, control condition, tasks: eat a healthy but bad tasting vinegar beverage, eat cookies, persist on solving complex puzzle, lonely: less likely to consume healthy drink, ate more cookies, less persistent on solving complex puzzles Identity: social identity theory (we define ourselves by our social groups), self-concept is derived from knowledge of membership with a social group and value placed on group, desire to behave in accordance with group's goals and be perceived in a positive light by the group can alter our behavior Ex. Milgram experiments (shock intensity increases as the learner/confederate gets more questions wrong, 65% of people went to max voltage on shock machine, conformity based on authority), alternative explanation: conform based on wanting to identify with experimenter's group (greatest compliance when told the experiment requires you to continue - how it makes participant feel, placed on same team as experimenter Ex. revolutionaries: combatants (soldiers) and non-combatants (ambulance drivers, mechanics) indicated how closely they identified with their family, general public, other members of battalion, other revolutionaries (99% reported being fused to their own family, 97% to their own battalions, and 96% to other battalions - they didn't even know these people), 45% of combatants identified more with their battalions than families, 28% of non fighters identified more with their battalion than family (strong fusion between group and self)

Groupthink

Tendency of decision-making groups to suppress dissent in the interest of group harmony Conditions: we feeling, group is cohesive, group is isolated from dissenting viewpoints, group has a directive leader Symptoms: illusion of invulnerability (optimism blinds them to warnings of danger, Pearl Harbor: forces lost radio contact with Japanese carriers but didn't think they were actually going to attack), unquestioned belief in the group's morality (questioned invading small country but didn't discuss moral concerns), rationalization (justify their decisions), stereotyped view of opponent (group-thinkers consider their enemies too evil to negotiate with or too weak and unintelligent to defend themselves against the planned initiative), conformity pressure, self-censorship (to avoid uncomfortable disagreements members withheld or discounted their misgivings), illusion of unanimity (don't want to go against group because you think entire group feels the same way and you just want to fit in, Hitler), mind-guards (members protect group from info that would call into question the effectiveness/morality of its decisions, before the Bay of Pigs invasion the Secretary of State withheld expert warnings against the invasion) Ex. withheld expert warnings against invasion because they didn't want info calling into question their effectiveness/morality, belief in morality of group, feel invulnerable to danger Combatting groupthink: uphold impartiality, encourage other viewpoints (devil's advocate), subdividing and reuniting to discuss decisions, seeking outside input/different perspectives

Reductionism

The idea that everything can be reduce to the most fundamental/basic/biological level Anti-reductionist argument: biology and psychology/higher level processes can influence each other and there is overlap Ex. loneliness causes poorer health outcomes (loneliness can affect immune system response), society influences biology and vice versa (civilization influences how we live, language we use, resources we have, laws we follow)

Attachment

The intense love of parent and infant for each other qualifies as a form of passionate love Has survival value: maintaining proximity to caregiver increases physical safety and felt security, permits exploration of the environment and development of independence based on trust Strange Situation: mothers brought toddlers to lab, kids explored, mother leaves, then called back in, see how kids react Attachment patterns: secure (easily comforted by mom), avoidant (mad at mom, continue exploring, don't want to be comforted), anxious (difficult to sooth, doesn't want to go back to exploring, clingy) Mothers of secure kids were responsive to their needs, mothers of avoidant kids rejected them, mothers of anxious kids were inconsistent

Persuasion

The process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors

Matching phenomenon

The tendency for men and women to choose as partners those who are a good match in attractiveness and other traits Ex. those who were most similar in physical attractiveness were most likely, 9 months later, to have fallen more deeply in love

Confirmation bias

The tendency to search for info that confirms one's preconceptions Ex. liberals and conservatives prefer not to learn more about the other side's arguments, when a domineering person arrives at a party she seeks out those whom she knows will acknowledge her dominance and she presents her views in ways that elicit the respect she expects (this confirms her self-image)

How is social processing different from nonsocial processing?

We influence the environment and the environment influences us Ex. perception is active and mediated not passive (ambiguous figures), perception isn't just a mere rendering of the way the world is but rather the mind constructs a precept (impossible figures, second floor), perception is inferential/influenced by prior knowledge (Dalmatian, Al Gore and Bill Clinton same face)

Theory, hypothesis, research methods, research ethics

Theory: idea that summarize and explain facts Hypothesis: testable prediction that allows us to test a theory Random sample: every person in the population has an equal chance of inclusion (representative) Random assignment: every person in the sample has an equal chance of being put in each group (allows for causal inference since this guarantees that external factors/factors outside the thing being manipulated aren't influencing anything) Mundane realism: refers to the extent to which the experimental situation is similar to situations people are likely to encounter outside the lab Experimental realism: the experiment should engage participants (experience the experimental situation as intended, deception is used) Demand characteristics: cues that seem to demand certain behavior (experimenters typically standardize their instructions or use a computer to present them to avoid this) Ethics/principles: informed consent, be truthful (only use deception if necessary but not about aspects that would affect their willingness to participate), protect participants from harm and discomfort, confidentiality, debrief

Criticisms of dichotomous view of aggression

They are highly correlated, simultaneous processing (while angry and motivated to cause harm, the harm can still be controlled, calm, and premeditated), motivation (mixed or multiple motives)

Reciprocity

We tend to like others who like us Same-sex pairs, 5 minute convo to get to know each other, took a break and came back, manipulated person A's belief about person B's feelings during break (person A was warmer, more agreeable, and more self-disclosing when interacting with a student that A believed liked him/her, person A liked B more after such interaction, person A brought about greater liking from B when A believed that B liked him/her - self-fulfilling prophecy) Students like another student who says 8 positive things about them better than one who says 7 positive things and 1 negative thing (sensitive to slightest hint of criticism)

Ambivalent prejudice

When people have conflicting feelings about a group Stereotype content model: when we meet people we evaluate people on 2 dimensions (warmth/intentions, competence/effectiveness in pursuing intentions), rated high on both (whites, leads to admiration), low on both (poor people, leads to contempt), high warmth and low competence (housewives, leads to pity), low warmth and high competence (female CEOs, leads to envy) Ambivalent sexism: benevolent sexism (man should always open door for lady, may seem positive but idea that women need to be protected by men, can be controlling), hostile sexism (women belong in the home)