Social Psychology: Attributions

• Chapter 13 focuses on behavior within social contexts, covering social thinking, influence, relations, and pro-social behavior.

Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior

• Attributions are judgments about the causes of behavior and outcomes.
• Fritz Heider proposed that understanding behavior involves personal and situational attributions.
• Personal attribution attributes behavior to people's characteristics.
• Situational attribution attributes behavior to aspects of the situation.
• Three factors determine the type of attribution made: consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus.
• High consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus lead to situational attributions.
• Fundamental attribution error is underestimating situational impact and overestimating personal factors in others' behavior.
• Self-serving bias involves making more personal attributions for successes and more situational attributions for failures.
• Cultural influences affect attributions, with individuals from India leaning towards situational and Americans towards personal attributions.

Forming and Maintaining Perceptions

• The primacy effect involves attaching more importance to initial information about a person.
• A stereotype is a generalized belief about a group or category of people, functioning as a type of schema.
• A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when expectations lead to actions that cause the expected behavior.

Attitudes and Attitude Change

• An attitude is a positive or negative evaluative reaction toward a stimulus, derived from conditioning, social learning, and direct experience.
• Attitudes influence behavior more strongly when counteracting situational factors are weak.
• The theory of planned behavior states that the intention to engage in a behavior is strongest when attitudes toward the behavior are positive, perceptions of others support the attitudes, and the behavior is believed to be under personal control.
• Awareness and strength of attitudes increase their influence on behavior.
• General attitudes better predict general behaviors, while specific attitudes predict specific behaviors.
• The theory of cognitive dissonance posits that people strive for consistency in their cognitions.
• Cognitive dissonance, an uncomfortable state of tension, occurs when holding contradictory cognitions, which is reduced by changing or adding a cognition.
• Inducing people to engage in counterattitudinal behaviors can change their attitudes.
• Self-perception theory suggests that inferences about personal attitudes are made by observing personal behavior.
• Dissonance theory better explains attitude changes after behavior contradicting it.
• Persuasion involves a communicator delivering a message through a channel to an audience within a context.
• Communicator credibility, encompassing expertise and trustworthiness, is key to effective persuasion.
• Presenting both sides of an argument and refuting the opposing side is more effective.
• Moderate arguments are more effective than extreme ones.
• Fear arousal is most effective when the message evokes moderate fear.
• The central route to persuasion involves careful thought about the message, influenced by its arguments.
• The peripheral route to persuasion involves being influenced by factors like communicator attractiveness or emotional appeal rather than scrutinizing the message.
• The central route is often followed when the message is personally relevant.
• People with a high need for cognition follow the central route.
• Individuals with low self-esteem and a high need for social approval are more easily influenced.

Social Influence

• The mere presence of others can enhance or diminish performance.
• The presence of others leads to heightened arousal.
• This heightened arousal makes it more likely to perform the dominant response to that situation.
• People are more prone to errors in difficult situations.
• People are more likely to perform better in simple or well-learned tasks.
• Social facilitation is an increased tendency to perform one's dominant response in the presence of others.

Social Norms

• Social norms are shared expectations about how people should think, feel, and behave.
• A social role is a set of norms characterizing how people in a given social position should behave.
• Role conflict occurs when the norms of different roles clash.

Conformity and Obedience

• Norms can only influence behavior if people conform to them.
• Informational social influence involves following others' opinions or behaviors due to a belief in their accurate knowledge or "right" actions.
• Normative social influence is conformity motivated by gaining social acceptance and avoiding social rejection.
• Conformity increases to a point with increases in group size, then levels off.
• The presence of a dissenter greatly reduces conformity.
• Minority influence is powerful if consistently maintained over time.
• Factors that influence destructive obedience include the remoteness of the victim, closeness and legitimacy of the authority figure, and the perception of being a "cog in a wheel."
• Personal characteristics rarely influence obedience.
• The norm of reciprocity involves responding kindly when others treat one well.
• The door-in-the-face technique involves making a large request, expecting rejection, followed by a smaller request.
• The foot-in-the-door technique involves getting compliance with a small request before presenting a larger request.
• Lowballing involves getting commitment to an action and then increasing the cost before the behavior is performed.

Crowd Behavior and Deindividuation

• Deindividuation is a loss of individuality leading to disinhibited behavior, caused by anonymity to outsiders.
• Conditions making an individual less identifiable to people outside the group cause deindividuation.

Group Influences on Performance and Decision Making

• Social loafing involves expending less individual effort when working in a group.
• The collective effort model posits that people put forth effort only to the extent they expect their effort to contribute to a goal.
• Social loafing is more likely when individual performance is not monitored, the goal has less personal value or importance, and the task is simple with redundant input.
• Group polarization occurs when discussions among like-minded people lead to more extreme average opinions.
• Individuals may adopt more extreme positions to gain group approval.
• Group discussions expose people to arguments supporting their positions, reinforcing their validity.
• Groupthink is the tendency for group members to suspend critical thinking to seek agreement.
• Groupthink is likely when a group is under high stress to reach a decision, isolated from outside input, with a directive leader promoting a personal agenda, and has high cohesion.

Social Relations

• Craig Hill suggests affiliation serves four purposes: positive stimulation, emotional support, gaining attention, and social comparison.
• Initial attraction is caused by proximity, mere exposure, similarity, and physical attractiveness.
• The mere exposure effect increases liking for a stimulus with repeated exposure, given an initial neutral or mildly positive reaction.
• The matching effect is the tendency for partners in romantic relationships to have a similar level of physical attractiveness.
• The halo effect is when physical attractiveness leads to the perception of other positive attributes.
• Social structure theory posits that men and women display different mating preferences due to societal direction into different social roles.
• Social penetration theory states that relationships progress as interactions become broader and deeper.
• Social exchange theory states that relationships are governed by rewards and costs experienced by partners.
• The overall outcome is rewards minus costs.
• The outcome is compared against the comparison level (expected outcome in relationships) and the comparison level for alternatives (potential alternatives to the relationship).
• Matching hypothesis is people are friends and in relationships with those who are similar in level of attractiveness to themselves.

Love

• Passionate love involves intense emotion, arousal, and yearning.
• Compassionate love involves affection, deep caring, and commitment.
• The triangular theory of love focuses on intimacy, commitment, and passion.
• Consummate love exists when all three components are present.
• The cognitive-arousal model posits that passionate love has interacting cognitive and physiological components.
• Emotional arousal caused by another factor can be misinterpreted as love.
• Transfer of excitation is attributing arousal to another source.

Prejudice and Discrimination

• Prejudice is a negative attitude toward people based on their group membership, encompassing cognitive, affective, and behavioral components.
• Discrimination is treating people unfairly based on prejudices.
• Quicker reaction times are found for associated word pairs like "white, pleasant" compared to "black, pleasant."
• Cognitive and motivational causes of prejudice include categorization, us-them thinking, and stereotypes.
• Out-group homogeneity bias is viewing members of other groups as more similar than members of one's own group.
• Realistic conflict theory states that competition for limited resources fosters prejudice.
• Social identity theory is prejuidce stems from a need to enhance self-esteem.
• Stereotype threat is fear among stereotyped group members that they will live up to stereotypes.
• Equal status contact reduces prejudice when people engage in close contact, have equal status, work towards a common goal requiring cooperation, and are supported by social norms.

Pro-Social Behavior

• Pro-social behavior is motivated by the norm of reciprocity, the norm of social responsibility, and empathy.
• The norm of reciprocity states to reciprocate when others treat one kindly.
• The norm of social responsibility states to help others and contribute to society's welfare.
• The empathy-altruism hypothesis posits that altruism exists, produced by empathy.
• The negative state relief model is that high empathy causes distress when others suffer, reduced by helping.
• When do people help? Bystander intervention is a five step process:
• Noticing the situation.
• Deciding it is an emergency (social comparison).
• Assuming responsibility (diffusion of responsibility).
• Confidence (self-efficacy) in dealing with the situation.
• Deciding on perceived costs of intervening.
• The bystander effect is the presence of multiple bystanders inhibits each person's tendency to help.
• Whom do we help? Three factors include similarity, gender, and perceived responsibility.
• People are more likely to receive help when the need for aid is viewed as beyond their control.
• The just-world hypothesis is that people perceive that people get what they deserve as they want to view the world as fair.

Aggression

• Heredity partially determines aggression.
• Aggression involves the amygdala, hypothalamus, and frontal lobes.
• Higher testosterone levels contribute to social aggression.
• The frustration-aggression hypothesis is that frustration inevitably leads to aggression.
• This has been disproved because people do not always act with aggression.
• Aggression can be learned.
• Psychological factors in aggression include the perception of intended negative behavior, empathy, and emotion regulation.
• Catharsis is performing an act of aggression discharges aggressive energy, and temporarily reduces our impulse to aggress.