Social Psychology Exam 2

Another media influence: Video games (sources of aggression/ influences on aggression)

" "If health video games can successfully teach health behaviors, and flight simulator video games can teach people how to fly, then what should we expect violent murder-simulating games to teach?""

Sleeper effect

- If a credible person's message is persuasive, its impact may fade as its source is forgotten or dissociated from the message. - And the impact of a non credible person may correspondingly increase over time if people remember the message better than the reason for discounting it. - This delayed persuasion, after people forget the source or its connection with the message, is called the sleeper effect.

Message Context (foot in the door phenomenon, Lowball technique, door in the face phenomenon)

- Message Context - Foot in the door phenomenon: Other persuasion techniques rely on the size of the request being made. Experiments suggest that if you want people to do a big favor for you, you should get them to do a small favor first. In the best known demonstration of this foot in the door phenomenon, researchers posing as volunteers asked Califronians to permit the installation of huge, poorly letter "Drive Carefully" signs in their front yards. Only 17% consented. Others were first approached with a small request: Would they display three inch "Be a safe driver" window signs? Nearly all readily agreed. When approached two weeks later to allow the large, ugly signs in their front yards, 76% consented. - In this and many of the 100+ other foot in the door experiments, the initial compliance - wearing a lapel pin, giving directions, signing a petition - was voluntary. When people commit themselves to public behaviors and perceive those acts to be their own doing, they come to believe more strongly in what they have done. - In one experiment, Cialdini and his collaborators (1978) explored a variation of the foot in the door phenomenon by experimenting with the lowball technique. After the customer agrees to buy a new car with a bargain price and begins completing the sales forms, the salespersons removes the price advantage by charging for options or by checking with a boss who disallows the deal. Folklore has it that more lowballed customers now stick with the higher prices purchase than would have agreed to it at the outset. Later experiments found that this works only if people verbally commit to there choice. - And think, too, about what you might do next if you refuse a large request, known as the door in the face phenomenon. When Cialdini and his colleagues asked some ASU students to chaperone the delinquent children on a zoo trip, only 32% agreed to do so. With other students, though, the questioner asked if the students would commit 2 years as a volunteer counselors to delinquent children. All refused. The questioner then counteroffers by asking if they would take the children to the zoo, saying in effect, "OK, if you won't do that, would you do just this much?" With this technique, nearly twice as many - 56%- agreed to help.

Own race bias

- Perhaps you have noticed: They - the members of any racial group other than your own - even look alike. many people can recall embarrassing ourselves by confusing two people of another racial group, prompting the person we've misnamed to say, "You think we all look alike". Experiments in the US, Scotland, and Germany reveal that people of other races do in fact seem to look more alike than do people of one's own race. When white students are shown faces of a few white and a few black individuals and then asked to pick those individuals out of a photographic lineup, they show an own race bias: They more accurately recognize the white faces than the black ones, and they often falsely recognize black faces never before seen. o It's not that we cannot perceive differences among faces of another group. Rather, when looking at a face from another racial group we often attend, first, to group ("that man is Black") rather than to individual features. When viewing someone of our own group, we are less attentive to the race category and more attentive to individual details such as the eyes. Our attending to someone's being in a different social category also contributes to a parallel own age bias - the tendency for both children and older adults to more accurately identify faces from their own age groups.

Social dominance orientation

- Some people, more than others, notice and justify status differences. Those high in social dominance orientation tend to view people in terms of hierarchies. They like their own social groups to be high status - they prefer being on the top. Being in a dominant, high status position also tends to promote this orientation. Researchers argue that this desire to be on top leads people high in social dominance to embrace prejudice and to support political positions that justify prejudice.

The effect of arousing fear

- The Effect of Arousing Fear - Messages can also be effective by evoking negative emotions - When persuading people to cut down on smoking, get a tetanus shot, or drive carefully, a fear arousing message can be potent. - Young adults who saw warning labels with graphic images of blackened lungs and stained teeth (vs. text only warnings) were more likely to correctly remember the messages, experienced more fear, and were less inclined to smoke. - But how much fear should you arouse? Should you evoke just a little fear, lest people become so frightened that they tune out your painful message? Or should you try to scare the daylights out of them? Experiments show that, often the more frightened and vulnerable people feel, the more they respond. researchers concluded that "fear appeals are effective... there are no identified circumstances under which they backfire and lead to undesirable outcomes". - Playing on fear works best if a message leads people not only to fear but also to perceive a solution and feel capable of implementing it. Many ads designed to reduce sexual risks will aim to both arouse fear - "AIDS kills" - and to offer a protective strategy: Abstain, wear a condom, or save sex for a committed relationship. These types of appeals tell people not just to be scared, but to do something about it, increasing their sense of efficacy. - Appeals can slo focus on what you can gain by using the preventative product ("'If you wear sunscreen you'll have attractive skin) instead of what you lose ("If you don't wear sunscreen, you'll have unattractive skin"). - Gain framed messages focusing on the advantages of healthy behavior (not smoking, exercising, wearing sunscreen) are more effective than the framed in terms of loss.

The effect of good feelings

- The Effect of Good Feelings - Messages also become more persuasive through association with good feelings, such as what often accompanies munching food or hearing pleasant music. Receiving money or free sample often induces people to donate money or buy something. - Good feelings often enhance persuasion, partly by enhancing positive thinking and partly by linking good feelings with the message. People who are in a good mood view the world through rose colored glasses. But they also make faster, more impulsive decisions; they rely more on peripheral cues. Unhappy people ruminate before reacting, so they are less easily swayed by weak arguments.

Terror management theory

- With death on their minds, people exhibit terror management. They shield themselves from the threat of their own death by derogating those whose challenges to their worldview further arouse their anxiety. When people are already feeling vulnerable about their mortality, prejudice helps bolster a threatened belief system. But thinking about death can also heighten communal feelings, such as in-group identification. - Affirm people and they will evaluate an out group more positively; threaten their self esteem and they will restore it by denigrating an out group. - Despising outgrips strengthens the in-group.

Social categorization

??????? because we talk about categorization in terms of cognitive sources but not social?

Realistic group conflict theory came up early when talking about -- Frustration and Aggression: The Scapegoat Theory (sources of motivational prejudice)

Competition is an important source of frustration that can fuel prejudice. When two groups compete for jobs, housing, or social prestige, one group's goal fulfillment can become the other group's frustration. Thus, the realistic group conflict theory suggests that prejudice arises when groups compete from scarce resources.

So what's different in a group?

Performance and behavior

Elements of Persuasion

The communicator, the message, how the message is communicated, and the audience. o Credibility o Speaking style o Expertise o Trustworthiness o Attractiveness/liking

subgrouping

o A different way to accomodate the inconsistent information is to form a new stereotype for those who don't fit. Recognizing that the stereotype does not apply for everyone in the category, homeowners who have "desirable" Black neighbors can from a new and different stereotype of "professional, middle-class, Blacks." This subgrouping - forming a subgroup stereotype - tends to lead to modest change in the stereotype as the stereotype becomes more differentiated. o Subtypes are exceptions to the group; subgroups are acknowledged as a part of the overall diverse group.

Group size (in terms of deindividuazation)

o A group has the power not only to arouse its members but also to render them unidentifiable. o Lynch mobs: The bigger the mob, the more its member lose self awareness and become willing to commit atrocities, such as burning, lacerating, or dismembering the victim. o In each of these examples, from sports crows to Lynch mobs, evaluation apprehension plummets. o People's attention is focused on the situation, not on themselves. And because "everyone is doing it," all can attribute their behavior to the situation rather than to their own choices.

Physical vs. social aggression

o Aggression includes both physical aggression (hurting someone's body) and social aggression (such as bullying and cyberbullying, insults, harmful gossip, or social exclusion that hurts feelings. Social aggression can have serious consequences, with victims suffering from depression and sometimes - as has happened in several well publicized cases - committing suicide.

Arousing and Distracting activities (in terms of deindividuazation)

o Aggressive outbursts by large groups are often preceded by minor actions that arouse and divert people's attention. Group shouting, chanting, clapping, or dancing serve both to hype people up and to reduce self consciousness. o Experiments have shown that activities such as throwing rocks and group signing can set the stage for more disinhibited behavior. There is a self reinforcing pleasure in acting impulsively while seeing others do likewise. When we see others act as we are acting, we think they feel as we do, which reinforces our own feelings. Moreover, impulsive group action absorbs our attention. When we yell at the referee, we are not thinking about our values; we are reacting to the immediate situation. Later, when we stop to think about what we have done of said, we sometimes feel chagrined. Sometimes. At other times we seek deindividuating group experiences - dances, worship experiences, team sports - where we enjoy intense positive feelings and closeness to others.

Group

o All groups have one thing in common: Their members interact. Therefore, he defines a group as two or more people who interact and who influence one another. A pair of jogging companions, then, would indeed constitute a group. o Different groups help us meet different human needs- to affiliate (to belong to and connect with others), to achieve, and to gain a social identity. o By Shaw's definition, students working individually in a computer room would not be a group. Although physically together, they are more a collection of individuals than an interacting group (though each may be part of a group with dispersed others in an online chat room). o The distinction between unrelated individuals in a computer lab and interacting individuals sometimes blurs. People who are merely in one another's presence do sometimes, as we will see, influence one another.

The first two groupthink symptoms lead group members to overestimate their group's might and right (Illusion of invulnerability an unquestioned belief in the group's morality)

o An illusion of invulnerability: - The groups Janis studied all developed an excessive optimism that blinded them to warnings of danger. Told that his forces had lost radio contact with the Japanese carriers, Admiral Kimmel, jokes that maybe the Japanese were about to round Honolulu's Diamond Head. They actually were, but Kimmel's laughing at the idea dismissed the very possibility of its being true. o Unquestioned belief in the group's morality - Group members assume the inherent morality of their group and ignore ethical and moral issues.

Need for cognition

o Analytical people - those with a high need for cognition- enjoy thinking carefully and prefer central routes. o People who like to conserve their mental resources - those with a low need for cognition - are quicker to respond to such peripheral cues as the communicator's attractiveness and the pleasantness of the surroundings. o The consistent finding with each of these techniques: stimulating thinking makes strong messages more persuasive and (because of counter arguing) weak message less persuasive. o Many experiments have explored ways to stimulate people's thinking, - by using rhetorical questions; - by presenting multiple speakers - by making people feel responsible for evaluating or passing along the message; - by repeating the message; or - by getting people's undistracted attention.

Group Decision Making

o Are two (or many) heads better than one? IT DEPENDS! - Pearl Harbor - they could have stopped it but didn't - The Bay of Pigs Invasion

Aggression cues (sources of aggression/ influences on aggression)

o As we noted when considering the frustration - aggression hypothesis, violence is more likely when aggressive cues release pent up anger. o Berkowitz and others found that the sight of a weapon is such a cue. In one experiment, children who had just played with toy guns became more willing to knock down another child's blocks. o In a more recent experiment, people who used a driving simulator while a gun (vs. a tennis racket) was in the passenger sear drove more aggressively. In a metalnanlysus of 78 independent studies, the mere presence of weapons increased aggressive thoughts and behaviors, known as the "weapons effect". What's within sight is within mind. o The weapons effect might be why in the US, home to about 300 million privately owned guns. half of all murders are committed with handguns, or that handguns in homes are far more likely to kill household members than intruders. o Berkowitz was further unsurprised that countries that ban handguns have lower murder rates. o Basically a lot of details on how guns freaking suck

Resisting persuasion and attitude inoculation

o Attitude inoculation is exposing people to weak attacks upon their attitudes so that when stronger attacks come, they will babe refutations available. o When participants were "immunized" by writing as essay refuting a mild attack on a belief, they were better able to resist a more powerful attack later o One way inoculation can occur is by leading people to consider counterarguments - reasons why a persuasive message is wrong. o The answer, they suggest, is a "poison parasite" defense - one that combines a poison (strong counterarguments) with a parasite (similarities to an opponent's ads). In their studies, participants who viewed a familiar political ad were least persuaded by it when they had earlier seen counterarguments overlaid on a replica of the ad. Seeing the ad again thus also brought to mind the puncturing counterarguments. These ads use similar images to the real ones but feature the powerful counterargument that smoking harms health. o Counterarguments also came into play when a psychologist Chris Bryan wondered how teens could be persuaded to choose healthier snacks. In a Texas middle school, one group of 8th graders received the usual health - class appeal for healthier earring. But another group learned that the food industry used manipulative and deceptive strategies to sell junk food to young people, destining industry executives as "controlling, hypocritical adults." When later given the chance to choose snacks for a class party, teens who had learned the counterargument that junk food was a profit grab by older people were more likely to favor carrots and water over cookies and soda. The lesson? Teens might be more likely to eat healthy food if it's frames as a rebellion. o Smoking attitude inoculation probs on the study guide right? o One research team had high school students "inoculate" seventh graders against peer pressures to smoke. The seventh graders were taught to respond to advertisements with counterarguments. They also acted in role plays in which, after being called "chicken" for not taking a cigarette, they answered with statements such as "I'd be a real chicken if I smoked just to impress you." After several of these sessions during the seventh and eighth grades, the inoculated students were half as likely to begin smoking as were uninoculated students at another middle school - one that had an identical parental smoking rate.

Attractiveness and liking (element of persuasion and one of the six persuasion principle)

o Attractiveness and Liking - Most of us deny that endorsements by star athletes and entertainers affect us. We know that the stars are seldom knowledgeable about the products they endorse. Such ads are based on another characteristic of an effective communicator: attractiveness. - We are more likely to respond to those we like, a phenomenon well known to those organizing charitable solicitations and candy sales. - Our liking may open us up to the communicator's arguments (central route persuasion), or it may trigger positive associations when we see the product later (peripheral route persuasion). As with credibility, the liking- begets- persuasion principle suggests applications. - Attractiveness comes in several forms. Physical attractiveness is one. - Arguments, especially emotional ones, are often more influential when they come from people we consider beautiful. - Attractiveness and fame often matter most when people are making superficial judgements. - Similarity also makes for attractiveness. We tend to like people who are like us. - People who act as we do, subtly mimicking out postures, are likewise more influential. o Liking: people respond more affirmatively to those they like. ---- Application: Win friends and influence people. Create bonds based on similar interest, praise freely.

Cialdini's Six persuasion Principles

o Authority o Liking o Social Proof o Reciprocity o Consistency o Scarcity

sources of aggression/ influences on aggression

o Aversive incidents - Pain - Heat - Attacks o Arousal o Aggression cues o Media influences: POrnogrpahy and Sexual Violence - Distroted perceptions fo sexual reality - Aggression against women o Media Influences: TV, movies, and the Internet - Meida's affect on behavior - Media's effects on thinking o Another media influence: Video games o Effects of video games o Group influences

One sided vs two sided appeals

o Carol Wener and colleagues (2002) showed the disarming power of a simple two sided message in an experiment on aluminum can recycling. Signs added to wastebaskets in a University of Utah classroom building said, for example, "No Aluminum cans Please!!!!! Use the Recycler Located on the First Floor, Near the Entrance." When a final persuasive message acknowledged and responded to the main counterargument - "It May Be Inconvenient. But It Is important!!!!!!" - recycling reached 80%. o In simulated trials' defense case becomes more credible when the defense brings up damaging evidence before the prosecution does. Thus, a politic candidate speaking to a politically informed group, or a community group advocating for or against gay rights, would indeed be wise to respond to the opposition. o SO if your audience will be exposed to opposing views, offer a two sided appeal. Two sided appeals have another advantage: They can make the communicator seem more honest. When a salesperson mentioned a negative attribute of a product that was unimportant to the customer, the customer trusted the salesperson more and became more likely to buy the product.

Cognitive sources of prejudice (sources of prejudice)

o Categorization: classifying people into groups - spontaneous categorization - perceived similarities and differences o Distinctiveness: perceiving people who Stand out - distinctive people [] distinctiveness feeds self consciousness [] vivid cases - distinctive events foster illusory correlations o Attribution: Is it a just world? - group serving bias - The just world phenomenon

sub typing

o Consequence of prejudice o Prejdugements are self perpetuating. Whenever a group member behaves as expected, we duly note the fact; our prior belief is confirmed. When a group member violates our expectation, we may interpret or explain away the behavior as due to special circumstances. o We do notice information that is thinkingly inconsistent with a stereotype, but even that information has less impact than we might expect. When we focus on an atypical example, we can salvage the stereotype by splitting off a new category. The positive image that British schoolchildren from of their friendly school police officers (whom they perceive as a special category) does not improve their image of police officers in general. This sub typing - seeing people who deviate as exceptions - helps maintain the stereotype that police officers are unfriendly and dangerous. High prejudice people tend to subtype positive out group members (seeing them as atypical exceptions); low prejudice people more often subtype negative out-group members.

Consistency (six persuasion principle)

o Consistency: people tend to honor their public commitments.--- Application: Instead of telling restaurant reservation callers "please call if you change your plans," ask "Will you call if you change your plans?" and no- shows will drop.

Factors influencing persuasion

o Constructing a persuasive appeal - Make people feel good - make people feel scared - one sided vs two sided appeal

Evaluation Apprehension (Social Facilitation/ why are we aroused in the presence of others)

o Cottrell surmised that observers make us apprehensive because we wonder how they are evaluating us. TO test whether evaluation apprehension exists, Cottrell and associates (1968) blindfolded observers, supposedly in preparation for a perception experiment. In contrast to the effect of a watching audience, the mere presence of these blindfolded people did not boost a performer's well practiced responses. o Other experiments confirmed that the enhancement of dominant responses is strongest when people think they are being evaluated. In one experiment, individuals running on a jogging path sped up as they came upon a woman seated on the grass - if she was facing them rather than sitting with her back turned. o The self consciousness we feel when being evaluated can also interfere with behaviors that we perform best automatically. If self conscious basketball players analyze their body movements while shooting critical free throws, they are more likely to miss. We perform some well learned behaviors best without overthinking them.

Stigma consciousness

o Devine and colleagues report that people low and high in prejudice sometimes have similar automatic (unintentional) prejudicial responses. The result: Unwanted (dissonant) thoughts and feelings often persist. Breaking the prejudice habit is not easy. o In real life, a majority person's encountering a minority person may trigger a knee jerk stereotype. Those with accepting and those with disapproving attitudes toward homosexuals may both feel uncomfortable sitting with a gay male on a bus seat. Seeking not to appear prejudiced, they may divert their attention away from the person. o researchers who study stereotyping contend, however, that prejudicial reactions are not inevitable. The motivation to avoid prejudice can lead people to modify they thoughts and actions. Aware of the gap between how they should feel and how they do feel, self conscious people will feel guilt and try to inhibit their prejudicial response. Even automatic prejudices subside, when people motivation to avoid prejudice is internal rather than external.

Illusory correlation

o Distinctive events foster illusory correlations - Sterotypes assume a correlation between group membership and individuals' presumed characteristics. Often, people's stereotypes are accurate. But sometimes our attentiveness to unusual occurrences creates illusory correlations. Because we are sensitive to distinctive events, the co occurrence of two events is especially noticeable - more noticeable than each of the times the unusual events do not occur together. - In a classic experiment, researchers demonstrated illusory correlation. They showed students slides in which various people, members of "group A" or "group B," were said to have done something desirable or undesirable. For example, "John, a member of Group A, visited a sick friend in the hospital." Twice as many statements described members of Group A as group B. But both groups did nine desirable acts for every four undesirable behaviors. Since both Group B and the undesirable acts were less frequent, their co occurrence was an unusual combination that caught people's attention. The students therefore overestimated the frequency with which the "minority" group (B) acted undesirably, and they judged group B more harshly. - Although researchers debate why it happens, they agree that illusory correlation occurs and provides yet another source for the formation of racial stereotypes. Thus, the features that most distinguish a minority from a majority are those that become associated with it. Your ethnic or social group may in most ways be like other groups, but people will notice how it differs. - In experiments, even single co occurrences of an unusual act by someone in an atypical group can embed illusory correlations in people's minds. This enables the mass media to feed illusory correlations. - Further research revealed that our preexisting stereotypes can lead us to "see" correlations that aren't there.

Distinctiveness: Perceiving people who stand out (Cognitive source)

o Distinctive people and vidid or extreme occurrences often capture attention and distort judgements o When someone in a group is made conspicuous, we tend to see that person as causing whatever happens. o Have you noticed that people also define you by your most distinctive traits and behaviors? Tell people about someone who is a skydiver and a tennis player and they will think of the person as a skydiver. o The extra attention we pay to distinctive pole creates an illusion that they differ from others more than they really do. o Distnictivenss feeds self consciousness - When surrounded by Whites, Blacks sometimes detect people reacting to their distinctiveness. Many of reported being stared or glared ar, being subject to insensitive comments, and receiving bad service. Whites, when alone amid those of another race, may be similarly sensitive to others' reactions. Sometimes, however, we misperceive others as reacting to our distinctiveness. - Self conscious interactions between a majority and a minority person can therefore feel tense even when both are well intentioned. Tom, who is known to be gay, meets tolerant Bill, who is straight and wants to respond without prejudice. But feeling unsure of himself, Bill holds back a bit. Tom, expecting negative attitudes from most people, misreads Bill's hesitancy as hostility and responds with a seeming chip on his shoulder. o Vivid cases - Our minds also use distinctive cases as a shortcut to judging groups. Given limited experience with a particular social group, we recall examples of it and generalize from those. Moreover, encountering an example of a negative stereotype (for instance, a hostile black person) can prime the stereotype, leading some people to minimize contact with the group. - Such generalizing from a single case can cause problems. Vivid instances, though more available in memory, seldom represent the larger group. Exceptional athletes, though distinctive and memorable, are not the best basis for judging the distribution of athletic talent among an entire group. - Those in a numerical minority, being more distinctive, also may be numerically overestimated by the majority. o Vivid cases distort judgements and create stereotypes. o Distinctive events foster illusory correlations - Sterotypes assume a correlation between group membership and individuals' presumed characteristics. Often, people's stereotypes are accurate. But sometimes our attentiveness to unusual occurrences creates illusory correlations. Because we are sensitive to distinctive events, the co occurrence of two events is especially noticeable - more noticeable than each of the times the unusual events do not occur together. - In a classic experiment, researchers demonstrated illusory correlation. They showed students slides in which various people, members of "group A" or "group B," were said to have done something desirable or undesirable. For example, "John, a member of Group A, visited a sick friend in the hospital." Twice as many statements described members of Group A as group B. But both groups did nine desirable acts for every four undesirable behaviors. Since both Group B and the undesirable acts were less frequent, their co occurrence was an unusual combination that caught people's attention. The students therefore overestimated the frequency with which the "minority" group (B) acted undesirably, and they judged group B more harshly. - Although researchers debate why it happens, they agree that illusory correlation occurs and provides yet another source for the formation of racial stereotypes. Thus, the features that most distinguish a minority from a majority are those that become associated with it. Your ethnic or social group may in most ways be like other groups, but people will notice how it differs. - In experiments, even single co occurrences of an unusual act by someone in an atypical group can embed illusory correlations in people's minds. This enables the mass media to feed illusory correlations. - Further research revealed that our preexisting stereotypes can lead us to "see" correlations that aren't there.

Group Polarization and social comparison and pluralistic ignorance

o Do group interactions more often have good or and outcomes? Police brutality and mob violence demonstrate the detractive potential of groups. Yet support - group leaders, work group consultants, and educational theorists proclaim the beneficial effects of groups interaction. And self help group members and religious adherents strengthen their identities by fellowship with like minded others. o Studies of small groups have produced a principle that helps explain both bad and good outcomes: Group discussion often strengthens members' initial inclinations. The unfolding of this research on group polarization illustrates the process of inquiry - how an interesting discovery often leads researcher to hasty and erroneous conclusions, which get replaced with more accurate conclusions. o Risky Shift o Similar minds polarize o Group polarization: Discussion typically strengthens the average inclination of group members. o Would talking in groups enhance their shared initial inclinations? In groups, would risk takers take bigger risks, bigots become more hostile, and givers become more generous? That's what the group polarization hypothesis predicts. o Dozen of studies confirm group polarization o Another research strategy has been to pick issues on which opinions are divided and then isolate people who hold the same view. Does discussion with like minded people strengthen shared views? Does it magnify the attitude gap that separates the two sides? o They set up groups of relatively prejudiced and unprejudiced high school students and asked them to respond - before and after discussion - to issues involving racial attitudes. They found that the discussions among like minded students did indeed increase the initial gap between the two groups. o Show social psychologists a like minded group that interacts mostly among themselves and they will show you a group that may become more extreme. When diversity moderates us, like minds polarize. o Why do groups adopt stances that are more exaggerated than that of their individual member? o Among several proposed theories of group polarization, two have survived scientific scrutiny. One deals with the arguments presented during a discussion and is an example of informational influence (influence that results from accepting evidence about reality). The other concerns how members of a group view themselves vis -à- vis the other members, an example of normative influence (influence based on a person's desire to be accepted or admired by others. o Informational Influence - According to the best supported explanation, group discussion elicits a pooling of ideas, most of which favor the dominant viewpoint. Some discussed ideas are common knowledge to the group members. Other ideas may include persuasive arguments that some group members had not previously considered. Such statements often entangle information about the person's arguments with cues concerning the person's position on the issue. But when people hear relevant arguments without learning the specific stands other people assume, they still shift their positions. Arguments, in and of themselves, matter. o But there is more to attitude change than merely hearing someone else's arguments. Active participation in discussion produces more attitude change than does passive listening. When participants express the ideas in their own words, the verbal commitment magnifies the impact. The more group members repeat one another's ideas, the more they rehearse and validate them. o People's minds are not just blank tablets for persuaders to write upon. With central route persuasion, what people think in response to a message is crucial. o Normative Influence o A second explanation of polarization involves comparison with others. As Festinger argued in his influential theory of social comparison, we humans want to evaluate our opinions and abilities by comparing our views with others'. We are most persuaded by people in our "reference groups" - groups we identify with. Moreover, we want people to like us, so we may express stronger opinions after discovering that others share our views. o When we ask people to predict how others would respond to items such as then "Helen" dilemma, they typically exhibit pluralistic ignorance: They don't realize how strongly others support the socially preferred tendency (in this case, writing the novel). A typical person will advise writing the novel even if its change of success is only 4 in 10 but will estimate that most other people would require 5 or 6 in 10. (self serving bias). When the discussion begins, most people discover they are not outshining the others as they had supposed. In fact, others are ahead of them, having taken an even stronger position in favor of writing the novel. No longer restrained by a misperceived group norm, they are liberated to voice their preferences more strongly. o Or perhaps you can recall when you and others were guarded and reserved in a group, until someone broke the ice and said, "well, to be perfectly honest, I think ..." Soon you were all surprised to discover strong support for your shared views. o Social comparison theory prompted experiments that exposed people to others' positions but not to their arguments. o When people learn others' positions - without prior commitment and without discussion or sharing of arguments - will they adjust their responses to maintain a socially favorable position? They will. This comparison based polarization is usually less than that produced by a lively discussion. Still, it's surprising that instead of simply conforming to the group average, people often go it one better.

How to prevent group think

o Flawed group dynamics help explain many failed decisions; sometimes too many cooks spoil the broth. However, given open leadership, a cohesive team spirit can improve decisions. Sometimes two or more heads are better than one. o In search of conditions that breed good decisions, Janis also anlyzed two successful ventures. Janis's (1982) recommendations for preventing groupthink incorporate many of the effective groups procedures used in both cases: - Be impartial: do not endorse any position. DOn't start group discussions by having people state their positions; doing so surpasses information sharing and degrades the quality of decisions. - Encourage critical evaluation: assign a "devil's advocate." Better yet, welcome the input of a genuine dissenter, which does even more to stimulate original thinking and to open a group to opposing views. - Occasionally subdivide the group, then reunite to air differences - welcome critiques from outside experts and associates - Before implementing, call a "second chance" meeting to air any lingering doubts o When such steps are taken, group decisions may take longer to make, yet ultimately prove less defective and more effective.

The Channel Of Communication (how it is said) and the two step flow of communication

o For persuasion, there must be communication. And for communication, there must be a channel: a face to face appeal, a written sign or document, a media advertisement o Active Experience or Passive Reception? - Are spoken appeals more persuasive? Not necessarily. - Written and visual appeals are both passive, and thus have similar hurdles to overcome. Many are relatively ineffective. - With such power, can the media help a wealthy politician candidate buy an election? In the US, the candidate with more money wins 91% of the time. Advertising exposure helps make an unfamiliar candidate into a familiar one. Mere exposure to unfamiliar stimuli breeds liking. Moreover, mere repetition can make things believable. - Also as political manipulators know, believable lies can displace hard truths. - Mere repetition of a statement also serves to increase its fluency which increases believability - Because passively received appeals are sometimes effective and sometimes not, can we specify in advance the issues most amenable to persuasion? There is a simple rule: The more familiar people are with an issue, the less persuadable they are. On minor issues, such as which brand of aspirin to buy, it's east to demonstrate the media's power. On more familiar and important issues, such as attitudes about a lengthy and controversial war, persuading people is like trying to push a piano uphill. It is not impossible, but one shove won't do it. - Active experience also strengthens attitudes. When we act, we amplify the idea behind what we have done, especially when we feel responsible. In addition, attitudes more often endure and influence our behavior when rooted in our own experience. That's one reason why so many companies now aim to advertise through consumer generated ads, viral videos, facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and online games -- consumers who have interactive experiences with brands and products are more engaged than those who merely see or hear advertisements. o Personal VS Media Influence - Persuasion studies demonstrate that the major influence on us is not the media but our contact with people. - Personal contacts persuade MEDIA INFLUENCE: THE TWO STEP FLOW o Although face to face influence is usually greater than media influence, we should not underestimate the media's power. Those who personally influence our opinions must get their ideas from some source, and often their sources are the media. o Katz observed that many of the media's effects operate in a two step flow of communication: from media to opinion leaders to everyone else. In any large group, it is these opinion leaders and trendsetters - "the influentials"- that marketers and politicians seek to woo. Opinion leaders are individuals perceived as experts. o The two step flow model reminds us that media influence penetrate the culture in subtle ways. Even if the media had little direct effect on people's attitudes, they could still have a major indirect effect. Comparing Media o Lumpring together all media oversimplifies. Studies comparing different media find that the more lifelike the medium, the more persuasive its message. Thus, the order of persuasiveness seems to be: live (face to face), videotaped, audiotaped, and written. If you want to persuade someone who digress with you, it's better to speak than to write to them. Your voice humanizes you. o However, messages are best comprehended and recalled when written. Comprehension is one of the first steps in the persuasion process. o Chaiken and Eagly reasoned that if a message is difficult to comprehend, persuasion should be greater when the message is written, because readers will be able to work through the message at their own pace. o Researchers determined difficult messages were indeed most persuasive when written; easy messages, when videotaped/.

Frustration and Aggression: The Scapegoat Theory (sources of motivational prejudice)

o Frustration (from the blocking fo a goal) feeds hostility). When the cause of our frustration is intimidating or unknown, we often redirect our hostility. This phenmenon of "displaced aggression" (scapegoating )contributed to the lynchings of African Americans in the South after the Civil War. o When living standards are rising, societies tend to be more open to diversity and to the passage and enforcement of anti-discrimination laws. o Passions provoke prejudice. By contrast, indidivudals who experience no negative emotional response to social threats - namely children with the genetic disorder called Williams syndrome - display a notable lack of racial stereotypes and prejudice . Not passion, no prejudice. o Competition is an important source of frustration that can fuel prejudice. When two groups compete for jobs, housing, or social prestige, one group's goal fulfillment can become the other group's frustration. Thus, the realistic group conflict theory suggests that prejudice arises when groups compete from scarce resources.

Sources of motivation prejudice

o Frustration and Aggression: the Scapegoat theory o Social identity theory: Feeling superior to others - in-group Bias [] in group bias supports a positive self concept [] In-group bias feeds favoritism [] Must in-group liking foster out-group disliking? - The need for status, self regarded, and belonging o Motivation to avoid prejudice

Diminished Self Awareness

o Group experiences that diminish self consciousness tend to disconnect behavior from attitudes. o Research revealed that unselfish conscious, deindividuated people are less restrained , less self regulated, more likely to act without thinking about their own values, and more responsive to the situation. These findings complement and reinforce the experiments on self awareness. o Self awareness is the opposite of deindividuazation. Those made self aware, by acting in front of a mirror or a TV camera, exhibit increased self control, and their actions more clearly reflect their attitudes. In front of a mirror, people taste testing cream cheese varieties ate less of the high fat variety. People made self aware are also less likely to cheat. So are those who generally have a strong sense of themselves as distinct and independent. In Japan, where people more often imagine how they might look to others, the presence of a mirror had no effect on cheating. o The Principle: People Who Are Self Conscious, Or Who Are Temporarily Made So, Exhibit Greater Consistency Between Their Words Outside A Situation And Theirs Deeds In It.

group serving bias

o Group serving bias - Pettigrew showed how attribution errors bias people's explanations of group members' behaviors. We grant members of our own group the benefit of the doubt: "she donated because she had a good heart; he refused because he's using every penny to help support his mother." When explaining acts by members of other groups, we more often assume the worst: "she donated to fain favor; he refused because he's selfish." - Positive behavior by outgrip members is more often dismissed. It may be seen as a "special case" - Disadvantaged groups and groups that stress modesty (such as the Chinese) exhibit less of this group serving bias. B contrast, immodest groups that are invested in their own greatness react to threats with group serving bias and hostility. - When there is conflict or threat, a focus on differences can foster group level attributions and increased hostility. - The group serving bias can subtly color our language. Positive behaviors by another ungroup member are often described as general dispositions. When performed by an outgrip member, the same behavior is often described as a specific, isolated act. With negative behavior, the specificity reverses. - Earlier we noted that blaming the victim can justify the blamer's own superior status. Blaming occurs as people attribute an outcrop's failures to its members' flawed dispositions.

Anonymity (In terms of deindividuazation)

o How can we be sure that crowds offer anonymity? We can't. o But we can experiment with anonymity to see if it actually lessens inhibitions. o Phillip Zimbardo (1970, 2002) got the idea for such an experiment from his undergraduate students, who questioned how good boys in Lord of the Flies could so suddenly become monsters after painting their faces. o To experiment with such anonymity, he dressed NYU women in identical white coats and hoods, rather like Ku Klux Klan members. Asked to deliver electric shocks to a woman, they pressed the shock button twice as long as women who were unconcealed and wearing large name tags. Even dimmed lighting or wearing sunglasses increases people's perceived anonymity, and thus their willingness to cheat or behave selfishly. o The internet offers similar anonymity. Internent bullies who would never say, "get a life, you phony," to someone's face will hide behind their anonymity online. Most social media sites, to their credit, require people to use their real names, which constrains hate filled comments. o A research team led by Ed Diener (1976) cleverly demonstrated the effect both of being in a group and of being physically anonymous. At Halloween, they observed 1,352 Seattle children trick or treating. As the children, either alone or in groups, approached 1 of 27 homes scattered throughout the city, an experimenter greeted them warmly, invited them to "take on of the candies", and then left the candy unattended. Hidden observers noted that children in groups were more than twice as likely to take extra candy than were solo children. Also, children who had been asked their names and where they lived were less than half as likely to transgress as those who were left anonymous. When they were deindividuated both by group immersion and by anonymity, most children stole extra candy. o Does becoming physically anonymous always unleash our worst impulses? Fortunately, no. In all these situations, people were responding to clear antisocial cues. Researches point out that the Klan like outfits worn by Zimbardo's participants may have been stimulus cues for hostility. In an experiment at the University of Georgia, women put on nurses' uniforms before deciding how much sock someone should receive. When those wearing the nurses' uniforms were made anonymous, they bacem less aggressive in administering shocks. From their analysis, researchers concluded that being anonymous makes one less self conscious, more group conscious, and more responsive to situational cues, whether negative (klan uniforms) or positive (nurses' uniforms).

Peripheral Route to Persuasion

o However, when we're not mitigated or able to think carefully, the strength of the arguments might not matter. If we're distracted, uninvolved, or just plain busy, we may not take the time to reflect on the message's content. o Rather than analyzing whether the arguments are compelling, we might follow the peripheral route to persuasion- focusing on cues that trigger automatic acceptance without much thinking. In these situations, easily understood, familiar statements are more persuasive than novel statements with the same meaning o Billboards and television commercials - media that consumers are able to take in for only brief amounts of time - often use the peripheral route, with visual images as peripheral cues. o Instead of providing arguments in favor of smoking, cigarette ads associate the product with images of beauty and pleasure. o On the other hand, magazine prescription drug ads seldom feature Hollywood stars or great athletes. Instead, they offer customers information on benefits and side effects. (Central Route) o More implicit and automatic o Peripheral route processing more slowly builds implicit attitudes through repeated associations between an attitude and an emotion. o None of us have the time to thoughtfully analyze all issues. o Often we take the peripheral route, by using simple rule of thumb heuristics, such as "trust the experts" or "long messages are credible". o We all make snap judgements using heuristics: If a speaker is articulate and appealing, has apparently good motives, and has several arguments (or better, if the different arguments come from different sources), we usually take the easy peripheral route and accept the message without much thought.

Social Identity Theory: Feeling superior to others (sources of motivational prejudice)

o Humans aWe define ourselves by our groups. o Self concept - our sense of who we are - contains not just a personal identity (our sense of our personal attributes and attitudes) but also a social identity. o Social Identity Theory: - We categorize: we find it useful to put people, ourselves included, into categories. To label someone as a Hindu, a Scot, or a bus driver is a shorthand way of saying some other things about the person - We identify: We associate ourselves with certain groups (our in-groups) and gain self esteem by doing so - We compare: we contrast out groups with other groups (out-groups), with a favorable bias toward our own group. o Beginning in our preschool years, we humans naturally divide others into those inside and those outside our group. We also evaluate ourselves partly by our group memberships. Having a sense of "we-ness" strengthens our self concepts. We seek not only respect for ourselves but also pride in our groups. Moreover, seeing our groups as superior helps us feel even better. o Lacking a positive personal identity, people often seek self esteem by identifying with a group. Especially in a. chaotic or an uncertain world, being part of a zealous, tightly knit group feels good; it validates who one is. And that explains part of the appeal of extreme, radical groups in today's world. o When people's personal and social identities become fused - when the boundary between self and group blurs - they become more willing to fight or die for their group. o The more important our social identity, the more we react prejudicially to threats from another group. o In group bias - The group definition of who you are - your gender, race, religion, marital status, academic major - implies a definition of who you are not. The circle that includes "us" (the in group) excludes "them" (the out group). - The mere experience of being formed into groups may promote in-group bias. [] In-group Bias supports a positive self concept: The our group has been successful, we can make ourselves feel better by identifying more strongly with it. Basking in the reflected glory of a successful in-group is strongest among those who have just experienced an ego blow, such as learning they did poorly on a "creativity test". [] In-group Bias feeds favoritism: We are so group conscious that, given any excuse to think of ourselves as a group, we will do so- and we will then exhibit in-group bias. Even framing conspicuous groups on no logical basis - for instance, merely by composing groups X and Y with the flip of a coin - will produce some in-group bias. In experiments, Tajfel and Billing further explored how little it takes to provoke favoritism toward us and fairness toward them. In one study, Tajfel and Billing had individual British teenagers evaluate modern abstract paintings and the told them that they and some other teens had favored the art of Klee over that of kandinsky, while others favored Kandinsky. Finally, without ever meeting the other member os their Klee favoring group, each teen divided some money among members of the Klee and Kandinsky favoring groups. In this and other experiments, defining groups even in this trivial way produced in-group favoritism. Wilder summarized the typical result: "When given the opportunity to divide 15 points [worth money], subjects generally awarded 9 or 10 points to their own group and 5 to 6 points to the other group." We are more prone to in-group bias when our group is small and differs in status relative to the out group. When we're part of a small group surrounded by a larger group, we are more conscious of our group membership. o Need for status, self regarded, and belonging - Status is relative: To perceive ourselves as having status, we need people below us. Thus, one psychological benefit of prejudice, or of any status system, is a feeling of superiority. - If our status is secure - if we feel "authentic pride" that's rooted in accomplishment, not just self aggrandizement - we have less need to feel superior, and we express less prejudice. - Thinking about dying provokes enough insecurity to intensify in group favoritism and out group prejudice. - With death on their minds, people exhibit terror management. They shield themselves from the threat of their own death by derogating those whose challenges to their worldview further arouse their anxiety. When people are already feeling vulnerable about their mortality, prejudice helps bolster a threatened belief system. But thinking about death can also heighten communal feelings, such as in-group identification. - Affirm people and they will evaluate an out group more positively; threaten their self esteem and they will restore it by denigrating an out group. - Despising outgrips strengthens the in-group.

Primacy vs Recency Effect

o Imagine that you are a consultant to a politician who must soon debate another politician over a ballot proposition on bilingual education. Three weeks before the vote, each politician is to appear on the nightly news and present a prepared statement. By the flip of the coin, your side receives the choice of whether to speak first or last. what do you do? o Would first be better? People's preconceptions control their interpretations. Moreover, a belief once formed, is difficult to discredit, so going first could give voters ideas that would favorably bias how they perceive and interpret the second speech. Besides, people may pay more attention to what comes first. then again, people remember recent things better. Might it really be more effective to speak last? o Your first line of reasoning predicts what is most common, a primacy effect: Information presented early is most persuasive. First impressions are important. - Solomon Asch Experiment - Asch gave these sentences to college students in NYC: John is intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and envious. John is envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, and intelligent. Those who read the adjectives in the intelligent-to-envious order rated the person more positively than did those given the envious-to-intelligent order. The earlier information seemed to color their interpretation o the later information, producing the primacy effect. o What about the opposite possibility? Would our better memory of recent information ever create a recency effect? We know from experience (as well as from memory experiments) that today's events can temporarily outweigh significant past events. o To test for a possible recency effect, Miller and Campbell gave another group of students a section of testimony to read. A week later, the researchers had them read another section and then immediately state their opinions. The results were the reverse of the other experiment - a recency effect. Apparently the first section of arguments had largely faded from memory in the ensuing week. o Forgetting creates the recency effect (1) when enough time separates the two messages and (2) when the audience commits itself soon after the second message. When the two messages are back to back, followed by a time gap, the primacy effect usually occurs. This is especially so when the first message stimulates thinking.

Arousal (sources of aggression/ influences on aggression)

o In a famous experiment, researchers found we can experience an aroused bodily state in different ways. They aroused " University of Minnesota men by injecting them with adrenaline. The drug produced body flushing, heart palpitation, and more rapid breathing. When forewarned that the drug would produce those effects, the men felt little emotion, even when sitting next to either a hostile or a euphoric person. Of course, they could readily attribute their bodily sensations to the drug. Schachter and Singer led another group of men to believe the drug produced no such side effects. Then they, too, were placed in the company of either a hostile or a euphoric person. How did they feel and act? They were angry with the hostile person and amused by the euphoric person. The principle seemed to be: A state of arousal can be interpreted in different ways depending on the context." o Other experiments indicate that arousal is not as emotionally undifferentiated as they believed. Yet being physically stirred up does intensify just about any emotion =. For example, people find radio static unpleasant, especially when they are aroused by bright lightning. o People who have just pumped an exercise bike or watched a film of a rock concert find it easy to misattribute their arousal to a provocation and then retaliate with heightened aggression. o Arousal fuels emotions. o Sexual arousal and other forms of arousal, such as anger, can thereof amplify one another. o A frustrating or insulting situation heightens arousal. When it does, the arousal, combined with hostile thoughts and feelings, may form a recipe for aggressive behavior.

Attribution: is it a just world? (sources of cognitive)

o In explaining others' actions, we frequently commit the fundamental attribution error: We attribute others' behavior so much to their inner dispositions that we discount important situational forces. The error occurs partly because our attention focuses on the person, not on the situation. Slavery was often overlooked as an explantation for slave behavior; the behavior was instead attributed to the slaves' own nature. o The more people assume that human traits are fixed dispositions, the stronger are tie stereotypes and the greater their acceptance or racial inequities. o Group serving bias - Pettigrew showed how attribution errors bias people's explanations of group members' behaviors. We grant members of our own group the benefit of the doubt: "she donated because she had a good heart; he refused because he's using every penny to help support his mother." When explaining acts by members of other groups, we more often assume the worst: "she donated to fain favor; he refused because he's selfish." - Positive behavior by outgrip members is more often dismissed. It may be seen as a "special case" - Disadvantaged groups and groups that stress modesty (such as the Chinese) exhibit less of this group serving bias. B contrast, immodest groups that are invested in their own greatness react to threats with group serving bias and hostility. - When there is conflict or threat, a focus on differences can foster group level attributions and increased hostility. - The group serving bias can subtly color our language. Positive behaviors by another ungroup member are often described as general dispositions. When performed by an outgrip member, the same behavior is often described as a specific, isolated act. With negative behavior, the specificity reverses. - Earlier we noted that blaming the victim can justify the blamer's own superior status. Blaming occurs as people attribute an outcrop's failures to its members' flawed dispositions. o The just world phenomenon - Merely observing another innocent person being victimized is enough to make the victim seem less worthy. - Lerner noted that such disparaging of hapless victims results from the need to believe that "I am a just person living in a just world, a world where people get what they deserve." From early childhood, he argues, we are taught that good is rewarded and evil punished. Hard work and virtue pay dividends; laziness and immorality do not. From this it is but a short leap to assuming that those who flourish must be good and those who suffer must deserve their fate. This is the just world phenomenon - This line of research suggests that people are indifferent to social injustice not because they have no concern for justice but because they see no injustice. Those who assume a just world believe that: [] rape victims must have behaved seductively [] battered spouses must have provoked their beatings [] poor people don't deserve better [] sick people are responsible for their illnesses [] teens who are bullied online deserve it - Such beliefs enable successful people to reassure themselves that they, too, deserve what they have.

In group bias

o In group bias - The group definition of who you are - your gender, race, religion, marital status, academic major - implies a definition of who you are not. The circle that includes "us" (the in group) excludes "them" (the out group). - The mere experience of being formed into groups may promote in-group bias. [] In-group Bias supports a positive self concept: The our group has been successful, we can make ourselves feel better by identifying more strongly with it. Basking in the reflected glory of a successful in-group is strongest among those who have just experienced an ego blow, such as learning they did poorly on a "creativity test". [] In-group Bias feeds favoritism: We are so group conscious that, given any excuse to think of ourselves as a group, we will do so- and we will then exhibit in-group bias. Even framing conspicuous groups on no logical basis - for instance, merely by composing groups X and Y with the flip of a coin - will produce some in-group bias. In experiments, Tajfel and Billing further explored how little it takes to provoke favoritism toward us and fairness toward them. In one study, Tajfel and Billing had individual British teenagers evaluate modern abstract paintings and the told them that they and some other teens had favored the art of Klee over that of kandinsky, while others favored Kandinsky. Finally, without ever meeting the other member os their Klee favoring group, each teen divided some money among members of the Klee and Kandinsky favoring groups. In this and other experiments, defining groups even in this trivial way produced in-group favoritism. Wilder summarized the typical result: "When given the opportunity to divide 15 points [worth money], subjects generally awarded 9 or 10 points to their own group and 5 to 6 points to the other group." We are more prone to in-group bias when our group is small and differs in status relative to the out group. When we're part of a small group surrounded by a larger group, we are more conscious of our group membership.

Media Influences: TV, movies, and the Internet (sources of aggression/ influences on aggression)

o In one content analysis of TV dramas airing in 2012 - 2013, a gun, knife, or sword appeared on screen every 3 minutes. o SOcial aggression (such as bullying and social exclusion) is just as frequent; in the 50 most popular TV shows among 2 - 11 year olds, 92% featured at least some social aggression. This bullying often came from an attractive perpetrator, was portrayed as funny, and was neither rewarded nor punished. o Media's effects on behavior - The frequent result: The more violent the content of the child's TV viewing, the more aggressive the child. And it extends to social aggression. "Given the convergence of correlational and experimental evidence, researchers have explored why viewing violence has this effect. Consider three possibilities (Geen & Thomas, 1986). One is the arousal it produces (Mueller et al., 1983; Zillmann, 1989). As we noted earlier, arousal tends to spill over: one type of arousal energizes other behaviors. Other research shows that viewing violence disinhibits. In Bandura's experiment, the adult's punching of the Bobo doll seemed to make outbursts legitimate and to lower the children's inhibitions. Viewing violence primes the viewer for aggressive behavior by activating violence-related thoughts (Berkowitz, 1984; Bushman & Geen, 1990; Josephson, 1987). Listening to music with sexually violent lyrics seems to have a similar effect (Barongan & Hall, 1995; Johnson et al., 1995; Pritchard, 1998). Media portrayals also evoke imitation. The children in Bandura's experiments reenacted the specific behaviors they had witnessed. The commercial television industry is hard pressed to dispute that television leads viewers to imitate what they have seen: Its advertisers model consumption. Are media executives right, however, to argue that TV merely holds a mirror to a violent society, that art imitates life, and that the "reel" world therefore shows us the real world? Actually, on TV programs, acts of assault outnumber affectionate acts four to one. In other ways as well, television models an unreal world. But there is good news here, too. If the ways of relating and problem solving modeled on television do trigger imitation, especially among young viewers, then TV modeling of prosocial behavior should be socially beneficial. A character who helps others (like Dora or Doc McStuffins) can teach children prosocial behavior." o Desensitization o Social scripts - When we find ourselves in new situations, uncertain how to act, we rely on social scripts - culturally provided mental instructions for how to act. After so man y actions films, youngsters may acquire a script that is played when they face real life conflicts. - The more sexual content that adolscents view (even when controlling for other predictors of early sexual activity), the more lily they are to perceive their peers as sexually active, to develop sexually permissive attitudes, and to experience early intercourse. Media portrayals implant social scripts. o Altered perceptions - More likely to think that crime is more common than it is. o Cognitive priming - Research also reveals that watching violent tv primes aggression related ideas. After viewing violence, people offer more hostile explanations for others' behavior (was the shove intentional?). - They interpret spoken homonyms with the more aggressive meaning (interpreting "punch" as a hit rather than a drink)> And they recognize aggressive words more quickly.

Group Think and Group Decision Making

o Irving Janis wondered if such phenomena as self justification, self serving bias, conformity, public commitment, group polarization, might help explain good and bad group decisions made by some 20th century American presidents and they advisers. - Pearl Harbor: Military commanders in Hawaii received a stream of information about Japan's preparations for an attack on the US somewhere in the Pacific. Military intelligence then lost radio contact with Japanese aircraft carriers, which had begun moving straight for Hawaii. Air reconnaissance could have spotted the carriers or at least provided a few minutes' warning. But complacent commanders decided against such precautions. The result: No alert was sounded until the attack on a virtually defenseless base was under way. - The Bay of Pigs Invasion: In 1961, JFK and his advisers tried to overthrow Fidel Castro by invading Cuba with 1,400 CIA trained Cuban exiles. Nearly all invaders were soon killed or captured, the US was humiliated, and Cuba allied itself more closely with the former USSR. After learning the outcome, Kennedy wondered aloud, "How could we have been so stupid?" - Vietnam War o Janis believed that these blunders were bred by the tendency of decision making groups to suppress dissent in the interest of group harmony, a phenomenon he called group think. o In work groups, team spirit is good for morale and boosts of productivity. A shared group identity motivates people to persist on a project. But when making decisions, close knit groups may pay a price. Janis believed that the soil from which groupthink sprouts includes - amiable, cohesive group - Relative isolation of the group from dissenting viewpoints; and - A directive leader who signals what decision he or she favors.

Message Content (Element of persuasion)

o It matters not only who says something but also what that person says. o Reason VS Emotion - The effect of good feelings - The effect of arousing fear o Message Context - Foot in the door phenomenon - Lowball technique - Door in the face phenomenon o One sided versus two sided appeals o Primacy VS Recency - Primacy effect - Recency effect

Symptoms of Groupthink

o Janis identified 8 group think symptoms. o The symptoms are a collective form of dissonance reduction as group members, when facing a threat, try to maintain their positive group feeling. They are o An illusion of invulnerability o Unquestioned belief in the group's morality o Rationalization o Stereotyped view of opponent o Conformity pressure o Self censorship o Illusion of unanimity o Mind guards

benevolent vs. hostile sexism

o Judging from what people tell survey researchers, attitudes toward women have changed as rapidly as racial attitudes. o Researchers report that people don't respond to women with gut level negative emotions as they do to certain other groups. Most people like women more than men. They perceive women as more understanding, kind, and helpful. Eagly dubbed this favorable stereotype the women are wonderful effect. o Bur gender attitudes often are ambivalent. Gender attitudes frequently mix a benevolent sexism ("women have a superior moral sensibility") with hostile sexism ("Once a man commits, she puts him on a tight leash"). Moreover, on one 57 nation study, hostile sexists beliefs ("On the whole, men make better political leaders than women do") predicted increased future gender inequality. In the US, overtly negative hostile sexism predicted voting against Hillary Clinton, the first female presidential candidate of a major party. Benevolent sexism, though sounding positive ("women deserve protection"), may still impede gender equity by discouraging the hiring of women in traditionally male dominated occupations.

Stereotype threat

o Just being sensitive to prejudice is enough to make us self conscious when living as a numerical minority - perhaps as a black person in a white community or as a white person in a black community. o As with other circumstances that siphon off our mental energy and attention, the result can be diminished mental and physical stamina. Placed in a situation where others expect you to perform poorly, your anxiety may also cause you to conform the belief. Steele and colleagues call this phenomenon stereotype threat - a self confirming apprehension that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype. o In several experiments, researchers gave a very difficult math test to men and women students who had similar math backgrounds. When told that there were no gender differences in test scores and no evaluation of any group stereotype, the women's performance consistently equaled the men's. Told that there was a gender difference, the women dramatically confirmed the stereotype. Frustrated by the extremely difficult test questions, they apparently felt added apprehension, which undermined their performances. Even before exams, stereotype threat can also hamper women's learning math rules and operations. The same is true for older people, for whom age related stereotype threats (and resulting underperformance) have appeared across nearly three dozen studies. o Might racial stereotypes be similarly self fulfilling> Researchers gave difficult verbal abilities tests to whites and black. Clacks underperformed whites only when taking the tests under conditions high in stereotype threat. o Researchers report that stereotype threat affects athletic performance, too. Blacks did worse than usual when a golf taks was framed as a test of "sports intelligence," and whites did worse when it was a test of "natural athletic ability." "When people are reminded of a negative stereotype about themselves - "white men can't jump," or "Black men can't think" - it can adversely affect performance." o "Values affirmation" - getting people to affirm who they are - also helps. A Stanford research team invited African American 7th graders to write about their most important values several times. Compared to their peers, they earned higher grades over the next two Yeats. Ensuing studies have extended the values affirmation effect to populations ranging from female college physics students to soup kitchen clients. o How does stereotype threat undermine performance> in 3 ways - Stress: the stress of stereotype threat impairs brain activity associated with emotion processing. - Self monitoring: Worrying about making mistakes disrupts focused attention - Suppressing unwanted thoughts and emotions: The effort required to regulate one's thinking takes energy and disrupts working memory. o If stereotype threats can disrupt performance, could positive stereotypes enhance it? Researchers confirmed that possibility. When Asian American females were asked biographical questions that reminded them of their gender identity before taking a math test, their performance plunged (compared with a control group). When similarly reminded of their Asian identity, their performance rose. negative stereotypes disrupt performance, and positive stereotypes, it seems, facilitate performance.

Social Facilitation (old and new definition)

o More than a century ago, Norman Triplett (1898), a psychologist interested in bicycle racing, noticed that cyclist's times were faster when they raced together than when each raced alone against the clock. Before he peddled his hunch (that others' presence boosts performance), Triplett conducted one of social psychology's first laboratory experiments. Children told to wind string on a fishing reels as rapidly as possible wound faster when they worked with competing co actors than when they worked alone. "The bodily presence of another contestant ... serves to liberate latent energy," concluded Triplett. o A modern reanalysis of Triplett's data revealed that the difference did not reach statistical significance. But ensuing experiments did find that others' presence led people to do simple multiplication problems and cross out designated letters faster. It also improves accuracy on simple motor tasks, such as keeping a metal stick in contact with a dime sized disk on a moving turntable. o THIS SOCIAL FACILITATION effect also occurs with animals. o BUT WAIT: On other tasks, the presence of others instead hinders performance. Others' presence dimities efficiency at learning nonsense syllables, completing a maze, and performing complex multiplication problems o Saying that others' presence sometimes facilitates performance and sometimes hinders it is about as satisfying as the typical Scottish weather forecast - predicting that it might be sunny but then again it might rain. Social psychologist Robert Zajonc wondered whether these seemingly contradictory findings could break reconciled. o He determined that If social arousal facilitates dominant responses, it should boost performance on easy tasks and hurt performance on difficult tasks. o Social arousal facilitates dominant responses, whether right or wrong. o Crowding: The presence of many others - The effect of others' presence increases with their number. Sometimes the arousal and self conscious attention created by. a large audience interferers even with well learned, automatic behaviors, such as speaking. Given extreme pressure, we're vulnerable to "choking." Stutterers tend to stutter more in front of larger audiences than when speaking to just one or two people. o Being in a crow also intensifies positive or negative reactions. When they sit close together, friendly people are liked even more, and unfriendly people are disliked even more. o In experiments with Columbia University students and with Ontario Science Center visitors, Freedmand and coworkers had people listen to a humorous tape or watch a movie with other participants. When they all sat close together, an accomplice could more readily induce the individuals to laugh and clap. As theater directors and sports fans know, and as researchers have confirmed, a "good house" is a full house. o Heightened arousal in crowded homes also tends to increase stress. Crowding produces less distress in homes divided into many spaces, however, enabling people to withdraw in privacy.

Motivation to Avoid prejudice (sources of motivational prejudice)

o Motivations not only lead people to be prejudiced but also to avoid prejudice. But try as we might to suppress unwanted thoughts - thoughts about food, thoughts about romance with a friend's partner, judgmental thoughts about another group - they sometimes refuse to go away. o Devine and colleagues report that people low and high in prejudice sometimes have similar automatic (unintentional) prejudicial responses. The result: Unwanted (dissonant) thoughts and feelings often persist. Breaking the prejudice habit is not easy. o In real life, a majority person's encountering a minority person may trigger a knee jerk stereotype. Those with accepting and those with disapproving attitudes toward homosexuals may both feel uncomfortable sitting with a gay male on a bus seat. Seeking not to appear prejudiced, they may divert their attention away from the person. o researchers who study stereotyping contend, however, that prejudicial reactions are not inevitable. The motivation to avoid prejudice can lead people to modify they thoughts and actions. Aware of the gap between how they should feel and how they do feel, self conscious people will feel guilt and try to inhibit their prejudicial response. Even automatic prejudices subside, when people motivation to avoid prejudice is internal rather than external.

Persuasion

o One of the four forms of discourse, which uses reason and emotional appeals to convince a reader to think or act in a certain way o Persuasion is neither inherently good nor bad o

Categorization: Classifying people into groups ( Cognitive sources of prejudice)

o One way we simplify our environment is to categorize - to organize the world by clustering objects into groups. o Stereotypes sometimes offer a "beneficial ratio of information gained to effort expended." Stereotypes represent cognitive efficiency. They are energy saving schemas fro making speedy judgements and predicting how others will think and act. We judge people in out-groups quickly; when assessing in-group individuals, we take longer to form impressions. Thus, stereotypes and out group bias may have served evolutionary functions, by enabling our ancestors to cope and survive. o Spontaneous Categorization - We find it especially easy and efficient to rely on stereotypes when we are [] pressed for time [] preoccupied [] tired [] emotionally aroused - ethnicity and sex are powerful ways of categorizing people. Experiments expose our quick, spontaneous categorization of people by race. We label people of widely varying ancestry as simply "Black" or "White," as if such categories we black and white. By itself, such categorization is not prejudice, but it does provide a foundation for prejudice. o Perceived similarities and differences - There is a strong tendency to see objects within a group as being more uniform than they really are. - When we assign people to groups - athletes, drama majors, math professors - we are likely to exaggerate the similarities within the groups and the differences between them. We assume that other groups are more homogenous than our own. Mere division into groups can create an out group homogeneity effect - a sense that they are "all alike" and different from "us" and "our" group. - In general, the greater our familiarity with a social group, the more we see its diversity. The less our familiarity, the more we stereotype. - Perhaps you have noticed: They - the members of any racial group other than your own - even look alike. many people can recall embarrassing ourselves by confusing two people of another racial group, prompting the person we've misnamed to say, "You think we all look alike". Experiments in the US, Scotland, and Germany reveal that people of other races do in fact seem to look more alike than do people of one's own race. When white students are shown faces of a few white and a few black individuals and then asked to pick those individuals out of a photographic lineup, they show an own race bias: They more accurately recognize the white faces than the black ones, and they often falsely recognize black faces never before seen. o It's not that we cannot perceive differences among faces of another group. Rather, when looking at a face from another racial group we often attend, first, to group ("that man is Black") ra o It's not that we cannot perceive differences among faces of another group. Rather, when looking at a face from another racial group we often attend, first, to group ("that man is Black") rather than to individual features. When viewing someone of our own group, we are less attentive to the race category and more attentive to individual details such as the eyes. Our attending to someone's being in a different social category also contributes to a parallel own age bias - the tendency for both children and older adults to more accurately identify faces from their own age groups.

Minimal groups

o People placed arbitrarily into a group (told they were an "over-estimator" or "under-estimator") awarded people in their group more money o Shows our desire to categorize by groups

Expertise (elements of persuasion)

o Perceived expertise - How do you become an authoritative "expert? - One way is to begin by saying things the audience agrees with, which makes you seem smart - One reason the "scientific consensus' about climate change fails to persuade people is that people count as "expert" someone whose conclusions support their own preexisting values and views. - It also helps to be seen as knowledgable about the topic - Celebrity communicators are more persuasive when they are perceived as expert users of the product - when they are not, these appeals are very ineffective.

Out group homogeneity effect

o Perceived similarities and differences - There is a strong tendency to see objects within a group as being more uniform than they really are. - When we assign people to groups - athletes, drama majors, math professors - we are likely to exaggerate the similarities within the groups and the differences between them. We assume that other groups are more homogenous than our own. Mere division into groups can create an out group homogeneity effect - a sense that they are "all alike" and different from "us" and "our" group. - In general, the greater our familiarity with a social group, the more we see its diversity. The less our familiarity, the more we stereotype.

Trustworthiness (elements of persuasion)

o Perceived trustworthiness - we are more willing to listen to a communicator we trust - Experiment showed that Facebook users were more willing to believe an article shared by a trusted friend compared to one shared by someone they didn't trust. - Online reviews of products are seen as more trustworthy if they are negative - at least for practical products such as cameras. - Trustworthiness is also higher if the audience believes the communicator is not trying to persuade them. So if you want to persuade someone, start with information, not arguments. - Another effective strategy is having someone else convey your expertise.

Central Route to Persuasion

o Persuasion is likely to occur via one of two routes o When people are motivated and able to think about an issue, they are likely to take the central route to persuasion - forcing on the arguments o If the message offers only weak arguments, thoughtful people will notice that the arguments aren't very compelling and will countersue against them. o Explicit and Reflective. o Central route processing often swiftly changes explicit attitudes. o Central route processing can lead to more enduring change than the peripheral route. When people are thinking carefully, they rely not only on the strength of persuasive appeals but on their own thoughts in response. It's not so much the arguments that are persuasive as the way they get people thinking. And when people think deeply rather than superficially, any changed attitude will more likely persist, resist attack, and influence behavior. o Central route appeals seem to have dwindled in recent years, most likely because advertisers have found that peripheral, emotion based appeals are more effective across a variety of products. o In one study, researchers recorded viewer's facial expressions while they watched recent TV commercials. These facial expressions - particularly those indicating happiness - were better predictors of product sales than viewers' survey responses about how persuasive they found the ad, how closely the ad was linked to the brand, or how the ad conveyed the brand's key message.

Media influences: POrnogrpahy and Sexual Violence (sources of aggression/ influences on aggression)

o Porn is now a bigger business in the US than professional football, basketball, and baseball combined, thanks to some $13 billion a year spent on the industry's cable and satellite networks, theaters and pay per view movies, and in room hotel movies, phone sex, sex magazines, and Internet sites. o Social psychological research on porn has focused mostly on depictions of sexual violence, which is commonplace in porn videos. A typical sexually violent episode finds a man forcing himself upon a women. She at first resists and tries to fight off her attacker. Gradually, as she resists and her persists, she becomes sexually aroused, and her resistance melts. By the end she is in ecstasy, pleading for more. The problem, of course, is that women do not actually respond this way to rape or sexual harassment - this scenario Is pure fantasy. o Distorted perceptions of sexual reality - Helps guys think no does not really mean no - and watching it over and over again desensitizes them o Aggression against women - Evidence also suggests that pornography contributes to men's actual aggression toward women. - A meta analysis of 22 studies found that people who watch porn often were more likely to be sexually aggressive, including both physical and verbal coercion and harassment. - "Exposure to violent porn increases punitive behavior toward women"

Prejudice

o Prejudice comes in may forms - for our own group and against some other group. o Prejudice is a preconceived negative judgement of a group and its individual members. (some prejudice definitions include positive judgements, but nearly all uses of "prejudice" refer to negative ones_. o prejudice is an attitude - a combination of feelings, inclinations to act, and beliefs. It can easily be remembered as the ABCs of attitudes: affect (feelings), behavior tendency (inclination to act), and cognition (beliefs). o A prejudiced person may dislike those different from self and behave toward them in a discriminatory manner, believing them ignorant and dangerous.

Discrimination and Racism and Sexism

o Prejudice is a negative attitude; discrimination is negative behavior. o Discriminatory behavior often has its sources in prejudicial attitudes. Such was evident when researchers analyzed the responses to 1,115 identically worded emails sent to Los Angeles area landlords regarding vacant apartments. Encouraging replies came back to 89% of notes signed "Patrick McDougall," to 66% from "Said Al-Rahman," and to 56% from "Tyrell Jackson." o However, attitudes and behavior are often loosely linked. Prejudiced attitudes need not breed hostile acts, nor does all oppression spring from prejudice. Racism and sexism are institutional practices that discriminate, even when there is no prejudicial intent. There can be racism without racists and sexism without sexists. Consider: If word of mouth hiring practices in an all white business have the effect of excluding potential non- White employees, the practice could be called racism - even if an employer intended no discrimination. o Much discrimination reflects no intended harm; its simply favoritism toward people like oneself.

Social Inequalities: Unequal status and prejudice (Sources of prejudice)

o Prejudice springs from several sources. It may arise from people differing in social status and in their desire to justify and maintain those differences. It may also be learned from our parents as they socialize us about what differences they believe matter between people. Our social institutions, too, may maintain and support prejudice. o Social Inequalities: Unequal status and prejudice - A principle to remember: unequal status breeds prejudice. - slave masters viewed slaves as lazy, irresponsible, lacking ambition - as having exactly those traits that justified the slavery. - After those inequalities exist, prejudice helps justify the economic and social superiority of those who have wealth and power. - Upper class individuals are more likely than those in poverty to see people's fortunes as the outcomes they have earned - thanks to skill and effort and not as the result of connections, money, and luck. - Hacker noted how stereotypes of Blacks and women helped rationalize the inferior status of each: Many people thought both groups were mentally slow, emotional and primitive, and "contended" with their subordinate role. Blacks were "inferior"; women were "weak." Blacks were all right in their place; women's place was in the home. - Theresa Vescio and her colleagues (2005) tested that reasoning. They found that powerful men who stereotypes their female subordinates also gave them plenty of praise, but fewer resources, thus undermining their performance and allowing the men to maintain their power. - We see other groups as competent or as likable, but often not as both. - We typically respect the competence of those high in status and like those who agreeably accept a lower status. Depending on the situation, we may seek to impress people with either our competence or warmth. - Some people, more than others, notice and justify status differences. Those high in social dominance orientation tend to view people in terms of hierarchies. They like their own social groups to be high status - they prefer being on the top. Being in a dominant, high status position also tends to promote this orientation. Researchers argue that this desire to be on top leads people high in social dominance to embrace prejudice and to support political positions that justify prejudice. o Socialization: - Prejudice springs from unequal status and from other social sources, including our acquired values and attitudes. The influence of family socialization appears in children's prejudices, which often mirror those perceived in their mothers. Even children's implicit racial attitudes reflect their parents' explicit prejudice. - The Authoritarian Personality: [] researchers found that in those who were strongly prejudiced, prejudice appeared to be an entire way of thinking about those who are "different" or marginalized. These ethnocentric people shared entrain tendencies: an intolerance for weakness, a punitive attitude, and a submissive respect for their group's authorities. Adorno and colleagues surmised that these tendencies define a prejudice prone authoritarian personality. [] studies of authoritarian people's early lives have released that, as children, they often faced harsh discipline. Ironically, people who strongly support ethnic tolerance can display considerable intolerance and discrimination toward those who disagree. [] Research also suggests that the insecurity of authoritarian individuals predisposes them toward an excessive concern with power and status and an inflexible right wrong way of thinking that makes ambiguity difficult to tolerate. They therefore tend to be submissive to those with power over them and aggressive or punitive toward those whom they consider lower in status than themselves. - Religion And Racial Prejudice: [] what could be a more powerful justification than to believe that God has ordained the existing social order? [] The use fo religion to support injustice helps explain a consistent pair of findings concerning North American Christianity: (1) White church members have expressed more racial prejudice than nonmembers and (2) those professing fundamentalist beliefs have expressed more prejudice than those professing progressive beliefs. [] knowing the correlation between two variables - religion and prejudice - tells us little about their causal connection. Maybe there is no casual connection, perhaps prejudice causes religion, or perhaps religion causes prejudice. [] If indeed religion causes prejudice, then more religious church members should also be more prejudiced. But three other findings consistently indicate otherwise: Faithful attenders are less prejudiced, intrinsically religious people are less prejudiced, and clergy are less prejudiced. - Conformity [] Once established, prejudice is maintained largely by inertia. If prejudice is socially accepted, many people will follow the path of least resistance and conform to the fashion. Thus, people become more likely to favor ( or oppose) discrimination after hearing someone else do so, and they are less supportive of women after hearing sexist humor. [] This who conformed most to other social norms were also most prejudiced; those who were less conforming mirrored less of the surrounding prejudice. [] prejudice was clearly not a manifestation of "sick" personalities but simply of the social norms. [] If prejudice is not deeply ingrained in personality, then as fashions change and new norms evolve, prejudice can diminish. And so it has. - Institutional Supports [] SOcial insitituations (school, governments, media, families) may bolster prejudice through overt policies such as segregation, or by passively reinforcing the status quo. [] Media may also strengthen stereotypes. In several studies, exposure to news portrays of Muslims as terrorists was associated with increased perceptions of Muslims as aggressive, and increased support fro military action in Muslim territories and for Muslim harming policies. [] Institutional supports for prejudice are often unintended and unnoticed.

Instrumental vs. hostile aggression

o Psychologists also make a distinction between hostile aggression (which springs from anger and aims to injure) and instrumental aggression (which aims to injure, too - but is committed in the pursuit of another goal). Both physical and social aggression can be either hostile or instrumental. For example, bullying can be hostile (one teen is angry at another for stealing her boyfriend) or instrumental (a high school student believes she can become popular by rejecting an unpopular girl.

Group members also become closed minded (Rationalization, and stereotyped view of opponent)

o Rationalization - the groups discount challenges by collectively justifying their decisions. LBJ Tuesday lunch group spent far more time rationalizing (explaining and justifying) than reflecting upon and rethinking prior decisions to escalate. Each initiative became an action to defend and justify. o Stereotypes view of opponent: - Groupthinkers consider their enemies to be too evil to negotiate with or too weak and unintelligent to defend themselves against the planned initiative. The Kennedy group's convinced itself that Castro's military was so weak and his popular support so shallow that a single brigade could easily overturn his regime. ............... 226

Reason VS Emotion

o Reason vs Emotion - It depends on the audience - Well educated or analytical people are responsive to rational appeals. SO are audiences that have the time and motivation to think through an issue. - Thus, thoughtful, involved audiences more often travel the central route to persuasion; they are more response to reasoned arguments. - Uninterested audiences more often travel the peripheral route; they are more affected by their liking of the communicator - It also matters how people's attitudes were formed. When people's initial attitudes are formed primarily through the peripheral route, they are more persuaded by later peripheral, emotional appeals; when their initial attitudes are formed primarily through the central route, they are more persuaded by later information based, central route arguments.

Aversive incidents (sources of aggression/ influences on aggression)

o Recipes for aggression often include some type of aversive experience =. These include pain, uncomfortable heat, an attack, or overcrowding o Pain - Pain heightens aggressiveness in humans, too. Many of us can recall such a reaction after stubbing a toe or suffering a headache. - Leonard Berkowitx and his associates demonstrated this by having University of Wisconsin students hole one hand in either lukewarm water or painfully cold water. Those whose hands were submerges in the cold water reported feeling more irritable and more annoyed, and they were more willing to blast another person with unpleasant noise. In view of such results, Berkowitz proposed that aversive stimulation rather than frustration is the basic trigger of hostile aggression. Frustration is certainly one important type of unpleasantness. But any aversive event, whether a dashed expectation, a personal insult, or physical pain, can incite an emotional outburst. Even the torment of a depressed state increases the likelihood of hostile, aggressive behavior. o Heat - Temporary climate variations can affect behavior. Offensive odors, cigarette smoke, and air pollution have all been linked with aggressive behavior. But the most studied environmental irritant is heat. - Griffitt found that compared with students who answered questionnaires in a room with a normal temperature, those who did so in an uncomfortable hot room reported feeling more tired and aggressive and expressed more hostility toward a stranger. Follow up experiments revealed that heat also triggers retaliation in response to an attack or injury and that heat leads to aggression only after sensitive people are socially rejected. - DO these real world findings show that heat discomfort directly fuels aggressiveness? Although the conclusion appears plausible, these correlations between temperature and aggression don't prove it. Other factors may contribute. o Attacks - Being attacked or insulted is especially conducive to aggression. Several experiments confirm that intentional attacks breed retaliatory attacks.

Reciprocity (six persuasion principle)

o Reciprocity: people feel obliged to repay in kind what they've received ----- Application: Be generous with your time and resources. What goes around, comes around.

free riders

o SOcial loafing also appears in donations of money and time. In North America, workers who do not pay dues or volunteer time to their unions or professional associations nevertheless are usually happy to accept the associations' benefits. So, too, are public radio listeners and tv viewers who do not respond to their station's fund drives. This hints at another possible explanation of social loafing: When rewards are divided equally, regardless of how much one contributes to the group, any individual gets more reward per unit of effort by free riding on the group. Thus, people may slack off when their efforts are not individually monitored and rewarded - which may also enable them to overestimate their own relieve contribution. Situations that welcome free riders can therefore be, in the words of one commune member, a "paradise for parasites".

Scarcity (six persuasion principle)

o Scarcity: People prize what is scarce---- Application: Highlight genuinely exclusive information or opportunities.

deindividuazation

o Social facilitation experiments show that groups can arouse people, and social loafing experiments show that groups can diffuse responsibility. When arousal and diffused responsibility combine, and normal inhibitions diminish, the results may be startling. People may commit acts that range from a mild lessening of restraint to impulsive self gratification to destructive social explosions. o These unrestrained behaviors have something in common: they are provoked by the power of being in a group. Groups can generate a sense of excitement, of being caught up in something bigger than one's self. It's in group situations that people are more likely to abandon normal restraints, to forget their individual identity, to be come responsive to group or crowd norms - in a word, to become deindividuated. o WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES ELICIT THIS PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE? - Group Size - Anonymity - Arousing and Distracting activities

Social Sources of Prejudice

o Social inequalities: unequal status and prejudice o Socialization - the authoritarian personality - religion and racial prejudice - Conformity - Institutional supports

Social Proof (six persuasion principle)

o Social proof: People allow the example of others to validate how to think, feel, and act. ---- Application: Use "peer power" - have respected others lead the way

Credibility (elements of persuasion)

o Social psychologists have often found that it is not just the content of a message that affects an audience's response, but also the presumed source o In one experiment, when the Socialist and Liberal leaders in the Dutch parliament argued identical positions using the same words, each was most effective with members of his own party. What makes one communicator more persuasive than another? o Credibility - Any of us would find a statement about the benefits of exercise more believable if ti came from the Royal Society or National Academy of Sciences rather than from a tabloid newspaper. But the effects of source credibility (perceived expertise and trustworthiness) diminish after a month or so.

Authoritarian personality

o Source of prejudice - The Authoritarian Personality: [] researchers found that in those who were strongly prejudiced, prejudice appeared to be an entire way of thinking about those who are "different" or marginalized. These ethnocentric people shared entrain tendencies: an intolerance for weakness, a punitive attitude, and a submissive respect for their group's authorities. Adorno and colleagues surmised that these tendencies define a prejudice prone authoritarian personality. [] studies of authoritarian people's early lives have released that, as children, they often faced harsh discipline. Ironically, people who strongly support ethnic tolerance can display considerable intolerance and discrimination toward those who disagree. [] Research also suggests that the insecurity of authoritarian individuals predisposes them toward an excessive concern with power and status and an inflexible right wrong way of thinking that makes ambiguity difficult to tolerate. They therefore tend to be submissive to those with power over them and aggressive or punitive toward those whom they consider lower in status than themselves.

Speaking style (elements of persuasion)

o Speaking style - Another way to appear credible is to speak confidently and fluently. - Speakers who stumble over their words are seen as less credible, which then leads people to question their message, which then makes them less likely to accept what the speaker is saying. - On the other hand, it's not good to speak too much and not listen. Telemarketers who take this approach are less successful.

Risky shift

o Stoner tested the commonly held belief that groups are more cautious than individuals. He posed decision dilemmas in which the participant's task was to advise imagined characters how much risk to take. Having marked their advice on a dozen items, five or so individuals would then discuss and reach agreement on each item. How do you think the group decisions compared with the average decision before the discussions? o TO everyone's amazement, the group decisions were usually riskier. This "risky shift phenomenon" set off a wave of group risk taking studies. o These revealed that risky shift occurs not only when a group decides by consensus; after a brief discussion, individuals, too, will alter their decisions. o During discussion, opinions converged. Curiously, however, the point toward which they converged was usually a lower (riskier) number than their initial average. The small risky shift effect was reliable, unexpected, and without any immediately obvious explanation. o But DM found that the risky shift is not universal. o TURNS OUT THERE IS A STRONG TENDENCY FOR DISCUSSION TO ACCENTUATE THESE INITIAL LEANINGS.

Stereotype

o The negative evaluations that mark prejudice often are supported by social beliefs, called stereotypes. o TO stereotype is to generalize o To simplify the world, we generalize: The British are reserved; Americans are outgoing. Women love children; men love sports. Professors are absentminded. The elderly are frail. o Such generalizations can be more or less true (and are not always negative). The elderly are generally more frail. People may stereotype Asians as good at math, and those of African heritage as superior athletes. o Such stereotypes often arise from the occupational roles we observe people playing o So stereotypes may be accurate (they may reflect sensitivity to diversity). o The 10% problem with stereotypes arises when they are overgeneralized or just plain wrong, as when liberals and conservatives overestimate the extremity of the others' views, or when people believe Black men are taller, more muscular, and thus potentially more threatening than same sized white men.

Driven by distraction (Social Facilitation/ why are we aroused in the presence of others)

o They theorized that when we wonder how co actors are doing or how an audience is reacting, we become distracted. This conflict between paying afternoon to others and paying attention to the task overloads our cognitive system, causing arousal. o We are "driven by distraction." This arousal comes not just from the presence of another person but also from other distractions, such as bursts of light.

Aggression

o To a social psychologist, aggression is physical or verbal behavior intended to cause harm. This definition excludes unintentional harm, such as auto accidents or sidewalk collisions; it also excludes actions that may involve pain as an unavoidable side effect of helping someone, such as dental treatments or - in the extreme - assisted suicide.

Groups at risk for groupthink

o Very cohesive groups o Homogenous and isolated o Ones with directive or charismatic leader

Social Loafing and cohesiveness

o What happens when people pool their efforts toward a common goals and individuals are not accountable for their efforts? On such "additive tasks" - tasks where the group's achievement depends on the sum of the individual efforts - will team spirit boost productivity? Will bricklayers lay bricks faster when working as a team than when working alone? o Max RIngelmann (reported by Kravitz and Martin, 1986) found that the collective effort of tug of war teams was but half the sum of the individual efforts. Contrary to the presumption that "in unity there is strength," this suggested that group members may actually be less motivated when performing additive tasks. Maybe, though, poor performance stemmed from poor coordination - people pulling a rope in slightly different directions at slightly different times. A group of Massachusetts researchers led by Alan Ingham (1974) cleverly eliminated that problem by making individuals think others were pulling with them, when actually, they were pulling alone. Blindfolded participants were assigned the first position in the apparatus and were told to "Pull as hard as you ca". They pulled 18% harder when they knew they were pulling alone than when they believed people being them were also pulling o I did not include the noise experiment... o Political scientist John Sweeney (1973) observed social loafing in a cycling experiment. University of Texas students pumped exercise bikes more energetically when they knew they were being individually monitored than when they though they their output was being polled with that of other riders. In the group condition, people were tempted to free ride on the group effort. o In this and 160 other studies, we see a twist on one of the psychological forces that makes for social facilitation: evaluation apprehension. In the social loafing experiments, individuals believed they were evaluated only when they acted alone. The group situation (rope pulling, shouting, and so forth) decreased evaluation apprehension. When people are not accountable and cannot evaluate their own efforts, responsibility is diffused across all group members. By contrast, the social facilitation experiments increased exposure to evaluation. When made the center of attention, people self consciously monitor their behavior. So, when being observed increases evaluation concerns, social facilitation occurs; when being lost in a crowd decreases evaluation concerns, social loafing occurs. o TO motivate group members, one strategy is to make individual performance identifiable. Some football coaches do this by filming and evaluating each player individually. Whether in a group or not, people exert more effort when their outputs are individually identifiable. o In work place group experiments, employees have produced more when their individual performance was posted. o But surely collective effort does not always lead to slacking off. Sometimes the goal is so compelling and maximum output from everyone is so essential that team spirits maintains or intensifies effort. In an Olympic crew race, will the individual rowers in an eight person crew pull their oars with less effort than those in a one or two person crew? o The evidence assures us they will not. People in groups loaf less when the task in challenging, appealing, or involving. On challenging tasks, people may perceive their efforts as indispensable. When swimming that last leg of a relay race with a medal at stake, swimmers tend to swim even faster than in individual competition. o Group also loaf less when their members are friends or they feel identified with or indispensable to their group. Even just expecting to interact with someone again serves to increase effort on team projects. Cohesiveness COHESIVENESS intensifies effort o These findings parallel those from studies of everyday work groups. When groups are given challenging objectives, when they are rewarded for group success, and when there is a spirit of commitment to the "team," group members work hard. Keeping work groups small can also help members believe their contributions are indispensable. o In terms of groupthink: Very cohesive groups are at risk of groupthink There is often faulty thinking in cohesive groups because people want to keep harmony. The norms of a cohesive group van favor either consensus, which can lead to groupthink, or critical analysis, which prevents it. Given open leadership, a cohesive team spirit can improve decisions. In terms of social loafing Cohesiveness intensifies effort so groups loaf less when their members are friends or they feel identified with or indispensable to their group.

Why are we aroused in the presence of others (social facilitation)

o What you do well, you will be energized to do best in front of others (unless you become hyperaroused and self conscious and choke). What you find difficult may seem impossible in the same circumstances. o What is it about other people that creates arousal? evidence supports three possible factors: - EVALUATION APPREHENSIONS DISTRACTION AND MERE PRESENCE

Mere Presence (Social Facilitation/ why are we aroused in the presence of others)

o Zajonc, however, believed http the mere presence of others produces some arousal even without evaluation apprehension or arousing distraction. Recall that facilitation effects also occur with nonhuman animals. This hints at an innate social arousal mechanism common to much of the zoological world. (Animals probably are not consciously worrying about how other animals are evaluating them.) o This is a good time to remind ourselves that a good theory is a scientific short hand: It simplifies and summarizes a variety of observations. Social facilitation theory does this well. It is a simple summary of many research findings. o Many new office buildings have replaced private offices with large, open areas. Might the resulting awareness of others' presence help boost the performance of well learned tasks but disrupt creative thinking on complex tasks?

Implicit and explicit prejudice and IAT

o as hundreds of studies using the Implicit Association test (IAT) have shown, we can have different explicit (conscious) and implicit (automatic) attitudes toward the same target. The test assess "implicit cognition" - what you know without knowing that you know. And it does so bu measuring people's speed of associations. Although explicit attitudes may change dramatically with education, implicit attitudes may linger, changing only as we form new habits through practice. o Critics contend that the IAT does not predict behavior well enough to assess or label individuals. Perhaps the test's modest predictive power reflects its merely revealing common cultural associations, much as your associating bread with butter faster than bread with carrot need not reveal a vegetable prejudice. o The test is more appropriate for research, which has shown, for example, that implicit biases modestly predict behaviors ranging from acts of friendliness to work evaluations. o In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, both implicit and explicit prejudice predicted voters' support for Barack Obama, and his election in turn led to some reduction in implicit prejudice. And, as in elections, even a small effect of implicit prejudice may, over time and across people, accumulate to a large societal effect. Thus, while the IAT, like most psychological measures, only modestly predicts individual acts, it better predicts average outcomes. o A raft of other experiments converge in pointing to one of social psychology's big lessons: prejudiced and stereotypic evaluations can occur outside people's awareness. o Some of these studies briefly flash words or faces that "prime" (automatically activate) stereotypes for some racial, gender, or age group. Without their awareness, the particpants' activated stereotypes may then bias their behavior. Having been primed with images associated with African Americans, for example, they may then react with more hostility to an experimenter (intentionally) annoying requests.

Ethnocentric

researchers found that in those who were strongly prejudiced, prejudice appeared to be an entire way of thinking about those who are "different" or marginalized. These ethnocentric people shared entrain tendencies: an intolerance for weakness, a punitive attitude, and a submissive respect for their group's authorities. Adorno and colleagues surmised that these tendencies define a prejudice prone authoritarian personality.

In-group and out group

too much to write here. But basically we favor our in group more than out group and we identify with our in group when they succeed. And often it is a big part of our identity. And we are more likely to be aggressive to an out group if we are not secure in our own skin or group.