summery psychology for the social sciences

8/2/2019 Summery Psychology for the Social Sciences

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Summery Psychology for the Social Sciences

1. Introduction, Methods, and Paradigms Chapter 1 & 2

- Social psychology = the study of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors related to social situations. Thesesituations can be real or imagined.

- Comparing social psychology to other social research: Social psychology: focuses on how social situations can influence the thoughts, feelings,

and behaviors of an individual.

Personality psychology: focuses on how differences between individuals influencethoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Sociology: focuses on behavior of communities and groups, not individuals. - Different types of factors that influence thoughts, feelings, and behavior:

Proximal: factors in the immediate situation (current feelings and thoughts). Distal: factors that are not immediately present (evolutionary universals).

- Proximal influences : Power of the situation: situational factors often determine behavior, despite individual

differences(for example, Nazi Germany or the Milgram experiment).

Classic example of the power of the situation: Milgrams study of obedience: over 60percent of average Americans followed orders from an authority figure even though

those orders could have harmed another person. Participants did not intend to harm

another person, yet behaved in accord with the situation.

- Often the influences of situational factors arent fully recognized: Channel factors = small situational factors can have large influences on behavior by

guiding behavior in a particular direction.

Fundamental attribution error = tendency to overestimate the role of personality and tounderestimate the role of situations when explaining other peoples behavior.

- The role of construal = interpretations about the situation will determine thoughts and feelings.Interpretation is an active process, interpretations are subjective and may misrepresent the truth.

Construals can govern behavior (how we interpret a situation will influence how we act in that

situation).

- Schemas = general knowledge about the physical and social world. This includes expectations abouthow to behave in different situations. Schemas influence behavior and judgment (these influences

construals).

- Stereotypes = schemas about specific social groups. This can influence interaction with different socialgroups. Stereotypes can make social interactions more efficient (because people believe they know

what to expect), or they may be applied incorrectly (applied to the wrong individuals).

- Automatic versus controlled processing: Automatic: thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that occur automatically and without our

awareness (automatic, involuntary, and unconscious, often based on emotional

responses).

Muscular feedback: more positive judgments are made if pulling the arm toward theself and more negative judgments if pushing the arm away.

(For example, people walk more slowly if mentally primed with thoughts of the

elderly).

Controlled: thoughts, feelings, and behavior that occur more deliberate (conscious,systematic, and deliberate, can override automatic responses).

- Evolutionary theory may explain many human behavior (why they are apparently universal and occurin all human cultures). Natural selection shapes plants and animals to have traits that enhance the


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- Experimental research = research that involves assigning participants to different situations orconditions. Experiments allow for causal inferences about how different conditions influence behavior.

- Experimental methods: Independent variable = the variable that is manipulated by the researcher. This variable

is hypothesized to cause changes in the dependent variable.

Dependent variable = the variable that is measured (often a change in behavior, feelings,or evaluation).

Control condition = a condition identical to the experimental condition, but absent fromthe independent variable.

Random assignment = ensures that individual differences are evenly distributed acrossconditions.

- Experimental validity = experiments can determine causation because variables are controlled, butmanipulating the situation may limit the validity of results.

External validity = experimental results can generalize to real life situations because theexperimental set-up resembled a real-life situation.

Internal validity = confidence that the experimental results were being caused by themanipulated variables.

- Reliability = how consistently a test will measure the variable of interest (if you took the same testtwice, would it give the same score?).

- Measurement validity = the degree that a test accurately measures the variable of interest.- Statistical significance = measure of the probability that a given result could have occurred by chance.

Results that have a very low probability of occurring by change are considered statistically significant.

- Basic research = concerned with trying to gain knowledge in its own right. The aim is to gain greaterunderstanding of phenomenon (for example, how social information influences behavior).

- Applied research = concerned with using current understanding of a phenomenon in order to solve areal-world problem (for example, helping design advertising campaigns and behavioural

interventions).

2. Understanding the self and others Chapter 3

- Five-factor model of personality = five traits that are basic building blocks of personality:openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. These traits

are heritable and are linked to specific biological processes. This model can be used for both

individualists and collectivists:

Individualists are more likely to view personality traits as stable, fixed, and unchangeable. Collectivists are more likely to view personality traits as able to change, through effort

and changing circumstances.

- Aspects of the self may change depending on the situation social context: the sense of self mayshift dramatically depending on whom we are interacting with.

- Better-than-average effect = most Westerners tend to have a positive view of the self. They tend torate the self as better than average on most traits.

- Illusion about the self: Positive illusions and mental health: most people assume that proper mental health is

marked by realistic views of the world, but research suggest that most well-adjusted

people may have slightly unrealistic views about themselves.

Benefits of positive illusions: elevate positive mood and reduce negative mood, fostersocial bonds by making people more outgoing, promote pursuit of and persistence at

goals.

Costs of positive illusions: may be detrimental if overestimation of abilities leads to poorperformance.


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- Common positive illusions: Unrealistic positive view of the self: believe that positive traits are more true of the self

than negative traits.

Exaggerated perception of control: believe we have more control over events than wedo.

Unrealistic optimism: believe positive events are more likely to happen to oneself thanto other people.

- Positive illusions about the self are more common in individualistic cultures. Members of collectivisticcultures are less likely to rate themselves as better than average, and are less likely to be

unrealistically optimistic.

- Individualistic cultures place greater value on positive views of the self than collectivistic cultures(promote feelings that the self is unique, independent, and good).

- Self-esteem = overall positive or negative evaluation we have of ourselves. Trait self-esteem: enduring level of regard we have for ourselves, fairly stable across

time.

State self-esteem: dynamic and changeable feelings about the self, felt at differentmoments in time.

Motivates for self-esteem: maintain positive self-esteem, by reflection (associating ourselves with the

accomplishments of others) and by social comparison (choose to compare ourselves with others in

ways that favour ourselves).

- Members of individualistic cultures tend to report higher levels of self-esteem than members ofcollectivistic cultures.

- Members of collectivistic cultures place more value on self-improvement (more emphasis on feelinggood about ones contribution to collective goals).

- Contact with other cultures can influence views of the self (for example, Asians with greater contactwith Western cultures report higher levels of self-esteem than those with less contact).

- Dangers of high self-esteem: People with high self-esteem may be more sensitive to threats, insults, and challenges. Inflated self-esteem can be counterproductive (for example, many murderers, rapists,

and violent gang members have very high self-esteems).

- Attribution theory = general term for theories about how people explain the causes of events theyobserve.

- Causal attribution= explanation for the cause of your or another persons behavior.Importance: the type attribution made will influence how you respond to the situation (for example, if

your friend cancels plant to get together with you, thinking your friend must not be feeling well feels

better than thinking your friend no longer likes you).

Internal attribution = behavior is explained by aspects of the person. External attribution = behavior is explained by aspects of the situation.

- Reasons for the fundamental attribution error: Perception salience: often attribute things to what appears to be the most obvious cause

(occur because people are often more salient than the surrounding context).

Motivation to believe in a just world: motivated to believe that people get what theydeserve in life.

Automatic and controlled cognitive processing: dispositional attributions are often madeautomatically, situational attributions require more cognitive thought after weighing

information about the context.

- Actor-observer difference: attribution may differ between the person engaging in a behavior and aperson observing the behavior. The actor is disposed to explain behavior as due to the situation, andthe observer is disposed to explain behavior as due to dispositional qualities of the actor (for example,


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when choosing a major, students focused on aspects of the major for their own choice, but on

personality traits for their friends choice).

- Causes of actor-observer differences: Perceptual salience: as actors, the situation is salient; as observes, the person is salient. May ignore the influence of dispositions when explaining our own behavior. Lack of information about the intentions and past behaviors of the actor.

- Collectivistic cultures may be more attuned to contextual factors: Emotional context: when judging the facial expression of an individual, collectivists were

more influenced by facial expression of other people in the scene.

Nonsocial context: when describing an animated underwater scene, individualists weremore attuned to the focal objects while collectivists described the scene as a whole.

Rod and Frame test: individualists perform better at making absolute judgments, butcollectivists perform better at making relative judgments (require paying attention to the

length of a line in context with the frame that surrounds is).

- The fundamental attribution error (overestimate role of personality and underestimate role ofsituation) may be less prevalent in collectivistic cultures.

- Differences in attribution are made even for non-human targets (in one study, participants wereshown an animation of a single fish swimming away from a larger group of fish: American participants

were more likely to attribute the behavior to individual choices of the fish, and Chinese participants, to

the action of the group).

- There are also differences between some American subcultures.- For the people who are connected to both independent and interdependent cultures, attribution

styles may change depending on the cultural context. For example, Hong Kong, which is heavily

influences by China and Western countries.

- There are also differences in desire for self-improvement: when given a chance to repeat a task thatthey had done either well or poorly, Canadian students chose the task they had done well, but

Japanese students chose the task they had done poorly.

3. Heuristics and biases in judgement Chapter 4 & 5

- Research on social judgement examines how people make decisions, interpret past events,understand current events, and make predictions for future events. The social judgements made will

ultimately influence behavior. Often social judgements are inaccurate. These mistakes can produce

consequences that may be harmless or dire.

- Firsthand information = information based on personal experience or observation. Biases in firsthand information:

Personal experiences may be unrepresentative. Pluralistic ignorance: individual motivations not to deviate from group norms can create

misperceptions about these norms, misperception of a group norm when people act at

odds with their true preferences because they fear social consequences. For example,

when a teacher is talking about a difficult topic in class, no one ask questions, because

everyone else is pretending they understand.

Memory biases: memories may be reconstructed: we may remember events as webelieve they should have been (expectations of what should have happened influence

memories of what did happened). Memory is not a passive recorder, memories are

actively constructed and are biased by inference and expectation.

Flashbulb memories = very vivid memories of important events showfrequent errors.

- Secondhand information = information that comes from other sources, like gossip, news accounts,books, magazines, the internet, etc.


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- Confirmation bias = the tendency to test an idea by searching for evidence that would support it. Canlead to false beliefs, because people may fail to attend to disconfirming information. Confirmatory

information is sought because people want to maintain a certain belief.

- Effects of prior knowledge: Bottom-up = data-driven information processing: judgements are made by taking

information piece by piece. Top-down = information processing guided by prior knowledge: information is filtered

and interpreted by expectations.

Knowledge structures= coherent clusters of information organized and stored togethermentally.

Schema = a knowledge structure consisting of any organized body of stored information schemas guide attention attention is selectivemay pay attention only to things

we expect to see.

- Dual modes of information processing: Intuitive: rapid responses based on associations that come automatically to mind.

Intuitive information processing can be done parallel (many things can be intuitively

processed at the same time).

Rational: slower responses based on controlled, rule-based reasoning. Rationalinformation processing must be done serially (analysed one at a time).

- Intuitive and rational judgements may agree or disagree. Quick intuitive judgements may feel accurateenough that further rational information processing is avoided.

- Heuristic = intuitive mental operations that allow us to make decisions quickly and efficiently.- Availability heuristic: heuristics are used to judge the frequency or probability of events, judgments

based on how easily something comes to mind. For example, if someone asks if Kansas or Nebraska

has more tornadoes, many people would intuitively say Kansas, because they think of the example

from the Wizard of Oz, but the two states have about the same number of tornadoes.

- Biased risk assessments (of availability heuristic): you may overestimate the frequency of dramaticevents

- Representativeness heuristic: judgments based on how similar something is to a prototypicalexample. Errors when failing to attend to base-rate information (= information about the relatively

frequency of events). Such judgments may ignore other important sources of informationTom

W. study: base-rate neglect occurs when judging a likely choice of profession from individual

personality traits (this research was about the perceived similarity between the description of Tom W.

and the prototypical study in that field).

Representativeness heuristics affect judgments of cause and effect. For example, you are what you

eat: study found that people believed tribes that hunt turtles for food are better swimmers than

tribes that hunt turtles for their shells.

- Errors with the representative heuristic result from focusing on what is salient; failing to take broaderor outside perspective on the judgment.

- Planning fallacy = tendency to be unrealistically optimistic about the time needed to complete a task.This results from failing to take outside the perspective. The focus is on steps needed to complete the

project at hand and may fail to consider how long similar projects have taken in the past. For example,

students may underestimate how long it will take to complete a paper despite knowing that past

papers had taken longer than planned.

- Illusory correlation = the belief that two variables are correlated when in fact they are not. Joint operation of the representativeness and availability heuristics: representative

samples are better remembered and come to mind more easily (easier to remember hits

than misses). Overestimate frequency of representative examples.


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Maintaining stereotypes: instances consistent with stereotypes are more easilyremembered. People overestimate the frequency of stereotype-consistent examples.

4. Attitudes and Behavior

- Attitudes may be poor predictors of behavior. LaPiere study in the 1930s: Travelling across the U.S. with a Chinese couple at a time

when anti-Chinese prejudice was high. Surprisingly, only were denied service at 1 place in

the 250 places they visited. However, when each place was later contacted and asked if

they would serve Chinese customers, 90 percent say they would not.

1960s research review: meta-analysis concluded there was no evidence that attitudesreliably predict behavior.

- Why attitudes are poor predictors: Attitudes may conflict with other influences on behavior. Social norms, other conflicting

attitudes, and situational factors may also influence behavior.

Attitudes may be inconsistent: emotional and cognitive aspects may conflict studyfound that researchers could not predict behvior if this was the case. Introspection may

influence attitudes, but may fail to capture the full cause of our attitudes.

Attitudes may be based on secondhand information: attitudes based on secondhandexperiences may be weaker and less likely to motivate behavior than attitudes based on

firsthand information.

General attitudes may not match specific targets: attitudes better predict behaviorswhen specific attitudes toward a specific behavior are measured.

Some behaviors may be automatic: automatic, intuitive information processing mayguide behavior in ways that escape conscious awareness, behavior may be unconsciously

influences by aspects of the situation of which we are not aware.

A study found that priming (= mental activation of a knowledge structure) the concept of

professor made participants do better on a knowledge test. - Attitudes may be poor predictors of behaviors, but behaviors are good predictors of attitudes.

Attitudes may change in order to be consistent with behaviors.

- Cognitive consistency theories = social psychology theories explaining how people explain andrationalize behaviors. Attitudes may be updated or altered in order to fall in line with the previous

behavior.

- Balance theory = theory that people try to maintain a balance between their thoughts, feelings, andsentiments. People are motivated to resolve unbalanced triads (if two of your friends dislike each

other, you may decide that you like one friend less than the other). When making social judgments,

people may make inferences about balanced relationships and remember balanced relationships

better.

- Cognitive dissonance theory = theory that inconsistencies between thoughts, feelings, and behaviorcreate an unpleasant mental state (cognitive dissonance) that motivates mental efforts to resolve

them. Cognitive dissonance can be reduced by changing thoughts, feelings, or behavior in order to

make them consistent (for example, stop smoking because its bad for your health). Cognitive

dissonance can also be reduced by adding thoughts, feelings, or behaviors to reduce apparent

inconsistencies (for example, if you cant stop smoking, thinking about your grandfather who lived to

be 100 years old, despite of the smoking).

- Decisions and dissonance: Rationalizing decisions: difficult choices can induce cognitive dissonance. Dissonance

aroused by the inconsistency of accepting the negatives of one choice while rejecting the

positives of another choice.


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Decision dissonance typically is resolved by emphasizing the positives and minimizing thenegatives of the selected choice.

Rationalizations can occur before or after the decision is made.- Effort justification: attempts to reduce dissonance produced by the effort or cost spent to obtain

something unpleasant or disappointing. Greater effort expended leads to more dissonance and more

attempts to rationalize behavior. For example, a study found that women who had to undergo themost severe initiation to join a discussion group reported the most liking for the group even though

the discussion was actually uninteresting.

Fraternity hazings: fraternities with more sever initiations have more loyal members. Sweet lemons rationalization: people may think its not so bad after all to justify

costly or unpleasant effort.

- Induced compliance (forced compliance) = subtly getting people to act in ways inconsistent with theirattitudes. Often leads to a change in attitude in order to resolve dissonance.

Original study of dissonance: participants first completed a long and boring task, then participants

were either paid $1 or $20 to lie to another person and say the task was really fun. Then participants

were asked how much fun they really though the task was. Participants paid $20 though the task was

boring, but participants paid $1 (caused more dissonance) said the task was actually enjoyable.

- Forbidden toy study: children are told that they can play with any of the toys, expect for one.Playing with the forbidden toy would make an adult annoyed (mild threat) or very very angry

(severe threat). Many children given a mild threat found the toy less desirable than before, but

children given a severe threat found the toy more desirable. Why? Severe threats are a good

reason to resist a behavior, but may result in the behavior seeming even more appealing.

- When inconsistencies do (or dont) produce dissonance: Free choice: choosing to engage in a behavior that is inconsistent with beliefs will cause

dissonance. Forced behavior does not cause dissonance, since the reason for the

behavior is clear (I didnt have a choice).

Insufficient justification: dissonance may occur when the reasons for a behavior is weakor unclear. With sufficient justification (more money, larger threat), the behavior doesnt

need to be rationalized.

Negative consequences: freely chosen inconsistent behaviors may not cause dissonanceif there was no negative consequence of the behavior (lying may not cause dissonance if

the person doesnt believe what you say anyway). If nothing happened as a result, there

is nothing to rationalize.

Foreseeability: dissonance may not occur if the negative consequence was notsomething that could be foreseen (for instance, if you accidently give someone food they

are allergic to but you had no knowledge of the allergy, then you have no reason to

rationalize your behavior). Dissonance will occur if we are aware of the negative

consequences that will or may result from our actions.

- Cognitive dissonanceresults from challenges or threats to peoples sense of themselves as rational,moral, and competent.

Self-affirmation = boosting our self-esteem and identity by focusing on important aspects ofthe self. Self affirmation can reduce dissonance, it protects against threats to sense of self

cognitive dissonance resolved by adding other thoughts about the self (this is a though

choice, but Im a scientist and thats more important).

- Cognitive dissonance may be universal across cultures, but may be aroused by different situations. Forindividualists, cognitive dissonance may result from threats to how people see themselves. For

collectivists, cognitive dissonance may occur from threats to how people believe they are seen by

others.


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- Culture and decision dissonance: Euro-Canadians (individualists) experienced more dissonance when making a choice for

themselves than for a friend.

Asian-Canadians (collectivists) experiences more dissonance when making a choice for afriend than for themselves.

Collectivists are more likely to experience dissonance when primed with thoughts of howother people would view their choices and behavior.

- Self-perception theory = theory that people infer their attitudes from observing their behavior. Thistheory suggests a different interpretation of the cognitive dissonance research. The cognitive

dissonance theory argues that people change attitudes to fit their behavior because inconsistencies

are mentally unpleasant. The self-perception theory argues that an unpleasant mental state is not

needed as explanation for the results of the cognitive dissonance studies. The self-perception theory

argues that people didnt change their attitudes; instead they inferred their attitudes from their

behavior in the situation (for example, I told them that the task was fun, so it must have been fun,

because there wasnt any other reason to say it was).

- The role of an unpleasant arousal (dissonance) is the critical difference between cognitive dissonancetheory and self-perception theory.

- Evidence for dissonance: Counter-attitudinal advocacy increases performance on easy tasks and decreases

performance on difficult tasks (arousal does the same).

Believing the arousal was due to a drug, removes the need to resolve dissonance so thereis no attitude change.

- Cognitive dissonancemay occur when behavior doesnt fit a pre-existing attitude and the attitude isimportant to the self-concept.

- Self-perception may occur when attitudes are weak or ambiguous. It also may reflect aspects of howthe mind is constructed.

- System justification theory = theory that people are motivated to see the existing political and socialstatus quo as desirable, fair, and legitimate. System justification is another example of rationalization

(for example, people are motivated to believe the world is a fair place, however, social inequalities are

highly salient, think about discrimination).

- System justification reduces dissonance, it promotes the virtue of the status quo, and it exists ofpositive or compensatory stereotypes (for example, women make less money for the same job, but

they are liked better at work).

- Terror management theory (TMT) = theory that the knowledge of mortality produces an anxiety thatleads people to search for symbolic immortality. It predicts that attitudes will change when mortality is

made salient.

Ways to achieve symbolic immortality: view the self as connected to broader culture,worldview, and social institutions (for example, I may die, but America will be here long

after Im gone). Boost self-esteem (view self as a good valued member of culture).

Terror management concerns may occur in all cultures. Tests of TMT use mortality salience manipulations (possible by having people write about

death, read information about death, or look at images associated with death).

- Effects of mortality salience: More commitment to ingroups and more hostility to outgroups. Increased hostility to people who criticize ones country. More punitive to people who challenge prevailing laws. Reluctance to use cultural artifacts for mundane purposes. More acceptance of positive feedback about the self.


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- Benefits of experiments: Conditions are controlled or manipulated by the researcher. Behaviors are systematically measured. Comparisons of how different manipulations affect behavior allow researchers to

determine causal influences of behavior.

- Independent variable = the variable that is manipulated by the researcher. It is hypothesized to causechanges in the dependent variable.

- Dependent variable = the variable that is measured (often a change in behavior, feelings orevaluation).

- Control condition = a condition identical to the experimental condition but absent from theindependent variable.

- Random assignment = ensures that individual differences are evenly distributed across conditions.- Statistically significance = measure of the probability that a given result could have occurred by

change. Results that have a very low probability of occurring by change are considered statistically

significant.

5. Emotion

- Emotions differ from moods or emotional disorders, they are brief (lasting for only seconds orminutes) and specific (emotions are responses to specific events). Moods can last for days and the

cause or them may be unclear. Emotional disorders can last for weeks, months, or years, and may

have specific causes, but they are not a response to a particular event.

- Emotions motivate behavior to achieve goals (related to survival and social functioning). They alsohave psychological effects that drive behavior (for instance, strong urges to run, hide, or fight).

Emotions have physiological effects that help the body achieve goals.

- Components of emotion: Appraisal processes: how objects and events in our environment are evaluated relative

to our current goals. Different appraisals trigger different emotions (for instance,something thats unfair may trigger anger).

Core-relational themes: themes that define the essential purpose of each emotion, theyare similar across cultures (appraising something as unfair may lead to anger in any

culture).

Primary appraisal stage: initial, quick appraisal made of an event or circumstance, theylead to an initial pleasant or unpleasant feeling.

Secondary appraisal stage: later appraisal, which concerns why we feel the way we doand how we would like to respond, they lead to specific emotions like fear, anger, pride,

guilt and so on.

- Evolutionary approaches = emotions are biologically based on behavioural adaptations meant topromote survival and reproduction. Physiological responses to emotions (facial expression, heart rate,

breathing, vocalizations, and so on) should be cross-culturally universal.

- Cultural approaches = emotions are influenced by views of self, social values, and social roles, whichvary from culture to culture. Emotions should be expressed in different ways in different cultures.

- Both, evolutionary and cultural approaches are correct. Emotional responses may be innate anduniversal, but cultures may have different emotional accents and displays rules.

- Universality of facial expression: Facial expressions are recognized cross-culturally. For example, cultures which are never

exposed to the West or Western media, can accurately identify expressions or happiness,

surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear shown by Westerners.

Human facial expressions resemble displays of other primates (when playing,chimpanzees have a open mouth pant-hoot, that resembles human laughter).


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Facial expression may be innate (blind and sighted athletes show similar facialexpressions or pride after winning a competition).

- Cultures do show variation in expression of emotions. Emotion accents: culturally specific ways thatemotions are expressed (In India, embarrassment can be signalled by biting ones tongue).

- Emotions and intimate relationships: Oxytonic and trust: oxytonic is a hormone and neurotransmitter involved in care giving

and monogamous mating in non-human animals.

Oxytonic may encourage trust between strangers: participants who inhaled oxytonicversus inhaling a placebo, were twice as likely to give a maximum amount to the stranger

and trust him or her return to benefit money.

Touch and closeness: touch can promote closeness in social relationships. It ispleasurable and rewarding (touching can release oxytonic). Touch can be soothing and

stress relieving, it reduces the stress hormone.

Touch encourages reciprocity: in primates, touching increases likelihood of sharing foodwith grooming partners. In humans, touch increases cooperation and compliance with

requests.

- Emotions and social cognition: emotions can influence how we process information and makejudgments. Emotions can influence judgments by being taken as additional information about

judgmentfeeling-as-information: for complex, difficult judgments, people may rely on current

feelings or emotions to provide rapid, easily available information.

- Emotions inform judgments: Mood and life satisfaction study: study asking people to give ratings of their life

satisfaction found that higher ratings were given on sunny days than on rainy days

(current mood may influence judgment). However, when people were asked about the

weather first, there was no effect on weather judgments(realizing that current mood is

influencing judgments, people can make corrections).

Moods have more influence on complex judgments than simple judgments: forinstance, making a general judgments of people than a simple judgment (what colour are

their eyes?).

- Emotions influence reasoning: Processing style perspective: positive and negative emotions lead to different types of

information processing positive moods lead to more top-down thinking, negative

moods lead to more bottom-up thinking.

Sad moods lead to less stereotyping than other moods: sad moods lead to morebottom-up thinking, so there is less reliance on stereotypes and heuristics.

- Positive emotions have been linked with more creative and flexible thinking broaden-and-buildhypothesis = positive emotions generate broader and more flexible thinking styles and behavior. Over

time, broadened thought-action repertoires may help build personal resources (cognitive resources

like creativity, emotional resources like emotional resilience and social resources like closer friends).

- Emotions are essential to moral reasoning.- Emotion psychology:

Autonomic nervous system: the glands, organs, and blood vessels controlled by the brainand spinal cord that regulate the bodily responses to the environment. Sympathetic

branch prepares the body for action (increased heart rate, breathing and blood pressure).

Parasympathetic branch returns the body to its resting state.

William James early theory of emotion: emotions are the perception of bodily changesin response to the environment. Assumes each emotion should generate a distinct

physiological response.


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- Two-factor theory of emotion = theory that emotions are made of two components: an unexplainedphysiological arousal and a cognitive explanation of the arousal.

Schachter and Singers (1962) classic study: participants were told the study was testingeffects of a drug on vision (in reality, the drug was adrenaline). Participants were given an

injection and were either informed or uninformed about the effects. Results: uninformed

participants did report higher levels of happiness when interacting with the happyconfederate than informed participants. Interpreted as evidence that cognitive explanations

of physiological arousal are important components of emotion.

- Misattribution of arousal: when the source of an arousal is incorrectly attributed to the wrong case(the adrenaline causes the arousal, but uninformed participants assume their feelings due to

something else in the situation).

- Physiological specificity: does each emotion have a distinct pattern of physiology? James argued therewere, but the research of Schachter and Singer suggests that the same arousal could be labelled as

different emotions.

- Reseach by Paul Ekman re-examined the nature of emotions: universality of facial expressions andlinks between facial expression and physiological arousal.

- Directed facial action task: task in which participants are asked to pose facial expression by beinginstructed to achieve specific facial muscles. Cross-cultural research found that posed facial

expressions lead to specific patterns of physiological arousal (for instance, posing anger lead to

increased body temperature compared to fear, sadness, or disgust).

- Remembering emotional experience: Peak and end: assessments of emotional experiences are most influenced by the peak

moment of emotion and the ending emotion. For instance, judging how funny a movie is,

is most influenced by the funniest moment and the way the movie ends.

Duration neglect: the length of an emotional experience has little influence on theoverall evaluation of how pleasurable or unpleasurable the experience was.

- Predicting emotions: Affective forecasting: predicting how we will feel during or after a particular event in the

future. Affective forecast is often incorrect.

Immune neglect: tendency to overestimate our resilience during negative life events.Painful, difficult experienced often are less upsetting then we expect them to be.

Focalism: tendency to focus on only one aspect of an experience or event when trying topredict future emotions. May neglect thinking about how we will feel after the initial

event or the importance of other events in determining our feelings.

- The happy life: Advantages of happiness: more successful marriages, more creative and productive

work, longer lives.

Influences on happiness: age and gender are relatively unimportant, money onlyincreases happiness among the poor, people are happier in countries where individual

rights and economic opportunities are available. Social relationships are also an

important resource of happiness.

- Cultivating happiness: Predictors of individual levels of happiness: about 50 percent due to genetic factors,

only about 10 percent due to environment, about 40 percent due to personal lifestyle

choices.

Ways to increase happiness: put emotions into words and express positive socialemotions.


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6. Social influence

- Social influence = refers to the large number of ways that people impact one another, includingchanges in attitudes, beliefs, feelings, or behaviors resulting from the real or imagined presence of

other people. For example, fashion trends, peer pressure, getting a favour, following orders, and so

on.

- Forms of influence: Conformity = change in behavior with or without explicit pressure from others. For

example, fashion trends.

Compliance= following the request of another person, regardless of that persons status.For example, agreeing to do someone a favour.

Obedience = following the demands of a someone who is higher in social power thanoneself. For example, following orders of a police officer.

- Informational social influence: Conformity based on the desire to be accurate: use other people as information,

conform because other people are seen as correct or as having more information.

Autokinetic illusion study: the autokinetic illusion is that a stationary point of light willappear to move in a dark room, peoples judgments about the movement of the light

covered over time.

Informational social influence more likely when: situation is ambiguous or difficult, wefeel low knowledge or competence about the topic.

- Normative social influence: Conformity based on the desire to be liked or socially accepted. Line judgment study (Asch, 1956): line judgment task was a very easy task: judging

whether two lines were the same length. There was one true participant in group of

confederates, who give wrong answers. A full 75 percent of participant conformed at

least once. Overall, participants conformed 37 percent of the time.

Conformity on the line judgment task had to be due to desire to not be deviant from thegroup since the correct answer was obvious.

- Factors influencing conformity: Group size: conformity rates increases as group size increases, but only up to a point. Group unanimity: more conformity when group is unanimous. One person is likely to

conform to a group, but if they have at least one other ally who breaks the unanimity,

then conformity rates dramatically decreases.

Expertise and status: high status or expert group members have more social influence.Experts exert more informational social influence. High status exerts more normative

social influence.

Difficulty or ambiguity of task: more susceptible to information influence for difficult orambiguous tasks.

Anonymity: when decisions can be made anonymously, they cease being susceptible tonormative social influence.

- In some cases, a minority opinion can change the majority opinion. Minority opinion have the greatestinfluence when the opinion is consistent. Minority opinions may cause other members to reconsider

their positions (to understand the divergent opinion).

- Private acceptance versus public compliance: Informational social influence leads to internalization (private acceptance) of the majority

opinion. The information of the group is viewed as accurate and correct.

Normative social influence leads to public compliance, but not necessarily privateacceptance. People may publically agree with the group opinion in order to avoid social

disapproval, but privately believe something different.


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- Compliance = agreeing to the request of another person, regardless of that persons status. For example, doing a favour, giving to charity, buying a product.

Social psychology research has found many different techniques that can increase compliance.

- Reason-based approaches: Norm of reciprocity: feel obligated to give to someone who has given to us. Even when

given something small, we may feel obligated by a later request. Why it works: socialnorms, feelings, obligated: you gave to me, so I give to you.

Door-in-the-face: make a large request that is refused, followed by a smaller request. Forexample, psychologists Bob Cialdini, when asked to buy a $5 raffle ticket, refuses. Then

he is asked to buy a $1 candy bar and agrees (even though he doesnt like chocolate that

much). Why it works: reciprocal concession: you compromised with me, so Ill

compromise with you.

Foot-in-the-door technique: make a small request that is accepted, followed by a largerrequest. For example, charities often first ask for very small donations, then later ask for

bigger donations. Why it works: need for consistent self-perception; agreeing to the first

request makes it easier to agree with a second request.

- Emotion-based approaches: Both positive and (some) negative moods can increase rates of compliance. Positive moods: mood maintenance (people want to maintain a positive mood so they

agree more easily, feels good to say yes), different construals of the request (more likely

to trust someones intentions in a positive mood).

Negative moods: negative state relief (may be more likely to agree to a request when in anegative mood because it may make us feel better), guilt (may feel more obligated to

help someone if we feel guilty).

- Milgrams study of obedience: class study showing the power of social influence. Recall experimentalsetup: experiment describes as a study of learning. Participants instructed to shock another

participant for any wrong answers. Despite potential harm to another person, 62,5 percent ofparticipants completed the experiment. Originally it was predicted that less than 1 percent of people

would follow instruction until the end.

Several variations of the Milgram experiment have been conducted exploring which aspects of the

situation most influence obedience rates.

- Forces influencing obedience: Tuning in the victim: variations of the Milgram experiment that varied the proximity of

the learner. As the learner became more present (increased feedback and proximity), the

rate of obedience (shock delivered) decreased.

Tuning out the authority: variations on the social power of the experimenter. As thesocial power of the experimenter decreased, rates of obedience decreased.

- Real-world implications (of the Milgram experiment): Nazi Germany, ethnic cleansings, Abu GhraibPrison abuses.

- Why people obeyed: They tried, but failed: attempts to leave the situation are blocked by the authority. Release from responsibility: feeling of responsibility for ones actions is transferred to

other people (for example, in the Milgram study, the experimenter stated that he was

responsible for everything that happened).

Step-by-step situation: can arrive at extreme situations in step-by-step process: aslippery slope (for example, in the Milgram study, each increment is only 15 volts, so each

one seems like a small step, but step-by-step it gets to an extreme point).


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7. Attraction and relationships

- One of the biggest predictors of whether people become friend or romantic partners if actual physicalproximity. Not surprisingly, the people we interact with face-to-face are the people with whom we

usually form relationships.

- Effects of proximity are based more on functional distance than physical distance. How peopleencounter and interact with each other is more important than just living near another person.

- Explanation of proximity effects: Availability and proximity: encountering other people allows for and encourages the

formation of new relationships.

Anticipating interactions: knowing that we will interact with someone in the futuremakes us like that person more.

Mere exposure: greater exposure to a stimulus leads to greater liking of that stimulus,including other people. Effect holds in pleasant and unpleasant contexts(taste

preference study: participants tasted pleasant and unpleasant foods. Greater liking for

other participants predicted by frequency of contact with them, regardless of whether

foods tasted were pleasant or unpleasant.

- Why mere exposure causes liking: fluency (easier to process information about familiar stimuli,pleasant feelings associated with more fluent processing), classical conditioning (repeated exposure

to a stimulus without any negative consequence makes the stimulus more pleasant).

- Friends and romantic partners tend to be more similar in beliefs and other characteristics(attractiveness, intelligence, socioeconomic status). Studies find that we report greater liking of even

fictitious people if we see them as more similar to ourselves. The belief that opposites attract is not

largely supported by the research.

- How similarity promotes attraction: Social validation: similar others have similar beliefs. We like people who agree with us,

and we may feel uncomfortable around people challenge our beliefs.

More fluent interactions: interacting with people similar to ourselves is often easier (lessconflict over which activities are desirable, and greater ability to understand other

persons choices and perspectives).

Similar people are likely to like us: we tend to like people who like us in return. Similar people have characteristics that we like: we are motivated to like ourselves,

people who are similar to us, and thus share our characteristics, are easy to like.

- Physical attractiveness: Physical attractiveness plays an important role on interpersonal attraction. Halo effect: people who are more physically attractive are often assumed to have other

positive traits (assumed to be more successful, likable, happier). Halo effects may be due

to self-fulfilling prophecies (we expect attractive people to have desirable traits, so we

may behave more positively toward them, and as a result they may respond favourably,

confirming our original positive expectation).

Early effects of attractiveness: attractive infants receive more attention from mothersthan less attractive babies even before leaving the hospital.

- Why does attractiveness matter? Immediacy: physical appearance are the first thing we notice when encountering other

people. Appearance affects our immediate and gut reactions.

Prestige: physical attractiveness is socially valued, attractive people and people withattractive partners may be seen as higher in social status.

Biology: responses to physical attractiveness may serve biological purposes, physicalattractiveness signals cues of biological health and reproductive potential.


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- Evolutionary functions of beauty: Evolutionarily, people may have preferences for certain physical characteristics because

they were cues of health and reproductive fitness in our ancestral past (preferences for

beauty may have evolved so we mate with healthy and reproductively fit partners).

Faces that are more average (less abnormal) are seen as more attractive.- Gender differences in mate selection:

Evolutionary perspectives argue that males and females seek different characteristics inpotential mates.

Investment in offspring (large asymmetry in the minimal parental investment of malesand females). For females, the minimal parental investment is exponentially greater

(pregnancy, producing a placenta, lactation, and an extended period of infertility

following childbirth).

- Battle of the sexes: throughout the animal kingdom, investment in offspring drives how selectiveanimals are when choosing mates. Females invest more, so should be more selective than males. For

example, males often must compete to be selected by females and females may select mates based

on their ability to provide resources to potential offspring (in humans, females may view

characteristics like social status, wealth, intelligence).

- Critique of evolutionary perspectives: evidence that men and women have different preferences forpotential mates may reflect human evolutionary history, but may also be due to social factors. Some

cultural universals may be due to rational logic and not to evolutionary drives.

- Fertility and attraction: Evidence supporting evolutionary perspectives from studies of menstrual cycles and

attraction. Female mate preferences change during ovulation (near time of ovulation,

women show increased preference for masculine facial characteristics, prefer men with

deeper voices, etc.).

Effects of menstrual cycles on changing preferences for men only hold for women whoare not on hormonal birth control.

- Studying relationships: Interpersonal relationships: extended attachments between two or more individuals due

to bonds of friendship, family, love, respect, or hierarchy.

Interpersonal relationships can be difficult to study because of self-selection: peoplechoose their relationships; we cant experimentally assign people to form extended,

lasting social bonds.

Important conclusions drawn from animal experiments: Harlow monkey experimentshighlighted the importance of early social contact for normal development. Natural

experiments with elephants and feral children (humans and elephants are both very

social animals: when raised in isolations, they grow up to be socially dysfunctional).

- Psychologists argue that social belonging is a biological need, similar to hunger. Five criteria of a need: Evolutionary basis: social belonging is linked to survival and reproduction. Universal: all cultures have similar types of social relationships and dynamics. Guides social cognition: social relationships guide how we see ourselves, others, and our

surroundings.

Satiable: relationships are something we desire when we dont have them, but likehunger, the need to relationships can be satisfied by finding new relationships.

Profound consequences without relationships: a lot of evidence that being cut off fromothers is bad for mental and physical health.

- Because humans depend on social interaction for survival, we may have evolved a strong sensitivity tosocial rejection. Consequences of social rejection:

Monkeys, baboons, and coyotes that are more socially rejected have shorter life spans.


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In humans, people who feel more socially isolated report higher levels of chronic pain,ailments, and pain during childbirth.

Feeling socially rejected causes feelings of shame and distress. Brain imaging studies show that areas of the brain related to processing pain become

active after social rejection feedback.

Social rejection may reduce ability to regulate behavior.- Attachment theory = mammals (including humans) depend on parental care for survival early in life.

Evolution has shaped mammals to develop strong parent-offspring bonds. Many infant mammals

share traits that evoke nurturing behavior from parents (for example, large eyes and large head size).

Additionally, infant mammels have been shaped to form bonds with caregivers. In humans, the bonds

formed to caregivers early in life can impact relationship throughout our lives.

- As children form attachments with caregivers, they begin developing a working model of relationships.They develop their understanding of how relationships work, including how much warmth and

security relationships provide.

- Test of attachment: strange situation an experimental procedure where an infants reaction isobserved after the mother leaves the child in a room with a stranger and then returns to the room.

Three different patterns of behavior were observed:

The baby was comforted by mother and felt comfortable exploring the environment evenwithout needing continued contact with the mother.

The baby got upset and was not easily comforted by the mother. The baby got upset and did not seek comfort from the mother, sometimes rejecting her

attempts at comfort.

- Three different styles of adult attachment that result from early child-parent attachment: Secure: feel secure in relationships, comfortable with intimacy, desire to be close to

others during times of stress.

Anxious: feel insecure in relationships, compulsively seek closeness but constantly worryabout the relationship, and during stress, excessively try to get closer to others.

Avoidant: feel insecure in relationships, feel the need to be completely self-reliant, andprefer distance from others.

- Attachment style is generally stable across adulthood. Secure attachment style is the most stable.Attachment in adulthood:

Effects on relationships: securely attached least likely to have a breakup, then anxious,then avoidant. Secure attachment more likely to be married with fewer marital problems.

Anxious attachment involves more fear and sadness during temporary separations.

Avoidant attachment involves seeking less physical contact from partners.

Effects on life outcomes: people with anxious attachment styles are more likely to haveproblems with drug abuse, alcoholism, and eating disorders.

Effects on social cognition: for people with secure attachment styles, being primed withwords related to warm, caring relationships increased altruistic feelings and reduced

feelings of prejudice.

- Romantic relationships: Triangular theory of love: romantic relationships composed of three elements:

1. Passion: physical attraction, sexual excitement. Feelings of desire and chemistrydirected at one specific partner are more likely to be reciprocated than desire

directed at many people.

2. Intimacy: trust, caring, honesty. Feelings of intimacy are related to feelings ofsimilarity to partner and ability to share personal details about oneself.


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3. Commitment: loyalty, devotion, sacrifice. Feelings of commitment are linked todecreased interest in other romantic opportunities, increased investment and

sharing of resources, and coordination of import life details.

- Investment model of commitment:Factors that influence whether couples stay commitment: rewards (what you get from a relationship),

costs (what you give and the partner takes), comparison level (what you expect the reward-to-costratio to be), alternatives (is an alternative partner available or likely?), comparison level for

alternatives (does an alternative partner offer a higher ratio of rewards to costs?), and investment

(what you have invested and put into the relationship that would be lost if the relationship ended).

Even when a more rewarding relationship may be available, we may stay in a relationship if we are

heavily invested in it.

- Relationship dissatisfaction: Top predictors of divorce: partnering with a neurotic personality, partnering with

someone highly sensitivity to rejection, marrying at a young age, undergoing financial

stress.

Behavioral predictors of divorce in couples: the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse(interaction dynamics studies focusing on how couples interact found that divorce could

be predicted with 93 percent accuracy on the basis of four behaviors): criticism,

defensiveness, stonewalling (withdrawal from partner, refusal to emotionally interact),

contempt (looking down on ones partner).

Blame and negative attributions for partners behavior: partners in unsatisfyingrelationships are more likely to make attributions that cast partner in a negative light.

- Creating stronger romantic bonds: Sharing positive events: communicating positive events with close others increases well-

being above and beyond the positive event itself. Biggest benefit when partner respond

actively and constructively .

Types of partner responses to shared positive events: active + constructive, passive +constructive, active + destructive, passive + destructive.

Most satisfying romantic relationship are ones where our partners capitalize andenhance the positive events in our lives: capitalize the positive, lowercase the negative.

Stay playful: do novel and arousing activities with partner. Successful couples havenicknames for each other, do new things together, and joke around when doing shared

household chores.

Care and forgive: successful relationships are characterized by partners taking acompassionate view of each others mistakes.

Idealize your partner:relationship satisfaction is linked to being able to maintain apositive view of our partners.

Romantic bonds across cultures: Western cultures may emphasize romantic views oflove more than other cultures. In cultures where marriage is viewed more as a social and

economic function, marriage satisfaction may be determined by different things (several

studies show that couples in arranged marriages often report higher levels of marital

satisfaction than couples who married for love).

8. Automatically

- We make many decisions without conscious attention or awareness. We make many decisionswithout conscious attention: heart rate, breathing, blinking, judgments of gender, feature search.

These are automatic processes, they happen without conscious deliberation.

- Many of our higher mental functions are also (partly) automatic: automatic may become controlled,controlled may become automatic (think about having your driver licence for a while).


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- Construal is often an automatic processthe classic Donald study (Srull, & Wyer, 1979):I went to visit my old friend Donald. Soon after I arrived, a salesman knocked at the door, but Donald

refused to let him enter. He also told me that he was refusing to pay his rent until the landlord

repaints his apartment, we assertive or rude?

Ambiguous person can be construed in two ways:

1. Scrambled sentences task: eithera. Hostility related he hit coffee wife hisb. Or not (control).

2. Read paragraph about Donald and form judgments about him.- Bargh 1999: perceiving is for doing:

Ideomotor action: thinking about x increases likelihood that you do x.

Bargh, Chen, Burrows, 1996, study 1: Experiment consists of two parts:

1. Scrambles sentences task: politeness words, control words and rudeness words.2. Then contact experimenter, who is busy. Confederate counts time to interruption:

- Bargh, Chen, Burrows, 1996, study 3:It seems like the computer did not save your data. Im sorry, but youll have to do the experiment

over again. After more fiddling, the experimenter concluded actually, it looks like the computer did

save your data. You dont have to do it over again.

- Source of error: scrambled words should not affect our perception of others.- Social role of automatically: nonconscious behavioural mimicry: Chartrand & Bargh (1999):

Participants interacts with 2 confederates, 1 after the other. Participant and confederate take turns

describing what they see in various photographs.

Participant interacts with 2 confederates, 1 after the other. Participant and confederate take turns

describing what they see in various photographs.

Throughout session, confederate either rubs his/her nose or shakes a foot.

Participants interact with one confederate on photo description task. Confederate either mimicked

the posture and mannerisms of participants or not. Participants report on exit questionnaire howmuch they liked the confederate and how smoothly the interaction went with the confederate.

- Automaticity: frees up our limited mental capacity, makes us behave in a socially adaptive way. Itdepends on individuals mental associations if automaticity is a good thing.

- Toward even more complex primes: Gardner, Gabriel, & Lee, 1999:Participants read a story about a general who had to choose a warrior to send to the king.

In the independent condition, the general chose the person who was the best individualfor the job and considered benefits to himself.

In the interdependent condition, the general chose a member of his own family andconsidered benefits to his family.

Next, participant completed an Individualists/Collectivists values questionnaire.

- Priming: write about the behavior, lifestyle, appearance, and attributes of the typical.- If behavior is affected in an automatic manner by stimuli around us, what does that mean? How do

religious people feel about automatic behavior? What is sin? Immorality? What is free will? Does it

exists? What is people can hide behind automaticity? Is it dangerous to discover these effects?

- Conclusions: Bargh: nonsense: Aim of psychology is to reduce the free will and to explain behavior. Your automaticity is based on the existing associations that you have with a prime. Sin is

wrong association.

Automaticity is flexible. We can recognize situations and the need to switch back.Automaticity is not maladaptive but adaptive.


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9. Stereotyping, prejudice & discrimination

- Like all attitudes, attitudes toward different social groups are composed of three components (ABC): Affective: prejudice refers to the general attitude structure, but more specifically the

emotional component.

Behavioral: discrimination is differential treatment due to group membership. Cognitive: stereotype is a generalization about a group that is seen as descriptive of all

members of that group.

- Blatant(old fashioned) racism: beliefs about minorities that are clearly bigoted and readilyadmitted. Open expression of bigoted views is now less common.

- Not all stereotypes are necessarily negative. Some stereotypes include favourable assessments ofabilities. For example, some groups may be stereotyped as smarter or nicer.

- Benevolent racism (or sexism) = race and gender stereotypes often contain a mix of both positive andnegative sentiments.

- Trouble with positive stereotypes: can be used to justify holding other negative stereotypes. Forinstance, may believe that women are kinder and more nurturing but that they are less capable than

men. Holding a positive stereotype can be seen to justify or balance out negative stereotypesmaydisparage members that dont fit the positive stereotype.

- Because people want to appear non-prejudiced, it can be difficult to measure true attitudes towarddifferent social groups.

- Implicit attitudes= a measure of someones automatic negative or positive evaluation of a socialgroup or category. Implicit attitudes are measured by ease of associating different social categories

with positive or negative words. They often dont correlate with explicit reports.

- Implicit attitudes can predict differential behavior toward groups. One study found that explicitattitudes predicted verbal expressions of friendliness in an interracial interaction, but implicit attitudes

predicted non-verbal behaviors. Implicit attitudes predict differences in biological and neurological

responses to racial outgroups (implicit pro-white/anti-black bias predicts greater amygdala activation

in the brain in response to seeing black faces).- Origins of prejudice and discrimination:

Economic perspective: argues that prejudice results from different social groupscompeting over scarce resources.

Motivational perspective: argues that prejudice results from motivations to view onesingroup more favourably than outgroups.

Cognitive perspective: argues that prejudice results from biases in social cognition due toschemas about differences between ingroup and outgroup members.

- Economic perspectiverealistic group conflict theory = competition for scarce recources willincrease conflict among groups, resulting in prejudice and discrimination. Resources may be physical,

economic, or conceptual. Hostile conflict increases ethnocentrism (= tendency to glorify ones own

group and to derogate outgroups). This theory also predicts that strongest feelings of prejudice will

come from the group that feels they have the most to lose. For instance, greater hostility is directed

toward immigrant groups during economic recessions.

- The Robbers cave experiment: two groups of boys were invited to participate in a summer campexperience. In reality, the summer camp experience was part of a study on intergroup relationships.

During the first week, the two groups were isolated from one another, and each group gave itself a

name. When the groups were unaware of each other, group activities were directed at building unity

and cohesion. During the second week, the two groups were brought together in a competitive

tournament. During the period of the tournament, the groups became hostile toward one another. In

the third week of the Robbers Cave experiment, the two groups were brought together to interact in

non-competitive ways. However, hostilities did not decrease, non-competitive social contact alone


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was not sufficient to reduce hostile feelings toward an outgroup. Hostile feelings between the groups

were reduced after researchers allowed the groups to work cooperatively.

- The economic perspective on prejudice and discrimination fits many familiar and historic examples ofconflict between groups. Economic perspectives suggest that prejudice can be reduced when groups

see themselves as needing to work together to achieve a collective goal. This may explain why racial

integration may be more successful in the military than in other domains.- Motivational perspectivesocial identity theory = people derive part of their self-concept from

membership in groups. Aspects of self-esteem are dependent on how people evaluate their ingroup

relative to outgroups. People are motivated to view their ingroup more favourably than the outgroup,

because it boosts personal self-esteem.

- Minimal group paradigm is a demonstration of social identities. Group categories are defined alongarbitrary or superficial dimensions. For instance, making groups based on whether people prefer one

abstract image over another.

- Experiments using the minimal group paradigm find that individuals shows preferences for theingroup, even when outgroups distinctions are meaningless. For example, prefer ingroup to get $7 and

outgroup $3 than for both groups to get $10.

- Effects of social identity: Ingroup bias: because self-esteem is based in part on our group memberships, were

motivated to boost the status of the ingroup.

Derogating outgroups to boost self-esteem: self-esteem can be bolstered by negativeevaluation of outgroups. After receiving negative feedback about self, participants are

more likely to endorse negative stereotypes.

- Evaluating motivational perspectives: Motivational perspectives highlight the idea that prejudice may result from motivations

to feel good about oneself.

People process information in terms of categories, including social information andinformation about the self. As a result, often see social groups in terms of us versusthem.

Hostile or aggressive motivations may be directed at social groups seen as lower inpower. Expressing advantage and dominance over a lower power group can boost

feelings of self-esteem.

Both motivational and economic perspectives can explain why people are more willing tohelp members of their own group but to hostile the outside.

- Cognitive perspective:Stereotypes as mental shortcuts: stereotypes are schemas, these influence attention, perception and

memory. Stereotypes help us process social information efficiently. We are more likely to use

stereotypes when we are mentally drained. Stereotypes can conserve mental energy.

- Biased construals: Stereotypes may be efficient, but may frequently be inaccurate. Accentuation of ingroup similarities and outgroup differences (assume members of

ingroup to be more similar to us and members of outgroups to be more dissimilar to us

than they may actually be).

Outgroup homogeneity effect: members of outgroup viewed as more similar to eachother. Impaired ability to view outgroup members as distinct individuals (theyre all the

same).

Biased information processing: stereotypes may guide attention, perception andmemory. We may pay attention to and remember things that are consistent with our

stereotypes and fail to notice or remember things that are inconsistent.


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Self-fulfilling prophecy: stereotypes may give us expectations about certain groups thatlead us to treat those groups in ways that encourage them to confirm our original

expectation.

Illusory correlations: false beliefs about groups may be maintained because we moreeasily remember the pairing of two distinct events. Encountering minority group

members and observing negative behavior are both less frequent events than observingmajority group members and positive behaviors, so it may be easier to remember

examples of minorities doing negative things.

Subtyping: explaining away people that dont fit stereotypes by creating a subcategory ofthe stereotype. Creating a subtype preserves the original stereotype so attitudes dont

need to change.

- Automatic and controlled processing: Social information may be processed two different ways: automatic processing

(automatic, involuntary, unconscious, often based on emotional responses) and

controlled processing (conscious, systematic, and deliberate, can override automatic

responses).

Implicit attitudes determine behavior: Dovidio, Kawakami, Gaertner (2002) study: whiteparticipants interacted with a white and black student were measured for implicit and

explicit attitudes towards blacks. Videotapes coded for verbal and non-verbal friendliness

during interactions.

1. Explicit racial attitudes predict differences in verbal friendliness (what was said, orcontrolled behavior) between black and white interactions.

2. Implicit attitudes predicted difference in nonverbal behaviors (coded fromvideotapes with no sound, measure of non-conscious or automatic behavior)

between black and white interactions.

3. Shooter bias: participants were presented images of black and white people whowere either armed with a gun or not. As in the video game, participants wereinstructed to shoot the armed targets and not shoot the unarmed targets.

4. A mistake on an unarmed trial involved shooting when one should not have, andparticipants did so more often for a black target than a white target. A mistake on an

armed trial involved failing to shoot when one should have, and participants did so

more often for a white target than a black target.

- Automatic stereotypingobject recognition: participants do a task identifying objects as hand gunsor hand tools. The face of a black or white man was shown briefly before each object. White

participants were quicker to recognize guns after seeing a black face and more likely to mistake a tool

as a gun after seeing a black face guns were identified due to associations of black males with

criminal behavior.

Automatic stereotyping applies to positive stereotypes as well. People also were quicker to identify

sports equipment after exposure to black male faces due to stereotypical associations with sports.

- Evaluating the cognitive perspective: cognitive perspectives highlight how stereotypes can alterperception of and behavior toward different social groups. Stereotypes may conserve mental energy

but can lead to unintentionally biased judgments. Activation of a stereotype may be automatic and

involuntary. Influence of automatically activated stereotypes can be corrected for if people are

motivated and aware of potential biases.

- Effects of being stigmatized: Attributional ambiguity: members of stigmatized groups may be uncertain if the

treatment they receive is due to them personally or is a result of their group

membership. White and black students may respond differently to flattering orunflattering feedback.


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Stereotype threat: due to prevalent negative stereotypes about different social groups,members of those groups may be fearful of confirming the stereotype. Threat of

confirming the stereotype may impair performance.

Example of stereotype threat: black students perform worse on aptitude tests whenasked to indicate their race beforehand. Female students perform better on math tests

when told the test doesnt show a gender difference.

10. Aggression, altruism, and cooperation

- Aggression = any behavior aimed at causing either physical or pshychological pain. Hostile aggression = aggression in which causing pain or harm is the only goal. Instrumental aggression = aggression in which the pain or harm caused is a means to

some other goal (for example, self-defense).

- Situational determinants of aggression: Heat: higher temperatures are related to higher rates of aggression. For example, more

acts of violence occur in cities that have higher average temperature.

Media violence: evidence that media violence can increase aggressive behaviors. Effectof childhood media consumptioncopycat violence: acts of violence imitated from

media portrayals. Video game violence has similar effects as other media portrayals.

Presence of a weapon: the presence of a weapon may increase aggression throughpriming effects.

- Situational construals: How people interpret situations plays a vital role in whether they will act aggressively. Frustration-aggression theory: frustration signals that a goal has been thwarted;

aggressive feelings arise to motivate goal achievement. The levels of aggression are

related to how desirable the goal was, how much the goal was thwarted, how close the

person was to achieving the goal.

Critiques of the frustration-aggression theory: aggression can result when goals are notdirectly blocked, and not all frustration leads to aggression.

Challenges to the frustration-aggression theory suggests that aggression may be moregenerally associated with stimuli that make us feel angry or unpleasant.

- Aversive stimuli (like pain, heat, or frustration) make us feel angry, and feelings of angry make us wantto act aggressively.

- The neo-associationistic account highlights that aggression may be caused by situational factors, andfeelings based on interpretations of those situational factors. For example, being stuck in the traffic on

a hot day, may be last thing we want to experience, and angry feelings may arise.

- Culture of honor = cultural concern with defending reputation or honor. People from a culture ofhonor are more likely to be aggressive after being insulted.

- Evolutionary causes of homicide: violence in stepfamilies: studies found that children in Canada were70 times more likely and that children in America were 100 times more likely to be killed by a

stepparent than a biological parent.

- Gender differences in types of aggression: Males are much more likely to be involved in violent and criminal behavior. Males are

also more likely to be the victims of violence. Possibly due to differences in hormone

levels, social learning, or evolved tendencies.

Males may be more physically aggressive, but females may display more relationalaggression.

Gender differences could be due to hormones and biology, evolutionary adaptations,and/or differences in socialization.

- Altruism = desire to help another person with no benefit to oneself, even at cost at oneself.


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- Empathy= ability to put oneself in another persons shoes, to experience the same feelings andemotions.

- Empathy-altruism hypothesis = helping results from concern for another person.- Negative state relief hypothesis = helping results from trying to relieve own distress. - Empathy and helping:

Empathy for another person can involve empathic distress (feeling similarly unpleasant)and empathic concern (sympathy for the person).

Study of empathy and helping: participants view of video of a confederate receivingshocks. Although all participants report feeling empathic distress (its upsetting to watch

her suffer), only participants reporting empathic concern were willing to help by trading

places in the easy escape condition.

Empathy concern can promote helping even at a cost to the self.- Situational determinants of altruism:

Audience effects: bystander intervention: likelihood that others will intervene to help insituation of need.

Victim characteristics: some people are more likely to receive help than others. Environmental effects: receiving help is more likely in some places than others. Ways that bystanders can reduce helping:

1. Diffusion of responsibility: failure to act because they assume other will actinstead.

2. Pluralistic ignorance: failure to act because if no one else seems alarmed, wemay assume no action is required. Pluralistic ignorance results from

informational social influence.

Factors influencing who receives help:1. Unambiguous need: people with an obvious need of help are more likely to

receive it.

2. Similarity: more likely to provide help to people who seem more similar toourselves.

3. Gender: women are more likely to receive help from others, especially true forwomen dressed in ways that are more feminine and attractive.

- Environment and helping: Rural versus urban areas: more likely to receive help in a rural area than an urban area. Urban-overload hypothesis: people living in cities keep to themselves to limit

overstimulation.

Its the urban environment, not urban people: when places in rural environment, citydwellers are equally likely to help.

- Evolution and altruism: Evolutionarily, we should behave altruistically toward those who promote the survival

and reproduction of ourselves and our genetic relatives.

Kin selection: tendency for natural selection to favour behaviors that benefit the survivalof genetic relatives. Evolutionarily inclined to help people more if they are more

genetically related to ourselves.

Reciprocity: it can also be evolutionary advantageous to help non-relatives if that helpwill be reciprocated at a later time.

- Cooperation is essential to human functioning, however, individuals also must balance the desire tocooperate with the desire to not be taken advantage of.

- Prisoners dilemma: situation where outcome between two individuals depends upon eachindividuals independent choice to cooperate or not.


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- Social and cognitive determinations of cooperation: The most important determinant of whether people will cooperate are their construals

about the people theyre interacting with.

Evidence from prisoners dilemma games: people who are more competitive are morelikely to assume that others are competitive. People become more competitive after

being primed with words related to hostility. Greater competition when the prisonersdilemma was played in business context than when played as a community game.

- Culture and cooperation: Cultural beliefs can influence rates of cooperation. The ultimatum game: situation where one participant is given a sum of money (or other

resource) to allocate between him- or herself and another person. Can choose to allocate

the resource in any way.

Economic cooperation: economics majors were least likely to share resources in anultimatum game compared majors (economics teaches that people should act in terms of

rational self-interest). Professional economists were less likely to contribute to public

charities than members of other professions.

Cooperation around the world: people who live in cultures requiring high amounts ofinterdependence for survival (for example, food sharing), allocated resources more fairly

during an ultimatum game than people from other cultures.

- Optimal cooperation: computer simulations of the prisoners dilemma game revealed an optimalstrategy for cooperationTit-for-tat strategy: start by cooperating, and from that point on do

whatever the other person did last. The simple strategy is optimal because it encourages the benefits

of cooperation, but doesnt allow for exploitation.

summery psychology for the social sciences

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