Social Thinking and Perception

Social Thinking and Perception

• Attribution involves judgments about the causes of behaviors and events.
• Personal (dispositional) attribution attributes the cause to internal traits.
• Situational attribution attributes the cause to the external context.
• Kelley's Covariation Model uses consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus to decide between personal vs. situational attribution.
• High consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus lead to situational attribution.
• High consistency alone leads to personal attribution.
• Situational attributions activate the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
• Dispositional attributions activate the medial prefrontal cortex.
• The Fundamental Attribution Error overestimates personality and underestimates the situation when explaining others' behavior.
• The Self-Serving Bias attributes success to personal factors and failure to situational factors, except in depressed individuals who show the opposite pattern.
• Western cultures favor personal attributions, while Eastern cultures favor situational attributions.
• East Asians are likelier to consider multiple factors and complexity in behavior.

Forming and Maintaining Impressions

• The primacy effect means first impressions are more influential than later information.
• Motivation to think critically and being asked to avoid snap judgments can reduce the primacy effect.
• A mental set is a readiness to perceive a person/situation a certain way.
• Schemas are mental frameworks that organize information.
• Stereotypes are powerful schemas about groups.
• Self-fulfilling prophecies occur when false expectations change behavior toward someone, causing them to confirm the false belief.

Attitudes and Attitude Change

• An attitude is a positive/negative evaluation toward stimuli, having cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components.
• The attitude-behavior relationship is stronger when situational constraints are weak, the attitude is strongly held and formed from direct experience, and attitude and behavior match in specificity.
• The Theory of Planned Behavior states that positive attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control are the best predictors of behavior.
• Cognitive Dissonance Theory posits that inconsistent behavior leads to dissonance and attitude change.
• Self-Perception Theory suggests that attitudes are inferred by observing behavior, especially when attitudes are weak or ambiguous.
• The communicator is most persuasive if credible (expert and trustworthy) and attractive/similar to the audience.
• Messages are most persuasive when two-sided and refuting opposing views, not too extreme (unless the source is credible), and evoke moderate fear with clear ways to reduce the threat.
• The central route involves deep processing leading to long-lasting attitude change.
• The peripheral route uses superficial cues for short-term change.

Social Influence

• Social Facilitation: The presence of others improves performance on easy tasks and worsens it on difficult tasks.
• The presence of others increases arousal, enhancing dominant responses. For experts, this improves performance; for novices, it worsens performance.
• Social Norms: Shared rules about how to behave (implicit or explicit).
• Social Roles: Norms tied to a social position.
• Role Conflict: Occurs when norms of different roles clash.
• Culture and Norm Formation: Norms vary across cultures (e.g., personal space).
• The Autokinetic Effect Study (Sherif) showed that people's individual judgments converge in groups, creating group norms that persisted.
• Conformity = Adjusting behaviour and beliefs to match group norms.
• Informational Influence: Conform because we think others are correct.
• Normative Influence: Conform to gain approval and avoid rejection.
• Asch’s Line Study (1956) showed participants conformed to incorrect group judgment 37% of the time.
• Group size: Conformity increases up to 4–5 people, then plateaus.
• Dissenter presence: Even one dissenter drastically reduces conformity.
• Task difficulty: Easy task with high stakes = less conformity. Hard task with high stakes = more conformity.
• Collectivist cultures show higher conformity than individualistic ones.
• Minorities can influence majorities if they stay consistent, are confident but not rigid, and appear open-minded.
• Milgram’s Shock Experiment (1960s) showed that 65% of people obeyed to full 450 volts.
• People obey authority figures more than expected, even if it causes harm.
• Factors that increase obedience: Remoteness of victim, closeness/legitimacy of authority, lack of personal responsibility, and being a cog in a system.
• Obedience is due not to cruelty but the power of the situation.

Compliance Techniques

• Norm of Reciprocity: obligated to return favours
• Door-in-the-Face: Start with a large request and follow with a smaller one.
• Foot-in-the-Door: Start with a small request, then escalate to a larger one.
• Lowballing: Get initial agreement, then raise the cost before finalizing.
• Deindividuation: Loss of self-awareness and moral restraint in groups.
• Increased by: anonymity, large crowds, uniforms/masks.
• Social Loafing: People exert less effort in a group than when alone.
• Less likely when the group is important, the task is meaningful, and people are held accountable.
• Group Polarization: Group discussion leads to more extreme opinions.
• Groupthink: Tendency to suspend critical thinking to preserve harmony.
• Most likely when the group is under high stress, isolated, the leader is directive, and the group is cohesive.
• Illusion of unanimity, self-censorship, mindguards, and pressure on dissenters are symptoms.
• Prevention: Leader stays neutral, encourages dissent, subdivides group, and brings in outside opinions.

Affiliation and Interpersonal Attraction

• Belongingness is a basic need.
• Social tendencies had survival value.
• We affiliate to gain stimulation, emotional support, receive attention, and compare ourselves socially.
• Fear increases the desire for affiliation.
• Proximity: Most relationships begin with physical closeness.
• Mere exposure effect: Repeated exposure = increased liking.
• Similarity: "Birds of a feather" effect is stronger than "opposites attract.”
• Physical Attractiveness: Strongly predicts interest, especially in initial stages.
• Matching effect: We tend to pair with people similar in attractiveness.
• Stereotype: “What is beautiful is good.”
• Averaged faces (symmetrical, composite faces) are seen as more attractive across cultures.
• Self-Disclosure: Sharing inner thoughts builds trust and intimacy.
• Social Exchange Theory: Satisfaction = Rewards - Costs
• Across 37 cultures, people value mutual attraction, dependability, and emotional stability.
• Men: value youth and looks.
• Women: value resources and ambition.
• Passionate love: Intense, emotional, often unstable.
• Companionate love: Deep affection, stability, long-term satisfaction.
• Sternberg’s Triangular Theory: Intimacy, Passion, Commitment.
• Consummate Love: All three present.
• Transfer of excitation: Misinterpreting arousal as attraction.
• Involves dopamine, norepinephrine, and reduced prefrontal cortex activity.
• Predictors of failure: Criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling
• Happy couples handle conflict respectfully, de-escalate negativity, make repair attempts, and maintain a deep “love map" of partner’s inner world.

Prejudice and Discrimination

• Prejudice: Negative attitude based on group membership.
• Discrimination: Negative behavior based on group membership.
• Overt prejudice has decreased; covert prejudice persists.
• Measured using Implicit Association Tests (IAT).
• Categorization leads to in-groups vs. out-groups.
• In-group favouritism and out-group homogeneity bias occurs.
• Realistic conflict theory: Competition for resources breeds prejudice.
• Social identity theory: Prejudice boosts self-esteem by enhancing in-group status.
• Stereotype threat: Anxiety about confirming a stereotype reduces performance.
• Works best when there is sustained contact, equal status, cooperative goal, and it is supported by norms.
• Students in diverse groups learn better and reduce bias when each person teaches part of the material and a shared group identity is fostered.
• Affirming (“Some Black people are lawyers”) > Negating (“Not all Black people are criminals”).

Prosocial Behavior (Helping Others)

• Kin selection: Help relatives to pass on shared genes.
• Reciprocal altruism: Help others now, get help later.
• We learn helping behavior through modeling and norms such as the norm of reciprocity and norm of social responsibility.
• Empathy → real altruism (not selfish distress reduction).
• Help is less likely with more bystanders due to diffusion of responsibility.
• Help more if: in a good mood/guilty, not in a hurry, victim is similar, female, or not blamed for their situation.
• Just-world hypothesis: People believe victims deserve their fate, reducing helping.

Aggression

• Genetic predisposition, brain areas (amygdala, hypothalamus, and frontal lobes), and hormones (low serotonin + high testosterone) contribute to aggression.
• Frustration, provocation, pain, heat, crowding, and COVID lockdowns increase aggression.
• Rewards reinforce aggression.
• Observing aggression leads to imitation.
• Perceived intent, low empathy, and self-justification increase aggression.
• The catharsis myth: Releasing aggression does not reduce it.
• Social learning view: Media violence teaches new aggression, desensitizes viewers, and reinforces aggression as acceptable.
• Violent games may increase hostile thoughts and aggressive behavior, desensitize players, and encourage moral disengagement.

What is Personality?

• Personality refers to distinctive, relatively enduring patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting.
• Arises from two observations: individual differences and consistency across time/situations.
• Theories judged by how well they: organize known facts, predict future behaviour, stimulate new research.

Psychodynamic Perspective

• Focuses on unconscious internal forces and conflicts.
• Freud’s theory was the first and highly influential.
• Based on clinical observations of conversion hysteria.
• Believed unconscious memories and impulses drive behavior.

Freud’s Mind Structure

• Mind consists of conscious, preconscious, and unconscious levels
• Personality has three structures:
  • Id: irrational, unconscious, driven by pleasure principle
  • Ego: conscious, mediates via reality principle
  • Superego: moral values, strives for perfection
• Ego struggles between id, superego, and reality.
• Anxiety results from internal conflict.
• Ego uses unconscious defence mechanisms:
  • Repression: pushes anxiety-provoking info into unconscious
  • Denial, displacement, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, sublimation, etc.
• Personality shaped by how children handle sexual urges during 5 stages:
  • Oral (0–2): weaning
  • Anal (2–3): toilet training
  • Phallic (4–6): Oedipus/Electra complex
  • Latency (7–puberty): social development
  • Genital (puberty+): mature relationships
• Fixation occurs with over/under gratification
• Hard to test scientifically and has ambiguous concepts.
• Little empirical support for psychosexual stages.
• Adler: people motivated by social interest and striving for superiority
• Jung: added collective unconscious and archetypes
• Object relations: mental representations of caregivers influence later relationships
• Attachment theory grew from object relations (secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganized)

Humanistic Perspective

• Emphasizes conscious experience, positive growth, and self-actualization.
• Self-concept central to personality.
• Self: organized set of beliefs about oneself
• Self-consistency: absence of conflicting self-perceptions
• Congruence: match between experience and self-concept
• Incongruence leads to anxiety and defensive distortion
• Affective component of self-concept
• High self-esteem linked to better mental health and social outcomes
• Low self-esteem linked to anxiety, depression, and poor relationships
• Influenced by unconditional positive regard from parents
• Conditional regard leads to conditions of worth and incongruence
• Open to experience, authentic, self-directed, free from conditions of worth
• Self-verification: desire to maintain consistent self-views
• Self-enhancement: drive to maintain positive self-image
• People seek feedback and relationships that match self-concept
• Individualist cultures: personal traits emphasized
• Collectivist cultures: social roles emphasized
• Gender roles shape self-concept (e.g., masculinity, femininity, androgyny)

Trait Perspective

• Traits: enduring behaviour tendencies
• Goal: identify, measure, and predict behaviour from traits
• Allport: identified 17,000+ trait terms
• Cattell: 16 personality factors (16PF)
• Eysenck: 3 dimensions (Extraversion, Stability, Psychoticism)
• Five Factor Model (OCEAN):
  • Openness: willingness to try new things
  • Conscientiousness: being careful and organized
  • Extraversion: being sociable
  • Agreeableness: being helpful or trusting
  • Neuroticism: tendency to be anxious or emotional
• Big Five linked to health, relationships, and achievement
• Conscientiousness: lower disease risk
• Neuroticism: higher emotional instability and risk for illness
• Eysenck: traits linked to brain arousal and genetic factors
  • Introverts: overaroused, avoid stimulation
  • Extraverts: underaroused, seek stimulation
  • Neuroticism: reactive nervous system
• Dopamine and serotonin linked to personality traits
• Traits show moderate-long-term stability
• Self-monitoring influences consistency:
  • High: adapt behaviour to context
  • Low: behave consistently with inner beliefs
• Strong in description and measurement
• Weaker in explaining trait origins and interactions

Social Cognitive Theories of Personality

• Combines behavioural and cognitive perspectives
• Humans are perceivers, thinkers, planners—not passive recipients of environment
• Personality is shaped by learning (conditioning, modelling) and cognition
• Personality, behaviour, and environment interact in two-way causal links
• Behaviour is influenced from “both inside and outside” (not one-directional)
• Emphasizes interaction over singular causation (e.g., not just traits or environment)
• Expectancy: how likely one believes a behaviour will lead to a desired outcome
• Reinforcement value: how much we desire or dread the expected outcome
• Behaviour = function of expectancy × reinforcement value
• Merges behavioural reinforcement concepts with cognitive interpretations
• Internal locus: outcomes determined by own actions
• External locus: outcomes determined by chance or powerful others
• Internals: more likely to be proactive, healthier, and better achievers
• Externals: more passive, higher susceptibility to influence and anxiety
• High entitlement beliefs correlate with external locus of control
• Low entitlement correlates with internal locus
• Entitlement was unrelated to GPA, gender, income, or self-monitoring
• Internals: higher self-esteem, better health, more problem-focused coping
• We are agents of our own lives, not controlled by environment alone
• Human agency includes:
  • Intentionality – planning and goal-setting
  • Forethought – anticipation and future planning
  • Self-reactiveness – self-motivation and behaviour regulation
  • Self-reflectiveness – evaluation of motivations and beliefs
• Self-efficacy: belief in one’s ability to perform behaviours to achieve goals
• High self-efficacy = persistence, performance, and success
• Four sources of self-efficacy:
• Past performance
• Observational learning
• Verbal persuasion
• Emotional arousal
• Use specific, behavioural, measurable goals
• Combine goals + feedback for greatest improvement (Bandura study)
• Found low cross-situational consistency in personality traits (e.g., conscientiousness)
• People behave differently across contexts despite having stable traits
• Personality consistency is seen in "if... then..." behavioural patterns
• Children who delayed gratification:
  • Scored higher on SATs
  • Had better self-control, health, and stress coping in adulthood
• Delay of gratification linked to success and personality development
• Strong scientific basis
• Emphasizes person × situation interaction
• Explains behavioural variability across situations
• Explains both stability and flexibility in behaviour patterns

Personality Assessment Methods

• Overview of six methods:
  • Interview
  • Behavioural assessment
  • Remote behaviour sampling
  • Physiological measures
  • Objective personality scales
  • Projective tests
• Structured interviews employ the same questions to every participant for standardization.
• However, can lack reliability and validity due to subjectivity and participant honesty.
• Involves direct observation and explicit behavioural coding systems
• Useful for studying real-time behaviours and identifying situational triggers
• Uses tech (e.g., phone apps) to collect self-reported data during daily life Captures emotional states, thoughts, behaviours in natural settings
• Useful for detecting patterns across situations
• Standardized questionnaires (true-false, Likert) with agreed scoring systems
• Pros: efficient, consistent, objective
• Cons: may be biased by social desirability or self-deception
• Based on theory (e.g., NEO-PI for Big Five)
• Based on item responses from diagnosed groups (e.g., MMPI-2)
• 567 true-false items, measures clinical and personality dimensions
• Includes validity scales to detect fake or exaggerated responses
• Used for psychiatric assessment, personality description, and screening
• Based on psychodynamic view that unconscious processes are revealed in ambiguous tasks
• 10 inkblots, interpreted for symbolic meaning
• Limited reliability unless standardized scoring is used
• Ambiguous pictures; person makes up stories
  • Analyzed for themes, motives, interpersonal style
• The interpretation is subjective and standardization efforts help
• Psychodynamic: projective tests
• Humanistic: self-reports
• Social cognitive: behavioural measures, situational sampling
• Trait theorists: objective inventories (e.g., NEO-PI, 16PF)
• Biological: physiological measures

Definition of Stress

• Stress as stimulus-based: External events (stressors) that place demands on us.
• Stress as response-based: Internal physical and psychological reactions to stressors.
• Transactional model: Ongoing interaction between person and environment, resulting from perceived imbalance between demands and coping resources.

Types of Stressors

• Microstressors: Daily hassles (e.g., traffic).
• Major negative events: Loss, assault, failure.
• Catastrophic events: Natural disasters, war.
• Key characteristics increasing stress impact: severity, unpredictability, uncontrollability, chronicity.

Measuring Stress

• Life Event Scales (e.g., SRRS) quantify stress exposure.
• Modern tools include subjective appraisal of events, predictability, duration.

Cognitive Appraisal

• Primary appraisal: Is this threatening?
• Secondary appraisal: Do I have resources to cope?
• Consequences appraisal: What’s at stake if I fail?
• Personal meaning: What does this say about me?

Physiological Response to Stress

• Hans Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS):
  • Alarm: Activation of sympathetic nervous system, cortisol release.
  • Resistance: Continued physiological effort, but resources depleting.
  • Exhaustion: Vulnerability to illness, collapse.
• Cortisol: Raises blood sugar but suppresses immune function.

Stress and Psychological Health

• PTSD: Anxiety disorder after trauma.
  • Re-experiencing (flashbacks, dreams)
  • Hyperarousal and anxiety
  • Emotional numbing/avoidance
  • Survivor guilt
• Residential school syndrome: PTSD-like symptoms among Indigenous survivors, with cultural and intergenerational impacts.

Stress and Physical Health

• Chronic stress increases risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, autoimmune disorders.
• Weakens immune function.
• Impairs memory via hippocampal damage (Meaney et al.).
• Poor health habits under stress (smoking, drinking, diet, inactivity).

Vulnerability and Protective Factors

• Vulnerability factors: Increase susceptibility (e.g., poor coping, low social support, anxiety).
• Protective factors: Increase resilience.
• Enhances immunity and psychological well-being.
• In-person > text message support.
• Hardiness (3 C’s): Commitment, Control, Challenge.
• Unexpectedly positive outcomes after adversity.
• Linked to humor, optimism, and support.
• Belief in ability to cope.
  • Increases with: past success, vicarious experience, encouragement, low physiological arousal.
• Linked to lower distress, fewer illnesses, and better immune function.
  • Type A: Competitive, impatient, hostile—higher CHD risk.
  • Conscientiousness: Linked to longevity and good health habits.

Coping Strategies

• Confront or change the stressor (e.g., study for test, resolve conflict).
• Regulate emotional response (e.g., relaxation, denial). Adaptive or maladaptive (e.g., avoidance).
• Turning to others for help (emotional/instrumental).
• Best outcomes: Problem-focused + social support.
• Emotion-focused helpful when stressor is uncontrollable.
• Present-focused, non-judgmental awareness.
• Benefits: Reduces stress, anxiety, depression (e.g., in teachers).

Unhealthy Coping

• Self-medication
• Self-injury
• Emotional suppression
• Males: more problem-focused
• Females: more emotion-focused + social support
• Individualist: problem-focused, humour
• Collectivist: emotion-focused, avoid conflict

Gender, Culture and Coping

• Health-enhancing behaviours: Exercise, good diet, medical care.
• Health-compromising behaviours: Smoking, poor diet, inactivity.

Transtheoretical Model of Behaviour Change

• Precontemplation
• Contemplation
• Preparation
• Action
• Maintenance
• Termination
• Interventions should be matched to stage of change.
• Aerobic exercise: Sustained, heart-rate raising.
• Benefits: Lowers heart risk, improves mood, enhances cognitive function.
• High dropout rate: influenced by self-efficacy, social support.

Scope and Cost of Substance Abuse

• Alcohol plays a major role in Canada’s 4th leading cause of death: accidents.
• 2019: 85,637 impaired driving offences; at least 155 deaths, 540 injuries
• 40%+ of alcohol-related traffic deaths are other road users.
• Total: $38.4 billion/year in Canada.
  • Alcohol: $14.6B, Tobacco: $12B, Opioids: $3.5B, Cannabis: $2.8B.
• 40%+ of crimes are drug/alcohol-related.
• High rates of violent crimes committed under substance influence.
• Up to 75% of people with severe mental illness also have substance use disorder.

Treatment and Prevention Approaches

• Increase awareness, desire to change, and belief in ability to change.
• Non-confrontational, highlights discrepancy between current and desired state.
• Proven effective for alcohol, smoking, and drug issues.
• Genetic predispositions, craving, withdrawal, emotional triggers, and conditioned stimuli make change difficult.
• Nicotine patches.
• Aversion therapy: pairing substance with nausea.
• Stress management
• Self-monitoring
• Coping and social skills
• Family therapy
• Some success but long-term success usually under 30%.