Chapter 15 Social Psychology PDF

Chapter 15: Social Psychology Unit textbook 15.1) Social psychology - how social context as well as broader cultural environments influence people’s thought, feelings and actions Focuses on how immed...

Chapter 15: Social Psychology Unit textbook 15.1) Social psychology - how social context as well as broader cultural environments influence people’s thought, feelings and actions Focuses on how immediate environmental changes our behaviour Why people act differently in different situations 15.2) If we can make more accurate impressions of people, our interactions with them go more smoothly because we can better predict what they might do, feel or say Fusiform face area underlie facial recognition Schemas - mental representations that organise the associated pieces of information we know about a person -> mental file folder ex) someone says something funny -> “good sense of humour” in your schema of them You have a schema for everyone you encounter and had to think of an impression of 2 dimensions to categorizing (1) friends or foe (2) gauge person’s status or competence in social pecking order Heuristics - Mental shortcuts Transference - Tendency to treat a person as if they had the traits or characteristics of another person you are more familiar with heuristic (mental shortcut) in applying schema representation we have of people we already know onto meeting new people. Chapter 15: Social Psychology 1  ex) meeting someone in college that reminds you of someone you already know of and acting a certain way towards that person because they remind you of that familiar person. False consensus - Using ourselves as an anchor and overestimating the extent to which other people’s belief and attitudes are similar to our own ex) college students overestimating how many other people drink and use drugs Impression management - Attempt to put their best face forward when trying to form impressions 15.3) Attribution - assignment of a causal relationship to try to explain an event, action or outcome ex) your mom did not make you dinner when you came home, does she hate me? Is she busy? Attribution might have an external/internal dimension to it EX) they had something going on IN) they dislike me Self-serving attribution - external and internal Fundamental attribution error - the tendency to attribute internally as an explanation rather than analyse is situationally 15.4) Motivation to think positively about ourselves can bias what we see and believe Self-serving attitudes - attribution people make for their own behaviour/outcome. People usually make dispositional attributions for a positive thing and a situational attribution for another ex) did bad on test -> why did they make this test so unfair // did good on test -> wow im so smart Chapter 15: Social Psychology 2  Broader bias to interpret our experiences in the most positive light Alternative forecasting errors - people’s inability to predict their emotional reaction they will have to events Leads to overestimations on influences that are either relevant/irrelevant to us ex) Tend to emphasise too much on the features of a place, not enough emphasis on the things that really bring us joy (family friends, and roommates) 15.5) Attitude - orientation towards target stimuli that triggers an (1)affective feeling ranging from positive to negative, (2) a cognitive belief about the characteristics of that target (the EV is environmentally friendly)and (3) a behavioral motivation to approach or avoid that target Weak link between attitude and behavior A - abstract topics B - more specific Implicit attitudes - automatically activated evaluation ranging from positive to negative on target stimuli Can be an evolutionary thing that primes our survival instincts Explicit attitudes - the conscious evaluation we have on target stimuli 15.6) Persuasion - explicitly changing held attitudes by directly appealing to them ex) being physically attracted to them Appealing to their emotions Being crediable Elaboration likelihood model - persuasion can be approached at two different routes: (1) a central route which focuses on the strength of the argument and (2) the peripheral route that is sensitive to superficial cues Chapter 15: Social Psychology 3  CR ex) expert reviews, researching statistics, buying book based on the received reviews PR ex) surface-level reasoning, automatic associations, buying book for how it looks Compliance strategies - change behaviour more directly without targeting people’s attitudes towards the product, idea or message 15.7) A need to understand the world around them and their own thoughts and actions Cognitive dissonance - conflict between actions and attitudes motivate efforts to reduce dissonance and restore sense of internal consistency Behaving out of line with their beliefs, values or attitudes Trigger attitude change People need a rationale to intentionally conflict their actions with their attitudes about something ex) 20$ does not need another rationale to lie, $1 does, leading to the people who were paid $1 to experience cognitive dissonance Post-decision dissonance - discomfort with having turned down one desirable option in order to obtain another Effort justification - valuing something more because of how hard it was to obtain Degree in electrical engineering 15.8) Social norms - patterns of behaviour, traditions, beliefs and preferences that are accepted and reinforced by others and influence our behaviour Conformity - process in which people internalise, mimic and adopt behaviour exhibited by others around them ex) people in a elevator facing the back, person walks in and keeps reinforcing this social norm, causing conformity amongst those in the Chapter 15: Social Psychology 4  elevator Satisfy need to belong and fit in with people around us Allows us to adapt to the broader culture and get along with others Informational social influence - conformity to others’ actions or beliefs in order to behave correctly or gain an accurate understanding of the world Normative social influence - conform to gain approval from others or avoid disapproval 15.9) Being around others or feeling a sense of social connection can boost motivation Social facilitation - presence of others can boost arousal in a way that facilitates the dominant response or most likely behavioural reaction to that task Easy task sees boost in productivity Difficult task enables the dominant response to make mistakes Social loafing - tendency for individuals to expend less effort on a task when they are doing it with others rather than alone More likely to occur if their individual performance is unnoticed by others 15.10) Group polarization - tendency for people’s attitudes on an issue to become more extreme after discussing it with like-minded others Justification Creates bias decision making in an extreme manner ex) being in polarized groups tend to make everyone’s beliefs and position more extreme Polarized groups often rely on a more limited range of facts when making their decisions Polarized groups are often overconfident about their decisions Chapter 15: Social Psychology 5  Group think - avoiding unpopular opinions for the reason of not wanting to hinder group consensus Exacerbated by having a dominant group leader 15.11) Leaders - rise to power by (1) demonstrating their skills or (2) showing their dominance and intimidating others to follow their lead Milgram - post ww2, hitler regime 65% of participants complied with the experimenter when professional psychologist predicted that 0.01% of people would go to that extent Obedience and milgram’s experiment- people are more likely to to comply with authority instructions when the victim is not present in sight of the shocker and when the authority figure is present 15.12) Aggression - any behaviour directed toward the goal of harming another living being General aggression model - framework for knitting together various factors that in combination predict the likelihood that people will act aggressively Negative situational effect (frustrating event, personal insult or some other aversive cue) can prompt aggression Things that threaten our fundamental need for belonging and acceptance Distance to goal prompts degree of aggression (closer = more/vice versa) Aggression can be very situational Weapons effect - simple exposure to a gun or weapon can increase aggressive responses by bringing violent thoughts to mind 15.13) Kin selection - evolved/adaptive strategy of assisting those who share one’s genes, even at personal cost, to increase odds of genetic survival Helping people we are related to Chapter 15: Social Psychology 6  Norm of reciprocity - adaptive advantage to helping strangers because according to this norm, people help others that have helped them in the past or will help them in the future Believed to have developed as a strong social norm because it helps societies succeed Empathy - key to altruism, to be in the shoes of another person, feeling their emotions like its our own Empathy gap - inability to accurately stimulate the emotions of another person 15.14) Bystander effect - when people are less likely to come to the aid of a victim when other observers are present than when they are alone The number of other individuals being ‘bystanders’ makes the situation feels less of an emergency Pluralistic ignorance - people are collectively unaware of each other’s true attitudes or beliefs Diffusion of responsibility - assume that someone either has already gone for help or would be more skilled at knowing what to do Nature of emergency is clear, people need to take personal responsibility for helping 15.15) Stereotypes - mental representations of schemas we have about groups Stereotypes of a group used to frequently to judge an individual member of that group Energy-saving devices -> relied on more frequently when people are tired Help justify the ways things are 15.16) Prejudice - negative attitude towards a group or members of a group Leads to discrimination Chapter 15: Social Psychology 7  Need to recognize that people naturally carve up their social world into social groups Discrimination - tendency for individuals to receive different treatment or outcomes as a result of their membership in a given social group Realistic group conflict theory - negative intergroup attitudes can develop whenever groups compete against one another for access to the same scare resources Social identity theory - people maintain positive attitude for their ingroup in part by seeing other groups/outgroups in a more negative light Symbolic racism - tendency to redirect one’s prejudice towards a racial/ethnic group to the policies that might benefit that group Being opposed to affirmative action programs designed to improve opportunities for minority groups not by stating they dislike the group itself but by arguing that these policies are unfair for people who work to achieve it through merit 15.17) Implicit racial biases - differential treatment as a response of the inability to control + natural response of negative attitudes/stereotypes towards a racial group Explicit racial biases - results from negative attitudes and stereotypes that are openly endorsed and freely expressed Aversive racism - a tendency, even amongst egalitarian minded people, to subconsciously have negative thoughts of someone amongst racial ethnic groups 15.18) Contact hypothesis - suggests that prejudice can be reduced through cooperative interactions between members of different groups to work towards one common goal ex) sherif's robbers cave - 2 groups of boys separated in cave - compete with each other upon discovery - when give common goal, mutual understanding and befriending occurred Chapter 15: Social Psychology 8  15.19) Humans are social-seeking creatures Relationships get formed through people who we are more exposed to and feel closer to Physical proximity or frequent close contact with another person usually first requirement for a relationship to form Mere exposure -> familiarity -> liking Attitudes, interest and background experiences shape the contexts we choose for ourselves (friendship and romantic) People tend to befriend those from the same socioeconomic, racial or ethnic, political and religious backgrounds Chameleon effect - the mimicking of another’s mannerisms, accent and speech patterns 15.20) What is different from ourselves (sexual attraction) Exotic becomes erotic Evolutionary perspective Most attractive to the healthiest mates who have hte best chance of transmission to future generations Physical cues to health are a universal signal of attractiveness Parental investment theory - sex difference in attraction due to time, risk and effort by women compared to men during procreation Argument suggest that men’s best strategy for genetic longevity is a short- term mating strategy with many fertile women Suggest that straight men report higher interest in young physically attractive women with hourglass figure and straight women reporting to be more into men that are financially well off with a v-taper researchers have noted that men and women’s preference might be more similar than data suggest as across 37 cultures, people have reported to Chapter 15: Social Psychology 9  care more about having a positive personality (kindness, good sense of humour, etc) Defensiveness - denial of personal responsiblities Stonewalling - refusal to continue conversation Contempt - dismissiveness of the other person’s POV Criticism - use of personal attacks during arguments 15.21) Attachment theory - explains the importance of strong and secure bonds between infants and their primary caregiver Secure attachment style - feeling worthy of love and affection and viewing others are inherently trustworthy Set people up for more successful and lasting relationships Less defensive when conflict arises and are more likely to remain monogamous Anxious - ambivalent style - prone to jealousy and anger, but passionate in their relationships Dismissive - avoidant - might be self confident but more reluctant to biome close or dependent on a partner Fearful-avoidant style -negative view on self and general mistrust of others Placing greater emphasis on partner’s positive traits instead of downplaying their weaknesses promote a longer-lasting relationship Triangular theory of love - Passion, intimacy and commitment Consummate love is experienced when there is a combination of all 3 15.22) Online interactions Enables easy connections with friends and family who no longer live nearby Chapter 15: Social Psychology 10  Large social networks (even online) is associated with lower levels of stress and higher well-being Tendency to lower people’s self-esteem and to share their negative thoughts and feelings can be actually off-putting to others Chapter 15: Social Psychology 11