Psychology Chapter on Social Influence

Podcast

Play an AI-generated podcast conversation about this lesson

Questions and Answers

What is the primary reason individuals participate in normative conformity?

Need to gain information in ambiguous situations

Desire for genuine agreement with the group's beliefs

Influence from experts in the field

Desire for social acceptance and avoidance of rejection (correct)

Which scenario is most likely to lead to informational social influence?

Friends debating the best restaurant

Eating in a familiar restaurant

A fire alarm ringing in a crowded theater (correct)

A group discussing a popular movie

What differentiates private acceptance from public compliance?

Public compliance involves genuine agreement with the group.

Private acceptance is quicker than public compliance.

Private acceptance involves changing personal beliefs while public compliance does not. (correct)

Public compliance occurs only in private settings.

What does the Tit-for-Tat strategy in social interactions emphasize?

Responding in kind to the actions of others Signup and view all the answers

When is conformity most likely to occur in an ambiguous situation?

When the decision is important and ambiguous Signup and view all the answers

Which approach is more effective for changing a cognitively based attitude?

Rational arguments Signup and view all the answers

What type of processing is utilized in the heuristic route of the Heuristic-Systematic Model?

Use of credibility and emotions Signup and view all the answers

What does attitude inoculation aim to do?

Make individuals immune to attitude changes Signup and view all the answers

Which theory suggests that people help others based on expected reciprocation?

Norm of Reciprocity Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following affects helping behavior according to social exchange theory?

Future benefits from helping Signup and view all the answers

Which statement aligns most closely with the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis?

Empathy triggers helping behavior regardless of personal gain. Signup and view all the answers

How does Reactance Theory explain resistance to persuasive messages?

Individuals perform prohibited behaviors to restore freedom. Signup and view all the answers

What role does personal relevance play in attitude change?

It significantly enhances message processing and receptivity. Signup and view all the answers

What is transactive memory in the context of long-term relationships?

The phenomenon where individuals remember information for each other. Signup and view all the answers

Which statement best describes a cognitively based attitude?

An attitude grounded in logical evaluations of facts. Signup and view all the answers

How do the concepts of criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt relate to relationship success?

They are indicators that a couple might break up in the long term. Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following factors is considered a reliable principle of attraction?

Physical beauty. Signup and view all the answers

What is the role of positive affect in marriages?

It is crucial for relationship satisfaction. Signup and view all the answers

What does social loafing refer to in group processes?

Diminished effort by individuals when working in a group. Signup and view all the answers

What best describes the primacy effect in impressions?

The tendency to remember the first pieces of information received. Signup and view all the answers

Which concept defines the mental shortcuts or rules of thumb used in social perception?

Schemas. Signup and view all the answers

Study Notes

Lecture 1

Social psychology attempts to understand how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the presence of others.
Demand characteristics are cues that participants pick up that tell them what the researcher wants, potentially altering their behavior.
Evaluation apprehension is the fear of being negatively evaluated by others. This can change participant behavior in an experiment.
WEIRD populations (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) are overrepresented in psychology studies, which limits generalizability to other populations.
Limited generalizability means that findings from WEIRD samples may not apply to people from other backgrounds.
Cultural biases can arise from focusing on WEIRD populations. This may not accurately reflect diverse ways of living, thinking and perceiving the world found in other cultures.
Internal validity is the degree to which an experiment accurately measures what it claims to measure in a controlled setting, whereas external validity is the degree to which findings can be generalized to real-world settings.

Lecture 1 (cont.)

The core challenge of social psychology is to balance internal and external validity.
Evaluation apprehension is the tendency to try and look better/fear being negatively evaluated.
Anxiety can cause a change in participant's behaviour.
Demand characteristics are cues in an experiment subtly influencing participants to adjust their behavior based on expectations about what the experimenter wants.
These cues can skew the experiment's results.

Chapter 1

Folk wisdom is knowledge passed down through generations within a community. This wisdom often stems from everyday experiences rather than scientific inquiry.
Gestalt psychology emphasizes a holistic perspective, considering the context rather than just individual components in social situations.
Construal is the way people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world.
Basic human motives include wanting a good self-esteem, which might lead to distorting perceptions to protect self-image.

Chapter 2

Social cognition involves how people think about themselves and the social world.
Subjective construal is how each person interprets the world around them, leading uniquely to naive realism.
The goal of social psychology is to identify psychological properties that make almost everyone susceptible to social influence regardless of social class or culture.
Personality psychology studies individual differences, social psychology studies processes that make people susceptible to social influence, and sociology studies groups, organizations, and societies.
The fundamental attribution error occurs when we overestimate dispositional factors and underestimate situational ones when explaining other people's behaviors.

Chapter 2 (cont.)

The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overestimate the influence of internal, personal characteristics when trying to explain someone's behaviour while underestimating the impact of the environment.
Correspondent bias leads to conclusions about personality based on actions, even when situation influences actions more strongly.
Naive realism is the belief people have that they perceive the world 'as it is'. This underestimates how our interpretations and beliefs can influence our perceptions of others' perceptions.
Self-esteem is people's evaluation of their worth. People try to maintain a positive view, and they might act in surprising or paradoxical ways to fit in or justify actions.

Lecture 2

Ethnography is a research method where researchers study a group by observing it from the inside, without imposing preconceived notions.
Experimenter manipulation and the setting that might influence participants is important to consider.
Field experiments increase external validity by taking place in natural settings.
Meta-analysis averages and combines findings from multiple studies, providing statistically reliable results.
Researchers conduct basic research to understand the causes of behavior, while applied research aims to solve specific social problems.

Lecture 2 (cont.)

Mirror recognition test measures a person's self-recognition.
Somatoparaphrenia is a delusional belief that a paralyzed limb belongs to someone else's body.
Memory can be influenced by the illusion of control even if a person's actions are subtly manipulated.
Attention, memory decay, and suggestions all effect how accuracy of recalling the memory is.
Factors that influence how people might misremember include, attention, memory decay (details fade over time), and suggestion.

Lecture 2 (cont. 2)

Expectation and schema influence how our brains often fill in gaps based on our experiences, creating false memories.
Self-awareness theory describes evaluating one's behaviour against internal standards when attention is on oneself.
Subjective self-awareness (SSA) is when a person's attention focuses on the self as an object and outward to other objects.
Objective self-awareness (OSA) is when a person's attention is directed outward to the self as an object, like looking in a mirror.
Self-enhancement is the tendency to maintain a positive view of oneself.
Self-reference effect: people remember information better when it is related to themselves.
Self-serving bias: seeing oneself with an overly positive view.

Chapter 3

The spotlight effect is people's belief that others are paying more attention to them than is actually the case.
Explicit self-esteem refers to conscious evaluation, while implicit self-esteem is an unconscious evaluation.

Chapter 5

Self-concept is an overall set of beliefs about personal attributes.
Children's self-concepts are concrete, whereas adults' are more abstract.
Independent view of self emphasizes defining oneself through individual thoughts, feelings, and actions, while interdependent views emphasize defining oneself in relation to others' thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Self-perception theory explains how we infer our attitudes and feelings by observing our behaviour.
Forming attitudes about a given task involves observing past behaviour and inferring if liking is a motivating factor through past interactions.

Chapter 6

Cognitive dissonance is discomfort when beliefs and behaviour conflict. This discomfort motivates people to justify their actions.
Spreading of alternatives theory shows choices after a given decision lead to higher perceived value of the selected alternative and lower perceived value of alternative choices
Reducing dissonance: change behavior, change belief, or add beliefs
Consequences of dissonance include distorting likes and dislikes, making the current choice seemingly better, and permanence of the decision.

Chapter 7

Attitudes are evaluations of people, objects, and ideas.
Cognitively based attitudes are primarily based on beliefs about the properties of an object.
Affectively based attitudes are more based on feelings and values than beliefs.
Behaviourally based attitudes are based on observation of one's own behaviour.
Theory of Planned behavior (TPB) is a predictor of one's behaviour regarding deliberate and planned behaviours.
Attitude accessibility refers to how quickly and easily one can recall an attitude or opinion.
Persuasive communication presents a message advocating for a particular side of an issue.

Chapter 8

Conformity is a change in behaviour due to real or imagined influence from others.
Informational social influence is relying on others as a source of info to guide behavior in ambiguous situations which is seen as correct.
Normative social influence is conforming to expectations of a group to avoid rejection.
Private acceptance is genuine belief that others' behaviours are correct.
Public compliance is conformity without believing what others say.
Social impact theory (SIT) suggests conformity is influenced by group strength, immediacy (closeness), and number.

Chapter 9

Group cohesion refers to qualities that bind group members together and promote mutual liking.
Group diversity can be beneficial when it enhances the group's performance, but groups often strive towards homogeneity.
Social facilitation is when people perform better on simple tasks and worse on complex tasks in the presence of others.
Social loafing occurs when people perform worse on simple tasks and better on complex tasks when in a group and their personal performance cannot be evaluated.
Deindividuation is the loosening of normal constraints on behavior that occurs when people cannot be identified.
Groupthink is a way of thinking in which maintaining group cohesiveness and solidarity is more important than considering the facts in a realistic way.
Group polarization emphasizes the tendency of groups to make decisions more extreme than the initial inclinations of their members.

Chapter 10

Propinquity effect is the observation that people are more likely to become friends with those they see and interact with frequently.
Mere exposure effect demonstrates that repeated exposure to a stimulus increases liking for that stimulus.
Similarity influences attraction at all levels, including opinions, personality, interests, and experiences.
Composite faces are perceived as more attractive than individual faces due to averaged facial features.
Halo effect is the tendency to assume that individuals with positive characteristics also possess other desirable characteristics.

Chapter 10 (cont.)

Triangular theory of love proposes three core components: intimacy, passion, and commitment.
Different types of love are combinations of these three components, such as infatuation (passion only), companionate love (intimacy and commitment), and consummate love (all three).
Social exchange theory explains relationships based on rewards and costs, perceived deservingness of the relationship, and chances of having a better relationship with others.
Equity theory describes ideal relationships as those in which rewards and costs are roughly balanced for both parties, and relationships which violate this are usually less satisfying.
Communal relationships are more about responsiveness to the other person's needs.

Chapter 11

Altruism is helping another person even at a cost to the helper, even if it doesn't benefit the helper.
Evolutionary psychology suggests that helping behaviour evolves because of advantages for genetic relatives.
Social exchange theory suggests that helping may stem from self-interest, such as the desire to reduce guilt, gain rewards, or feel good.
Empathy-altruism hypothesis suggests that people are more likely to help others when they feel empathy for them.
The bystander effect is when the more onlookers there are to an emergency, the less likely it is that any one of them will intervene.

Chapter 12

How people recall, encode, store, and retrieve information.
Source monitoring, leading questions and witness confidence are important factors in terms of eyewitness testimony accuracy
Factors that are crucial to accurate witness recall include: Stress, the nature of the emergency, the time to observe the event, and viewing conditions (environment, poor viewing, etc).
Eye witness errors are common which stem from encoding, storage, or retrieval errors. These can be used to help prevent wrongful convictions, through preventing memory errors and improving eyewitness testimony procedures.

Chapter 13

Prejudice is a hostile or negative attitude toward specific groups without justification based on their identity or group membership.
Stereotypes are overgeneralizations about group characteristics which can be used to justify prejudice when a person acts on the prejudice
Discrimination occurs when one's prejudice results in unjustified negative actions towards a specific group or it's members.
Hostile sexism involves believing people have negative traits, while benevolent sexism involves positive beliefs toward traditional roles, but these are problematic.
Institutional discrimination is a systematic disadvantage of certain groups by organizations or institutions.
Social identity threat occurs when people feel that others are judging them strictly as members of a particular group rather than as individuals.

Chapter 14

Affective forecasting is how well we can predict intensity and duration of emotional reactions to events
Locus of control predicts how much a person feels like they can control events.
Peak-end rule means people remember peak and end moments more vividly
Memory can be used to support or make our beliefs about people or events seem correct, which may be biased.
Self-perception theory explains where we interpret our feelings.

Studying That Suits You

Use AI to generate personalized quizzes and flashcards to suit your learning preferences.

Description

This quiz explores key concepts in social psychology, focusing on normative conformity and informational social influence. You'll engage with questions that differentiate between private acceptance and public compliance, as well as examine strategies like Tit-for-Tat in social interactions. Test your understanding of when conformity is likely to occur in ambiguous situations.