PL3105 Notes PDF

Week 1 : Introduction & Method What is Social Psychology? - A lot about the self & people Experiment on social isolation (effects) : - Vivid hallucinations, both visual and auditory - Cognitive decline - Anxiety and panic attacks (implications on physical and mental health) - Most par...

Week 1 : Introduction & Method What is Social Psychology? - A lot about the self & people Experiment on social isolation (effects) : - Vivid hallucinations, both visual and auditory - Cognitive decline - Anxiety and panic attacks (implications on physical and mental health) - Most participants quit the experiment E.g. prison cells solitary confinement Fish analogy - For fishes : default is being in the water (but what exactly is water to them?) - Similarly, for humans, having social interactions is the norm (but what exactly is social interactions to them?) Common (False) Assumptions 1) I am in control of my actions 2) I know why I do the things I do 3) I know why people do the things they do 4) I know myself. I know what’s going on in my mind 5) My perspective matches reality Why would you admit to a crime you didn’t commit? - Some innocent individuals falsely confessed and served jail term - The power of situations : Due to mental vulnerability? Police coercion? - How can we prevent this from happening? 60-80% of the TikTok content centres around the self - Egocentric biases : huge emphasis of attention on self - Naive Realism : How did we take over the world? - We are not built as strongly as other animals - The power of social connection Definition of social psychology 1) An attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others - Gordon W. Allport (1968) : one of the founding fathers of social psychology 2) We know that the social interaction of individuals is [social psychology’s] core, and we can all quote Allport approvingly... [But perhaps] social psychology’s centre is not where  we think. We believe that the center around which modern social psychology actually turns is the understanding of subjective experience. - Daniel Wegner & Daniel Gilbert (2000) ↪ Actual nonacademic Internet use (⇧) is negative correlated with final exam score (⇩) & inversely related with ACT score (⇩) Research Methods (1) Why study methods? - Understand the rationale behind the methods e.g. How was it conducted? What’s a good/bad method? - Helps you to learn and apply beyond the classroom (2) Why run experiments? - Tells you about the causality between 2 factors (how A affects B)  - Stages a) Start with a research question e.g. How does PL3105 affect students’ mood? - Bad question : Very vague, not specific enough (What is “affect” & “mood”?) - Better phrasing : Does attending PL3105 lectures make students happy? Specific, answerable question with a yes or a no b) Operationalise e.g. How do we measure “attending PL3105”? & “happy’? c) Data Collection (2 variables : attendance rate and self-report feelings of happiness) - - Positive relationship between x & y : BUT is it really as it is? - May be (a) happy people -> attend lectures OR (b) attending lectures -> makes people happy : BOTH directions are plausible - Possible presence of confounding/third variables e.g. smart people -> attend lectures AND smart people -> are happy people - Issue : We cannot rule out alternative explanations for a relation between A and B (IMPT : Correlation ≠ Causation) Solution : Run experiments to test - Before VS After : people can be happier at the end of the semester and NOT because of the lectures (i.e. other activities contributing to the happiness, not due to PL3105) - Demand characteristics : subjects interpret the study’s objectives a) Within-subject design : repeated measurements Pros (1) Same individuals so no need to control for differences Cons (1) Confounding variables (2) Demand characteristics (3) Repeated exposure : participants may detect the manipulation b) Between-subject design Pros (1) Small sample size Cons (1) No manipulation of subjects (Solution - Random assignment) (2) Ceiling effect - at the end of one scale Data Analysis - Is it significant? E.g. not due to chance/being random - Magnitude of the effect : the smaller the magnitude, the less confident the results are - Variability of data points : a) Clustered b) More widely spread - Sample size : the larger the sample size, the more accurate the data is How do experiments go wrong? - Artifact : Any variable other than the manipulation that influences the differences between observations ; Any unintended influences on study results that aren't part of the manipulation we're trying to test a) Design confounds i.e. study design - A variable unintentionally built into the study design that could explain differences between conditions, potentially leading to incorrect conclusions about cause and effect. b) Experimenter artifacts Expectancy Effects : differential treatment by researchers due to expectation of meeting a hypothesis i.e. When someone expects a given result, that expectation unconsciously affects the outcome or report of the expected result (Solution - Experimenter does not know hypothesis i.e. Experimenter blinding & Preregistration of study : documenting research plan prior to starting and storing in a public repository) c) Participant Artifacts Evaluation Apprehension : a human tendency to try to look better or fear of being evaluated Demand Characteristics : subjects self-interpret the purpose of the experiment and acts in accordance to what they think they should do i.e. good : +ve hypothesis VS spiteful participants : -ve hypothesis  [Solution : a) Camouflaging the hypothesis b) Covert observation : participants are not informed that they are being observed during the study (prevent observer effects and capture natural behaviour) -> fully debriefed after observation [retroactive informed consent] c) Implicit measures - RT , psychophysiology like EMG electromyography, fMRI functional magnetic resonance imaging] WEIRD people : Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic ↪ Majority of participants and social psychologists from US, UK, Canada, Australia ↪ Majority of researchers overgeneralise results to other population which is not representative (Solution : Choose more representative participants OR Change the feasibility of the study) ➔ Avoiding Participant Artifacts: 1) Avoid revealing hypothesis (not disclosing specific predictions or research questions to participants -> can lead to demand characteristics or other biases) 2) Avoid obvious manipulations 3) Avoid obvious measures 4) Test diverse populations Unethical Research - Nuremberg Trials (1945-1949) - Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (1932-1972) Conducting Ethical Research 1) Institutional Review Board - Review by independent board that reviews study protocol - Subjects should be protected from physical risks psychological risks whenever possible risks to their privacy unnecessary deception  2) Cost/Benefit Ratio - What are we going to learn from this study that‘s beneficial, and at what cost? E.g. Can’t upset people even a little bit if it’s just for fun VS Can upset people a little bit if it can improve the world 3) Informed Consent - Must get consent before people participate - Make sure all participants have enough information to decide whether to participate or not - Participants have the option to end the experiment at any time at no cost 4) Debriefing - At the end of study, participants are told What the study was about Why it was conducted How to get more info if they want Who to complain to if they have complaints Textbook Chapter 1 LO 1.1 Define social psychology and distinguish it from other disciplines. 1) Social psychology is the scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people (Allport, 1985). ↪ Empirical questions : their answers should be derived from experimentation or measurement rather than by personal opinion - Goal : identify psychological properties that make almost everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of social class or culture (how and why) - Level of analysis : the individual in the context of a social situation i.e. individual within the group, institution or society at large—particularly the individual’s construal of that situation. ↪ The way in which how people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world - Social Influence : The effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior - Cross cultural research is important 2) Philosophy : insights into human nature ↪ Folk wisdom/common sense : often disagree with each other/contradicting 3) Biologists and neuroscientists : level of analysis might be genes, hormones, or physiological processes in the brain (individual)  4) Evolutionary psychology : The attempt to explain social behaviour in terms of genetic factors that have evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection - Suggests novel hypotheses about why people do what they do in today’s world, which can then be put to the test (BUT hard to test experimentally) 5) Personality psychologists : generally focus on individual differences i.e. the aspects of people’s personalities that make them different from others 6) Sociology : focuses on such topics as social class, social structure, and social institutions. ↪ Level of analysis is the group, institution, or society at large LO 1.2 Summarize why it matters how people explain and interpret events, as well as their own and others’ behavior. - Fundamental Attribution Error : The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors ↪ Social and environmental situations are usually more powerful than personality differences in determining an individual’s behavior. - Behaviorism : A school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment ↪ B. F. Skinner Positive reinforcement e.g. reward such as money, attention, praise : increase frequency of behaviour Negative reinforcement e.g. punishment such as anger, shouting : reduces frequency of behaviour Criticisms:  i) Overlooked phenomena vital to human social experience ii) Overlooked the importance of how people interpret their environments - Gestalt psychology : study the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds (the gestalt, or whole) rather than the way in which the objective, physical attributes of the object combine ↪ Kurt Lewin ↪ First proposed as a theory of how people perceive the physical world - Naïve Realism : The conviction that we perceive things “as they really are,” underestimating how much we are interpreting or “spinning” what we see LO 1.3 Explain what happens when people’s need to feel good about themselves conflicts with their need to be accurate. a) Need to feel good about themselves - Self-esteem : People’s evaluation of their own self-worth i.e. see themselves as good, competent, and decent ↪ Most people change the way they interpret events in order to preserve their self-esteem b) Need to be accurate - Social cognition : the study of how people select, interpret, remember, and use information to make judgments and decisions (how they think about the world) ↪ Even when we are trying to perceive the social world as accurately as we can, there are many ways in which we can go wrong, ending up with the wrong impressions ↪ In actuality, individuals typically act on the basis of incomplete and inaccurately interpreted information. LO 1.4 Explain why the study of social psychology is important. - We are curious ; Fascinated by human social behaviour and want to understand it on the deepest possible level - Contribute to the solution of social problems. Textbook Chapter 2 LO 2.1 Describe how researchers develop hypotheses and theories. - Hindsight Bias : The tendency for people to exaggerate, after knowing that something occurred, how much they could have predicted it before it occurred - Often generate hypotheses from previous theories and research ↪ revise/improve past theory and formulate new hypotheses - Based on personal observations that they find curious and interesting LO 2.2 Compare the strengths and weaknesses of various research designs that social psychologists use.  a) Observational method - The technique whereby a researcher observes people and systematically records measurements or impressions of their behaviour - Ethnography Researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions they might have - Archival analysis Researcher examines the accumulated documents, or archives, of a culture (e.g., diaries, novels, magazines, and newspapers) Limitation - Does not explain the reason why a phenomenon occurs b) Correlational method - Understand relationships between variables and to be able to predict when different kinds of social behaviour will occur. - Calculate coefficient correlation : -1 to +1 Positive correlation : increases in the value of one variable are associated with increases in the value of the other variable Negative correlation : increases in the value of one variable are associated with decreases in the value of the other variable Limitation - Correlation i.e. relationship between 2 variables =/= Causation i.e. A causes B c) Experimental method - The method in which the researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions and ensures that these conditions are identical except for the independent variable - Determine causal relationships - Independent Variable : The variable a researcher changes or varies to see if it has an effect on some other variable - Dependent Variable : The variable a researcher measures to see if it is influenced by the independent variable the researcher hypothesises that the dependent variable will depend on the level of the independent variable - Random Assignment to Condition : A process ensuring that all participants have an equal chance of taking part in any condition of an experiment; through random assignment, researchers can be relatively certain that differences in the participants’ personalities or backgrounds are distributed evenly across conditions - Internal Validity : Making sure that nothing besides the independent variable can affect the dependent variable; this is accomplished by controlling all extraneous variables and by randomly assigning people to different experimental conditions - External Validity : The extent to which the results of a study can be generalised to other situations and to other people  - Psychological Realism : The extent to which the psychological processes triggered in an experiment are similar to psychological processes that occur in everyday life - Field experiments Experiments conducted in natural settings rather than in the laboratory - Basic Dilemma of the Social Psychologist : The trade-off between internal and external validity in conducting research; it is very difficult to do one experiment that is both high in internal validity and generalizable to other situations and people LO 2.3 Explain the impact cross-cultural studies and social neuroscience research have on the way in which scientists investigate social behavior. - Cross-Cultural Research : Research conducted with members of different cultures, to see whether the psychological processes of interest are present in both cultures (universal) or whether they are specific to the culture in which people were raised (culture-specific) - Social neuroscience : connection between biological processes and social behaviour E.g. the study of hormones and behavior, the human immune system, and neurological processes in the human brain. Use of electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) ↪ take these measurements while participants think about and process social information, allowing them to correlate different kinds of brain activity with social information processing LO 2.4 Summarize how social psychologists ensure the safety and welfare of their research participants, while at the same time testing hypotheses about the causes of social behavior. - Main priority : maintain the health and welfare of participants - Informed consent given by participants : Agreement to participate in an experiment, granted in full awareness of the nature of the experiment, which has been explained in advance - Deception : misleading participants about the true purpose of a study or the events that transpire ↪ Not possible to inform people exactly what will happen in advance Debriefing : post-experimental interview process of explaining to the participants, at the end of an experiment, the true purpose of the study and exactly what transpired. ↪ If any participants have experienced discomfort, the researchers attempt to undo and alleviate it. ↪ Participants learn about the goals and purpose of the research - Institutional Research Board (IRB) reviews psychological research before it is conducted A group made up of at least one scientist, one non-scientist, and one member not affiliated with the institution that reviews all psychological research at that  institution and decides whether it meets ethical guidelines; all research must be approved by the IRB before it is conducted ↪ Required if any institution seeks federal funding for research Week 2 : The Self 1) How do we understand ourselves? 2) Do we understand ourselves? Layers of self-awareness a) Physical body - The Mirror Self-Recognition Test - Chimpanzees, orangutans, dolphins, elephants, magpies, humans - Chimps reared in social isolation fail the mirror self recognition test - Similarly, dogs raised in isolation don't learn how to act normally upon own bodies e.g. do not avoid painful stimuli Self-misidentification 1) Mirror agnosia - inability to recognise self in the mirror/ delusion that objected reflected are in the mirror (Patient T.H : damaged RH) 2) Somatoparaphrenia - does not recognise a body part e.g. left limb as their own (delusion of state of mind) i.e. denies ownership of their own limb/entire side of one’s body 3) Rubber hand illusion - the experience of an artificial hand as being a real body part b) Internal thoughts Choice blindness : our inability to detect when a choice (decision) made is different than our selection (thought) & our tendency to falsely explain why we made a choice in the first place Position of stockings (right > left : ratio 4:1) affecting preferences - Nisbett & Wilson, 1977 Choosing more attractive picture (only 30% noticed if the shown face was NOT what they chose) - Johansson et al., 2005 c) External action - Thought -> Action : Causation perceived when 1 event follows quickly from another I-spy Experiment (Illusion of conscious will) : Dan Wegner and Thalia Wheatley's Ouija board experiment - Under certain circumstances, participants thought it was them who moved the cursor to the target picture, although it was an experimenter (disguised as another participant) who moved the cursor.  ↪ Thought preceding the action : The illusion of conscious will arises when participants believe their thought to move the cursor came before the actual movement. our sense of will or intention might often be an interpretation of our thoughts and actions, rather than a direct insight into their causal relationship. In forced trials, the confederate moved the cursor to specific objects, while in unforced trials, participants moved freely. d) Experience of Self-Awareness (Pg 147-150) - Subjective (SSA) : perceiving the world as a subject Attention from self as subject, toward other objects (attention directed outward, focused on external environment/task) Created by tasks or distractions e.g. being absorbed in a game, unaware of own expressions Being introspectively aware of one's inner thoughts and feelings. - Objective (OSA) : you are the object Attention to self as object (attention directed inward) Created by mirrors (e.g. SPF bicycle theft mirror), cameras, audiences, or other self focusing stimuli -> noticing and highly aware of own appearance and behaviour Increases salience of discrepancy between real self and self standard ↪ Good Surgency : waited long enough Bad Surgency : varied between mirror (looking at themselves -> less patient : escape OSA due to discomfort) and no mirror ↪ The presence of a mirror serves to increase objective self-awareness, making individuals more aware of themselves as objects in the environment The Egocentric Self - Self Enhancement Kruger’s Experiment : What percentage of you will score above average on the midterm? - EVERY student thought they would score above average on the midterm - 47% claimed they would solve a logic problem that only 20% of classmates can solve ↪ Cannot recognise their actual face (think that they are at least 20% more attractive than they actually are) Implicit self-esteem refers to the unconscious or automatic evaluation of oneself, while explicit self-esteem refers to the conscious or deliberate evaluation of oneself ESE higher in Western than Eastern Self Esteem : An evaluation of oneself - High Self Esteem correlates with better education, better work performance, less crime, less drug abuse, less teen pregnancy - Increasing self-esteem through manipulation does not improve academic performance (Baumeister, Campbell et al., 2003). - Self-esteem does: + make people more willing to speak up in groups + Increases perseverance + increases happiness – in-group favoritism (prejudice, discrimination) Self Focus Self Reference Effect - Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker (1977) - Step 1: read word: KIND Structural properties: Printed in lowercase? Phonemic properties: Rhymes with mind? Semantic properties: Means the same as nice? Self-relevance: Describe you? - Step 2: Surprise recall ↪ Information to the self is more easily recalled Self Serving Biases - Ross & Sicoly, 1979 - Married couples rated how much they and their spouse took responsibility for 20 household tasks - On average, subjects thought they were more responsible for handling 16 of 20 (think they are doing more work) Spotlight Effect (ʻBad Hair Dayʼeffect) - Gilovich, Medvec & Savitsky (2000) - What % will notice the Barry Manilow shirt worn by the subject? ↪ N = 50 ; people don’t pay as much attention as you think they do Me, Now (‘End-of-History Illusion’) - Quoidbach, Gilbert, Wilson, 2013 ↪ N = 90 000 ; key finding of the study is that across all age groups, people consistently predicted less change for their future selves than others of the same age reported having experienced in the past decade. This discrepancy between  predicted future change and reported past change is what the authors call the "end of history illusion."l the y-axis in the graph represents the magnitude of change, regardless of the sign. That is, "higher values = a larger amount of change, and lower values = smaller amount of change". Egocentric biases - Subjective construal: the way each of us as an individual interprets what we see around us in the world, which leads to - Naïve realism: the disbelief in (or non-appreciation of) subjective construal and multiple perspectives as the fundamental nature of experiencing Week 3 : The Social Self - “A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.” - William James - We show different aspects of ourselves to others ; Others perceive us differently - People around us are each going to pull at different aspects of ourselves - Dynamic interplay between self and other - The self is not a stable, ever unchanging entity Someone’s watching : Kleck & Strenta, 1980 - Half the subjects had a make-up “scar” on their face and wiped it off after ; The other half did not have any scar (No one had scar) - Subject interacts with a partner and rates how partner acted during interaction (they rated it themselves) ↪ They thought the partner viewed them in the certain way they rated, though the partner actually had no clue about the scar Subjects were told they had a scar, but no scar was actually applied. Partners were unaware of any supposed scar and interacted normally. Despite this, subjects perceived their partners as tense and patronizing. These perceptions were entirely due to subjects' self-consciousness about their imaginary scar. The study demonstrates how our self-perceptions can strongly influence our interpretation of others' behavior, even when based on false information.  ↪ self-ratings were lower after the presentation of a disapproving significant other. Subliminal presentation : below threshold for conscious awareness ↪ In this study, participants were likely shown images of different people very briefly (milliseconds), too quickly for conscious recognition. This technique is used to study automatic, non-conscious processes in social cognition. Social Comparison Theory : Morse and Gergen, 1970 ↪ Assess our self worth by comparing ourselves to others Participants’ self esteem changes (feel better or worse about themselves) depending on who they interacted with i.e. compared themselves with ↪ Upward comparison - If other party looks clean, prim & proper : self report of lower self esteem Downward comparison - dirty : higher self esteem) Basking in reflected glory (BIRG) : Cialdini, 1976 ↪ To experience self gratification on the success of someone with whom one is associated  Sometimes we want our friends to do well - IV: school team either wins or loses big game - DV: school pride (multiple) - Result: Wear school clothes when your team wins ; “We” won, but “they” lost Sometimes it makes us feel bad when our friends do well (especially when what they excel at matters to us i.e. important to our self esteem) - Self-Evaluation Maintenance : Abe Tesser A person will try to maintain or increase their own self-evaluation We are so motivated to maintain a positive self evaluation in a domain relevant to our identity The motivation affects not just how we feel about ourselves but also how we act in the world How to understand when it will feel good or bad for another person to succeed 1) Strength social tie to the person (relevant to you or not) 2) Domain relevant or not relevant to your identity ↪ Taboo game : participants were told that results determine intelligence -> if all were told that it’s a game : clues given by friends are more helpful BUT if it was told that it was a diagnostic (determining one’s ability) : clues given by friends are much less helpful (results are important to one’s self-esteem, therefore they are less willing to share the clues with others) Intrinsic VS Extrinsic Motivation - Kids allowed to play with markers : Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett (1973) - IV: No reward / unexpected reward / expected reward for playing with markers (i.e. told that the longer the children plays, the more likely they are to get an award) - DV: How long do they keep playing with markers?  ↪ Result: 1) Played longer with no award > expected award 2) Overjustification Effect - Extrinsic reward undermines intrinsic interest - Extrinsic rewards decrease intrinsic motivation (Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973) - ↪ May not decrease when (i) unexpected reward (ii) rewards are not controlling but competence-signalling i.e. performance-contigent > task-contigent (iii) initial intrinsic motivation is already low - External surveillance decrease intrinsic motivation (Dienstbier, 1975) - Extrinsic deadlines decrease intrinsic motivation (Amabile, DeJong, & Lepper, 1976) - External motivators (shame) are less effective than internal motivators (guilt) at affecting behaviour change (Dienstbier, 1975) - Key: how the agent perceives the reward and whether it supports/undermines feelings of competence and autonomy Deci, 1976 - Controlling aspect of reward (reward for participation, physical reward) i.e. task contigent reward decreases intrinsic motivation - Competence-signalling aspect of reward (reward for performance, praise) i.e. performance contigent reward increases intrinsic motivation Self-Perception Theory : Bern, 1967 - "Individuals come to know their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partly by inferring them from their own overt behaviour and the circumstances in which it occurs. Thus, to the extent that internal cues are weak, the individual is functionally in the same position as an outside observer." - When our own thoughts/feelings are unclear or vague, we infer based on our own behaviour “The social world as a mirror” 1) Social presence increases self consciousness - The identity of the social presence matters  2) Social comparison affects mood for - Better (downward comparison & basking in reflected glory - Worse (upward comparison & self-evaluation maintenance) 3) External motives undermine internal motives Cognitive Dissonance Theory : Leon Festinger - People are driven to minimise inconsistency between their cognitions - Cognitions = representations in our minds of internal or external events - Values, attitudes, or perspectives regarding a person, item, brand, or group, … - Inconsistency between cognitions creates the internal state of cognitive dissonance, which operates like a drive - People are motivated to reduce cognitive dissonance - Dissonance can be reduced by altering one’s cognitions (values, attitudes, or perspectives) Useful Applications 1) Help people lose weight 2) Help elderly to increase exercise 3) Encourage college students to use condoms 4) Decrease anxiety in public speaking 5) Encourage COVID-19 safety behaviours including vaccinations Negative Applications 1) Propaganda and indoctrination 2) Promoting/sustaining behaviours that are not beneficial e.g. eating junk food, cigarettes, alcohol 3) Manipulation and abusing in relationships 4) Perpetuating discrimination 5) Scapegoating and blame shifting Some instances of when people are inconsistent : - When we believe one thing and do another - When we make choices knowing that there are reasons to have made a different choice - When we suffer to attain a mediocre goal - When we expect an event to occur and it does not Magnitude 1) Magnitude of tension state of dissonance increases with the size of discrepancy x importance ↪ What’s more important than self-esteem 2) Even in the face of inconsistency, the magnitude of dissonance decreases with consonant cognitions x importance ↪ Consonance : 2 or more cognitions (beliefs, attitudes, behaviours) that exist in tandem  ↪ Bigger denominator : bigger dissonance Bigger numerator : smaller dissonance -> makes you feel less overwhelmed Dissonance and The Seekers Summary : Festinger, Riecken & Schachter, 1956 - Dissonance was caused by the discrepancy between the belief and the disconfirmation - Dissonance is an uncomfortable drive state and must be reduced - The Seekers reduced their dissonance with a very important, consonant cognition: They had saved the world. By adding this cognition, they reduced their unpleasant drive state Cognitive Dissonance from Making a Difficult Choice - We face many hard choices e.g. Two modules at the same time, Commitment to relationship ↪ Making decisions involves inconsistent cognitions - The harder the choice is, the greater the dissonance will be (especially when all choices are equally appealing) Hypothetical hard choice - Problem with a hard choice Now every unwanted feature of the Porsche is discrepant from the choice to buy the Porsche Plus, every desired feature of the Chevrolet is discrepant from the choice to buy the Porsche - What’s a person to do? -> Enters cognitive dissonance 1) Change cognitions 2) Add cognitions 3) Change importance ↪ When you make a decision, you tend to view the preferred post-choice more positively by justifying -> reduce dissonance Saying What You Do Not Believe: Psychology of induced compliance - Thought experiment: You say something you do not believe Does it have an effect on your attitude? If so, what are the conditions that make it have more or less of an effect? Induced compliance : Festinger & Carlsmith (1959) - Student participants volunteered for a study in “measures of performance” - The experimental task was very boring - Some participants were asked to tell another participant that the task was fun, enjoyable and interesting Some students were paid $1 Some students were paid $20 - Other participants were not asked to talk to another participant - Later on, Ps were asked on how much they enjoyed the task Counter-attitudinal behaviour -> Internal justification - The fee for making the counter-attitudinal statement is a cognition consistent with making the statement - Presumably, $20 is a more important consonant cognition than $1 - Prediction: $1 condition should experience more dissonance and consequently change their attitude toward the task more than the $20 condition. Effort Justification: cognitive dissonance caused by suffering - Imagine that you had to endure a great amount of effort in order to join a group - Imagine that, after suffering the effort, you learn the group is not very good or enjoyable - Dissonance would exist between: I suffered to gain entry vs. The group is not good - Dissonance can be reduced by forming an attitude that the group was wonderful Week 4 : Emotions and Attribution Functions of Emotion (Susskind et al. 2008; Lee et al. 2014) ↪ Fear : bigger visual field (larger eyes) VS Disgust : smaller visual field (smaller eyes) ↪ Fear : larger nasal cavity VS Disgust : smaller nasal cavity - Fear expressions allow one to take in more visual information -> learning more - Fear Expressions are fast  - Fear expressions allow one to take in more air - Disgust expressions do the opposite : aversive emotion - Facial emotion displays are not random (not arbitrary -> survival functions) - Something deeper that ties an emotional expression to an emotion Universality of Emotions (Ekman, et al, 1969, 1971) ↪ across cultures and the whole world Participants - Papua New Guinean tribesmen (0 exposure to cities) - American undergraduates Situation given - E.g. “The person’s child died, and they felt sad” - Pick the expression (out of 3 possible) that matches the story - 3 expression options Results: - If guessing at chance: 33.3% - Tribesmen had accuracy rates of 80-90% when faces were from other culture (from same culture, it is 100%) - American undergraduates were similarly able to guess accurately when faces were from other culture Six basic emotions (Ekman, 1984) ↪ Shame/Guilt during a press conference Criticisms of the basic emotion theory : 1) There are more than 6 emotions 2) Not all emotion expressions are universal ↪ Prototypical emotions : not a one size fits all (varies across individuals, culture & social context) 3) Emotional expression does not always match emotional experience 4) Reading emotion expressions depend on context Cultural Specificity (Haidt & Keltner, 1999) ↪ Expression can be interpreted/classified differently depending on culture e.g. East VS West Social Functions of Emotion (Kraut & Johnston, 1979) ↪ Whether bowling players smile happily (emotion) after a bad/good game depends on the social/non-social context i.e. when there’s people around VS alone Context Dependence (Aviezer, Trope, Todorov, 2012) ↪ Guess if the tennis player won/lost based on the cut-out of the player’s face & the body without the face ↪ Just by looking at only facial expressions (without the bodily cues) : people are unable to inaccurately classify the emotions VS with bodily cues: they are able to accurately guess “What is Emotion?” William James (1884) - Argues that perception -> physiological arousal -> emotion (James/Lange Theory) - Conversely, another hypothesis : perception -> emotion -> physiological arousal (Central Theory Cannon-Bard) Central Theory : The key point is that physiological arousal and emotional experience are triggered independently and in parallel, rather than one causing the other. The theory emphasizes that both processes are initiated by the same stimulus and occur close enough in time to be perceived as simultaneous. Schachter-Singer theory : Two-Factor Theory of Emotion (Schachter & Singer, 1962) Cognitive Appraisal : interpretation of the emotion you are experiencing ↪ The idea that emotional experience is the result of a two-step self-perception process in which people first experience physiological arousal and then seek an appropriate explanation for it Emotion Misattribution (Dutton & Aron, 1974) - Attractive female experimenter administers test at end of scary bridge or safe bridge to male participants - Gives phone number to participants - Results After scary bridge: 50% call  After safe bridge: 13% call No differences in calling for male experimenter ↪ People interpret their physiological arousals depending on the situation (falling in love/feeling attracted VS danger) What are emotions? Facial Displays - People display and recognize emotions similarly and dissimilarly across cultures Functional Expressions: - Biological functions e.g. neurobiological feedback of feelings of fear VS disgust - Social functions e.g. bowling experiment Attributions of emotion - A result of certain physiological changes …in a certain context e.g. Two factor theory Attribution ↪ How the awardees perceive/interpret the meaning of the reward Michotte (1946): The Perception of Causality Launching or Apparent Causation Heider & Simmel (1944) - The study of intention perception (i.e., the ability to make good guesses about what others are trying to do just by observing their behavior). Mental states= Hidden causes of behavior  - Personalities, Goals, Desires, Beliefs, Emotions, Sensations Origins of goal attribution a) Gergely et al 2006 Gergely et al., 1995; Csibra et al., 1999 ↪ Ball moves in a straight trajectory VS hops without the block in the middle ↪ Surprised that the ball hops even without the block in the middle - Results 12MO babies are surprised by the hop (look longer when the ball hops), even though they have seen a hop many times - Babies have not habituated to the physical motion of the ball, but instead, the baby has habituated to the goal state of the ball -> ‘Ball’s goal=going left’ - When ball’s action is not in concordance with the goal state, they get surprised b) Woodward, 1998 ↪ Same path & new goal (longer eye fixation) > New path & same goal ↪ Goal is inconsistent with what they thought the path that leads to the goal will be ↪ Impersonal causation : external situational factors ↪ Bad temper : internal attributes VS Situational : external attribution Covariation Model (Kelley, 1967)  - Distinctiveness : How the actor behave towards different stimuli - Consistency : How the actor behave towards the same stimuli over time - Consensus : How others behave towards the same stimuli Criticisms of Covariation Model 1) Assumes many observations of the behaviour across a variety of situations - We do not have all the information needed 2) Normative (what people should be doing), not descriptive (what people actually do) - What do people actually do then? In fact, we are fundamentally biased in whether they apply personal or situation causation to a given behaviour Fundamental Attribution Error a) Jones & Harris, 1967 - Participants read essay written by another student - IV1: Essay is either pro or anti Castro - IV2: Essay topic was freely chosen or forced - DV: How Pro-Castro is the essay writer?  ↪ Result: People ignore the situation (chosen or forced) and over-apply personal causation (anti or pro sentiment) b) Ross, 1977 - The tendency to overestimate the importance of internal factors in explaining others’ behaviour and underestimate the importance of situational factors Focuses on attributions for others only c) Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988 - Participants watch silent video of woman who squirms and fidgets while talking - IV1: Talk topic (situation) is said to be bland or anxiety producing (sexual fantasies) - IV2: Some participants are made "cognitively busy" by rehearsing her talk topics out loud; other participants are not i.e. attention division - DV: Participants rate her trait nervousness - Result : More likely to account her trait nervousness as higher when they are engaged in another cognitively demanding task -> high cognitive load to suppress accounting someone’s behaviour as intrinsic and consider external situational factors i.e. presenting on an anxiety-inducing topic which causes performer to be nervous ↪ Divided attention : more likely to attribute to internal factors (they cannot pay attention to the root cause of the presenter’s anxiety) Actor-Observer Bias (Jones & Nisbett, 1972) - Tendency to engage in the fundamental attribution error (FAE) more when interpreting other people’s behaviour, and less when interpreting your own behaviour - Others : more likely to attribute to internal factors VS Yourself : more likely to attribute to external situational factors (Compares self VS others) Effect of Authority on Obedience (Stanley Milgram) : relates to FAE/Actor-Observer Bias  - Milgram Experiment : Revealed people's willingness to obey authority figures even when causing harm to others Self-Serving Attribution - Tendency to take credit for our success (internal attributions) but to blame the situation (external attribution) for our failures Textbook Chapter 4 - Social perception : The study of how we form impressions of and make inferences about other people LO 4.1 Explain how people use nonverbal cues to understand others. - Nonverbal Communication : The way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words, including via facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position, movement, touch, and gaze - What & How it was said - 6 primary emotions : Anger, Fear, Disgust, Haoouness, Surprise, Sadness ↪ Universal - - Darwin’s interest in evolution led him to believe that nonverbal forms of communication were species specific and not culture specific - Encode = express, Decode = interpret meaningk - Criticism of the universality of emotions : Cross-cultural differences i) Western participants show more rigid boundaries VS Asian participants show overlap in their categories ii) Universality when asking participants from across cultures to match emotional labels to faces but found evidence of cross-cultural differences when allowing people to freely sort faces into their own grouping system iii) Individuals are better at decoding facial expressions from other members of their own ethnic group than they are for people of other groups iv) Other emotions that are universal e.g. pride VS shame : individualised cultures tend to hide than display - Affect blends : Facial expressions in which one part of the face registers one emotion while another part of the face registers a different emotion e.g. disgusted and anger ↪ Complication :  a) Aspects of the same facial expression can have different implications based on context and other cues e.g. approach-oriented emotion like anger VS avoidance-oriented emotion like dear b) Culture dependent - Display rules : Culturally determined rules about which nonverbal behaviors are appropriate to display ↪ E.g. Japan culture : hide negative facial emotions , Western culture : males are discouraged to show emotional displays like grief and crying while females are allowed ↪ Personal space ↪ Emblems : Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture, usually having direct verbal translations, such as the OK sign LO 4.2 Analyze how first impressions form quickly and persist. - We form initial impressions of others based solely on their facial appearance in less than 100 milliseconds - Signs of this tendency to consistently infer character from faces when we’re as young as 3 years old - Participants’ first-impression ratings of politicians correlated with actual election results: The more powerful the candidates looked, the more likely they were to have won their election; the warmer they looked, the less likely they were to have won - Thin-Slicing : Drawing meaningful conclusions about another person’s personality or skills based on an extremely brief sample of behavior - Primacy effect : What we learn first about another person colors how we see the information we learn next - Schemas regarding which traits tend to appear together in clusters - Belief Perseverance : The tendency to stick with an initial judgment even in the face of new information that should prompt us to reconsider - Impression management : conscious and unconscious efforts to control how people see you Take place in real life and online Too much impression management can seem disingenuous and rub people the wrong way LO 4.3 Explain how we determine why other people do what they do - Attribution theory : the study of how we infer the causes of other people’s behaviour ↪ Fritz Heider - the father of attribution theory Internal attribution : deciding that the cause of the person’s behavior was something about themself—one’s disposition, personality, attitudes, or character—an explanation that assigns the causes of the person’s behavior internally External attribution : deciding that something in the situation, not in the person’s personality or attitudes, caused the person’s behavior - The Covariation Model (Kelley) ↪ When we are in the process of forming an attribution, we gather information, or data. The data we use, according to Kelley, are about how a person’s behavior “covaries,” or changes, across time and place and depending on the target of the behavior. a) Consensus : how other people behave toward the same stimulus i.e. the key person b) Distinctiveness : how a person responds to other stimuli i.e. everything other than the key person c) Consistency : the frequency with which the observed behaviour between the same person and the same stimulus occurs across time and circumstances - Criticisms: People don’t use consensus information as much as Kelley’s theory predicted; they rely more on consistency and distinctiveness when forming attributions People don’t always have the relevant information they need on all three of Kelley’s dimensions. - Fundamental Attribution Error : The tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people’s behaviour results from internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors - - Perceptual Salience : The seeming importance of information that is the focus of people’s attention Our focus of attention is usually on the person, not on the surrounding situation ↪ Tend to assume that they alone cause their behaviour - Two-Step Attribution Process : Analysing another person’s behaviour first by making an automatic internal attribution and only then thinking about possible situational reasons for the behaviour First step (making the internal attribution) occurs quickly and spontaneously, whereas the second step (adjusting for the situation) requires more effort and conscious attention i.e. cognitively demanding When we are distracted or preoccupied i.e. high cognitive load, we often skip the second step altogether i.e. less cognitive ability remaining, making an internal attribution in the extreme  - Self-Serving Attributions : Explanations for one’s successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one’s failures that blame external, situational factors Maintain their self-esteem whenever possible, even if that means distorting reality by changing a thought or belief Belief in a Just World : A defensive attribution wherein people assume that bad things happen to bad people and that good things happen to good people ↪ Allows us to avoid thoughts about our own mortality ↪ People might try to make themselves feel better about a disturbing attack by placing some of the blame onto the victim ↪In cultures with extremes of wealth and poverty, just-world attributions are more common than in cultures where wealth is more evenly distributed - Bias Blind Spot : The tendency to think that other people are more susceptible to attributional biases in their thinking than we are LO 4.4 Describe how culture influences our processes of social perception and attribution - Western cultures : individual autonomy VS East Asian cultures : group autonomy - Individualists : analytic thinking style & prefer dispositional attributes i.e. focusing on the properties of objects (or people) while paying much less attention, if any, to the context or situation that surrounds that object - Collectivists : holistic thinking style & prefer situational attributions i.e. people focus on the “whole picture”—that is, the object (or person) and the context that surrounds that object as well as the relationships that exist between them ↪ differ in the degrees of making dispositional/situational attributions - Social neuroscience American participants showed greater activation in higher-order cortical regions (frontal and parietal areas) when told to pay attention to the context, while East  Asian participants showed greater activity in the same brain regions when told to ignore context Participants showed significantly more brain activity when they had to follow the instructions that were the opposite of their usual cultural thinking style, despite equally accurate answers Pattern of ERPs : European American participants paid more attention to the targets, while the East Asian American participants paid more attention to the context surrounding the targets - Higher self serving bias in participants from Western cultures In many traditional Asian cultures, the values of modesty and harmony with others are highly valued & often attribute failure to internal causes, not to external ones (the opposite is true for Western cultures) Members of collectivist cultures are more sensitive to situational causes of behavior as long as situational variables are salient. Textbook Chapter 5 LO 5.1 Describe the self-concept and how it develops. - Mirror self-recognition Test Members of the great ape family, such as chimpanzees and orangutans, immediately touched the area of their heads marked with the red spot, whereas lesser apes, such as gibbons, did not ↪ Have a rudimentary sense of self Human self-recognition develops at around 18 to 24 months of age ↪ As we grow older, this rudimentary sense of self develops into a full-blown self-concept - Self concept : defined as the overall set of beliefs that people have about their personal attributes Typically, a child’s self-concept is concrete, with references to clear-cut, easily observable characteristics like age, sex, neighbourhood, and hobbies. As we mature, we place less emphasis on physical characteristics and more on psychological states (our thoughts and feelings) and on considerations of how other people judge us Morality is viewed as central to the self-concept, more so than cognitive processes or desires  - - Western cultures : Independent view of the self, which is a way of defining oneself in terms of one’s own internal thoughts, feelings, and actions and not in terms of the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others - Asian and other non-Western cultures : interdependent view of the self, which is a way of defining oneself in terms of one’s relationships to other people and recognizing that one’s behavior is often determined by the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others - 4 main functions of the self : 1) Self-knowledge : the way we understand who we are and formulate and organize this information 2) Self-control : the way we make plans and execute decisions, such as your decision to read this book right now instead of going out for ice cream 3) Impression management is the way we present ourselves to other people and get them to see us the way we want to be seen 4) Self-esteem : the way in which we try to maintain positive views of ourselves LO 5.2 Explain how people use introspection, observations of their own behavior, and other people to know themselves. - Introspection : The process whereby people look inward and examine their own thoughts, feelings, and motives - Self-Awareness Theory : The idea that when people focus their attention on themselves, they evaluate and compare their behaviour to their internal standards and values - Causal Theories : Theories about the causes of one’s own feelings and behaviors; often we learn such theories from our culture (e.g., “absence makes the heart grow fonder”) - Self-Perception Theory : The theory that when our attitudes and feelings are uncertain or ambiguous, we infer these states by observing our behavior and the situation in which it occurs - Schachter’s Two-Factor Theory of Emotion : The idea that emotional experience is the result of a two-step self-perception process in which people first experience physiological arousal and then seek an appropriate explanation for it ↪ People’s emotions are somewhat arbitrary, depending on what the most plausible explanation for their arousal happens to be. Schachter and Singer (1962) a) Could prevent people from becoming angry by providing a nonemotional explanation for why they felt aroused b) Could make participants experience a very different emotion by changing the most plausible explanation for their arousal. - Misattribution of Arousal : The process whereby people make mistaken inferences about what is causing them to feel the way they do - Intrinsic Motivation : The desire to engage in an activity because we enjoy it or find it interesting, not because of external rewards or pressures - Extrinsic Motivation : The desire to engage in an activity because of external rewards or pressures, not because we enjoy the task or find it interesting - Overjustification Effect : The tendency for people to view their behavior as caused by compelling extrinsic reasons, making them underestimate the extent to which it was caused by intrinsic reasons - Task-Contingent Rewards : Rewards that are given for performing a task, regardless of how well the task is done - Performance-Contingent Rewards : Rewards that are based on how well we perform a task Better to give a performance-contingent reward (BUT used with care else it backfires) than a task-contingent reward - Fixed mindset : idea that we have a set amount of an ability that cannot change ↪ More likely to give up after setbacks and are less likely to work on and hone their skills; after all, if they fail, it must be a sign that they simply don’t have what it takes. - Growth mindset : the belief that achievement is the result of hard work, trying new strategies, and seeking input from others. ↪ View setbacks as opportunities to improve through hard work - Social Comparison Theory : The idea that we learn about our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to other people Upward Social Comparison : Comparing ourselves to people who are better than we are with regard to a particular trait or ability -> what we can strive toward though it makes us feel inferior Downward Social Comparison : Comparing ourselves to people who are worse than we are with regard to a particular trait or ability -> feel better Compare our current performance with our own past performance  Want an accurate assessment of our abilities and opinions : compare to people who are similar to us - Social Tuning : The process whereby people adopt another person’s attitudes (even when we meet someone for the first time) LO 5.3 Compare when people are likely to succeed at self-control and when they are likely to fail. - Self-Control : The ability to subdue immediate desires to achieve long-term goals - Implementation Intentions : People’s specific plans about where, when, and how they will fulfill a goal and avoid temptations - Make sure that you are well-rested when trying to exert self-control Self-control requires energy, and spending this energy on one task, such as avoiding the ice cream in the freezer, limits the amount of energy you have to exert self-control on something else, such as deciding to study instead of going to a party Matters how much people believe that willpower is a limited resource that is easily depleted ↪ People who believe that willpower is an unlimited resource are better able to keep going and avoid being depleted by a difficult task, as long as the task is not too demanding LO 5.4 Describe how people portray themselves so that others will see them as they want to be seen. - Impression Management : The attempt by people to get others to see them as they want to be seen  - Ingratiation : The process whereby people flatter, praise, and generally try to make themselves likable to another person, often of higher status - Self-Handicapping : The strategy whereby people create obstacles and excuses for themselves so that if they do poorly on a task, they can avoid blaming themselves Behavioral self-handicapping : people act in ways that reduce the likelihood that they will succeed on a task so that if they fail, they can blame it on the obstacles they created rather than on their lack of ability Reported self-handicapping : Rather than creating obstacles to success, people devise ready-made excuses in case they fail - “Saving face,” or avoiding public embarrassment, is extremely important in Asian cultures Although such impression management strategies might seem extreme to Western readers, the desire to manage public impressions is just as strong in the West Textbook Chapter 6 LO 6.1 Explain what cognitive dissonance is and how people avoid dissonance to maintain a positive self-image. - Cognitive Dissonance : The discomfort that is caused when two cognitions conflict, or when our behavior conflicts with our attitudes ↪ Leon Festiger - We reduce dissonance to make ourselves better in 3 ways : a) By changing our behavior to bring it in line with the dissonant cognition b) By attempting to justify our behavior through changing one of the dissonant cognitions c) By attempting to justify our behavior by adding new cognitions. - Explains why so much of human thinking is rationalising - Postdecision Dissonance : Dissonance aroused after making a decision, typically reduced by enhancing the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and devaluating the rejected alternatives (best way to increase satisfaction) - Permanence of decision : makes one happier BUT increase prepurchase anxiety - Creating the illusion of irrevocability : Lowballing : An unscrupulous strategy whereby a salesperson induces a customer to agree to purchase a product at a low cost, subsequently claims it was an error, and then raises the price; frequently, the customer will agree to make the purchase at the inflated price Increasing probability of buying at new price : a) Commitment of sorts e.g. signing of contract b) Triggering of anticipation of exciting event c) Price is probably only slightly higher than price of another dealership (though substantially higher than initial quoted) - Justification of Effort : The tendency for individuals to increase their liking for something they have worked hard to attain  When individuals make an important decision and invest heavily in that decision (in terms of time, effort, sacrifice, and commitment), the result is a strong need to justify those actions and that investment. The more they give up to be a part of the group and the harder they work for the group, the greater will be the need to convince themselves that their views are correct - Counterattitudinal Behavior : Acting in a way that runs counter to one’s private belief or attitude ↪ Saying is believing : When we act in a way (lie that does not align with our beliefs or attitude) with little external justification (without being motivated by something outside of ourselves), what we believe begins to conform more and more to the lie we told External Justification : A reason or an explanation for dissonant personal behaviour that resides outside the individual (e.g., to receive a large reward or avoid a severe punishment) Internal Justification : The reduction of dissonance by changing something about oneself (e.g., one’s attitude or behavior)  ↪ Leon Festinger and J. Merrill Carlsmith (1959) Ben Franklin Effect : More likely to like a person after doing a favour for them (in particular if we don’t like the person) ↪ Acting in a way (helping someone) that is contrary to your beliefs (you don’t like the person you are helping) => change your cognition (you like them) Justifying cruelty : Dehumanising enemies to reduce dissonance (e.g. “They deserve it”) ↪ Military personnel are more likely to demean civilian victims (because these individuals can’t retaliate) than military victims Justifying our own immoral acts : Justify the action by finding a way to minimize its negative aspects => change in your system of values e.g. (convincing yourself that cheating is a victimless crime , everyone does it OR cheaters should be severely punished) - Avoiding Temptations Insufficient Punishment : The dissonance aroused when individuals lack sufficient external justification for having resisted a desired activity or object, usually resulting in individuals devaluing the forbidden activity or object ↪ A sizable reward or a severe punishment provides strong external justification for an action -> They encourage compliance but prevent real attitude change. ↪ The smaller the reward or punishment that will lead to momentary compliance, the greater will be the eventual change in attitude and therefore the more permanent the effect (Without much external justification, they need an internal justification to reduce dissonance) - Hypocrisy Induction : The arousal of dissonance by having individuals make statements that run counter to their behaviors and then reminding them of the inconsistency between what they advocated and their behavior ↪ Making people aware of the dissonance between what they are doing and what they are preaching to others ↪ To reduce dissonance and maintain self-esteem, people will change their behaviour by practising what they are preaching Culture - “Collectivist” societies, where the needs of the group matter more than the needs of a particular person (as in “individualist” societies), dissonance-reducing behavior might be less prevalent, at least on the surface  ↪ More likely to find behavior aimed at maintaining group harmony and less likely to see people justifying their own personal mis behavior but more likely to see people experiencing dissonance when their behavior shames or disappoints others. LO 6.2 Describe recent advances and extensions of cognitive dissonance theory. - Self-Affirmation Theory : The idea that people can reduce threats to their self-esteem by affirming themselves in areas unrelated to the source of the threat ↪ E.g. “Yes, it’s true that I smoke, but I am a great cook” - Self-Evaluation Maintenance Theory : The idea that people experience dissonance when someone close to us outperforms us in an area that is central to our self-esteem. This dissonance can be reduced by A) Becoming less close to the person B) Changing one’s performance relative to the other person’s i.e. changing our behaviour so that we now outperform them by sabotaging them C) Change how relevant the task is to our self-esteem i.e. deciding that the area is not that important to us after all LO 6.3 Summarize ways to overcome dissonance and the pros and cons of having high self-esteem. - Having high self-esteem is generally a good thing to the extent that it makes people optimistic about their futures and work harder for what they want in life - Avoid low self-esteem : a very unpleasant state that is associated with depression and the feelings that we are ineffective and not in control of our lives - Narcissism : The combination of excessive self love and a lack of empathy toward others Narcissists do less well academically than others, are less successful in business, are more violent and aggressive, and are disliked by others, especially once people get to know them (Bushman & Baumeister, 2002; Twenge &  Campbell, 2009). Further, narcissists are poor at looking in the mirror and seeing themselves as they really are Increasing trend in narcissism among college students born after 1980 due to increased self-focus ↪ Those assigned to the “spend it on others” condition were happier than those asked to spend the money on themselves. A little less self-focus and a little more concern with others can actually make us happier. - Terror Management Theory : The theory that holds that self- esteem serves as a buffer, protecting people from terrifying thoughts about their own mortality (death) Week 5 : Theory of Mind Definition of TOM : understanding that other people's thoughts and feelings may be different from your own Questions: 1) How do we know if people have a theory of mind? 2) When engaging in this process, we are truly reasoning about people’s mental states (thinking about what others are thinking) - not just applying rules - Infant experiment: “People must have mental representations; even babies take mental models inside someone’s head and can predict others’ behavior” - We don’t need to predict that behavior using mental models - Predictions based on the rule - I don't have to know anything about what their mental experiences – nor do i have to represent their goal state. - If waterfalls can engage in complicated motions to get around their barriers and follow the gravitational pull appropriately, why not humans? - Is it an overinterpretation to say that when a child thinks a ball will move over a barrier the child thinks the ball has a goal - Do we need to posit mental states into humans? False Belief : assess whether a person can understand that others can hold beliefs about the world that are different from their own, especially when those beliefs are false - False Belief Task e.g. Sally-Anne Task : One of the many measures to assess TOM ↪ Percentage of correct answers increases with age ↪ As young as 15 months old ↪ Once the task is non-verbal, their performance in the TOM task improves Autism : a spectrum of disorders varying in degree of severity, with Asperger’s syndrome at the mild end - High heritability, about 3:1 male - Disruption in the system responsible for “Theory of Mind” Sally-Anne False Belief Task (Happe, 1995; Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985) ↪ Those with autism can eventually reach the ability of neurotypical people as they grow older Simulation Theory : Use own thoughts, feelings, and experiences to understand others ↪Simulating their perspectives using our own mind as a model Your actions are my actions - Biased to think that others engage in the same behaviour as us - Activation of mirror neurons - - After first verifying our paradigm and measure with a group of adult participants, we found that when an agent had a false belief that a ball was in the box, motor activity indicated that infants predicted she would reach for the box, but when the agent had a false belief that a ball was not in the box, infants did not predict that she would act. In both cases, infants based their predictions on what the agent, rather than the infant, believed to be the case, suggesting that by 6months of age, infants can exploit their sensitivity to other minds for action prediction. - NOT mutually exclusive alternative to representational ToM (another way of social inference)  ↪ Limitation : they do not have the knowledge (do not know what is your intention) and experience (reaching out and grabbing objects) ↪ Once you switch to a habituation and fixation task i.e.for those babies with no experience, you can better assess their TOM My thoughts are your thoughts - False consensus effect : We assume other people feel or think similarly to how we think or feel (Ross, 1977) ↪ In inferring other people’s thoughts, we project own own upon them ↪ Falsely believe that others share the same beliefs as you - Spotlight effect : Tendency to “overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noted by others” (Gilovich, et al, 2000) - Evidence of simulating emotion, pain, motor, perspective - We are egocentric in our inferences about others Exam Review (Didn’t cover Representational theory -> not tested in mid-term) Week 8 : Textbook Chapter 3 Textbook Chapter 7 Week 9 : Week 10 : Week 12 : Week 13 : Exam Review