Social Psychology Exam 2

The textbook describes research by Todorov and colleagues in which participants rated a large number of
faces along different personality dimensions. Which two dimensions stood out as the main dimensions used in
these ratings?

trustworthiness and dominance

In one study, elementary school teachers were told that aptitude tests indicated that certain students would “bloom” intellectually in the coming year, though in reality these students’ names were chosen randomly. At the end of the year, the selected students indeed performed better on aptitude tests compared to other students. This phenomenon is called ________ .

Self fufilling prophecy

What are two essential components of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

expectations about what a person is like and behaving toward the person in ways consistent with the expectations

In her economics class, Nancy has been assigned to do a group project with Mario, whom she does not know well. Nancy’s friend Tia knows Mario from another class and tells Nancy about him. According to the primacy effect, Nancy will form the best impression of Mario if Tia describes him in which way?

intelligent, industrious, warm, impulsive, critical, stubborn

The confirmation bias makes what prediction about human behavior?

People will seek out supporting evidence for their beliefs.

You think of Jan as a very introverted person. The confirmation bias predicts that you will

look for examples of introverted behaviors in Jan.

Having prior knowledge about a situation can influence how we construe ambiguous situations. This is a result of a heavy reliance on

top-down processing.

When forming judgments about others, people often rely on the representativeness heuristic. Unfortunately, this can lead people to

ignore base-rate information

Lola visits Trish in Weston, CT. At some point, Lola asks Trish whether there is a lot of crime in Weston. Although crime rarely occurs there, Trish recalls a recent news story about a Weston drug store robbery. On the basis of this memory, she then tells Lola that there is a lot of crime in Weston. This scenario illustrates reliance on the ________ heuristic

availability

People use the ________ heuristic when they try to categorize something by judging how similar the object is to their conception of the typical member of the relevant category.

representativeness

________ theory focuses on the ways in which we answer such questions as, “Why does my roommate always play his music so loud?”

Attribution

Bo has repeatedly tried to find a job. After each unsuccessful attempt, he concludes that there is just something about him that will always get in the way of success in his life. Bo is displaying a ________

pessismistic

According to ________, our confidence that a particular cause is responsible for a given outcome is reduced if there are other plausible causes that might have produced it.

the discounting principle

Jamal watches how his new boyfriend reacts to a performer at a comedy club. Is he easily amused or is the comedian really that funny? If he compares his boyfriend’s response to the comedian to other people in the
audience, he is focusing on ________ information

consensus

Flora will most likely attribute Jeremy’s quiet, shy behavior to his introverted personality when

consistency is high, and consensus and distinctiveness are low

The ________ is the idea that behavior should be attributed to potential causes that occur along with the behavior.

covariation principle

The actor-observer difference is the tendency to make ________ attributions for one’s own behavior, while making ________ attributions for others’ behavior

situational; dispositional

In her debate class, Mischa was assigned to give a “pro-life” speech on abortion. Before her speech, the teacher told everyone that Mischa had been assigned to take this position, regardless of her true beliefs. Research on the fundamental attribution error suggests that, after class, the other students will

be biased to think that Mischa is truly pro-life

When we engage in a self-serving bias, we attribute failure and other bad events that happen to us to ________, but we attribute success and other good events to ________

external circumstances; ourselves

Modern racism in the United States is characterized by

Prejudice directed at other racial groups that coexists alongside a rejection of explicitly racist beliefs.

Andrew thinks that all New Yorkers are “rude jerks.” This is an example of

stereotyping

According to the economic perspective, intergroup hostility is particularly likely to occur when

material resources are scarce

Mr. Biggs sets up his fifth grade classroom so that students need to teach each other and cooperate in order to do well. Mr. Biggs is applying

jigsaw classroom technique

When experimental groups are created using the minimal group paradigm, which of the following characteristics do these groups have?

Groups are created using meaningless and arbitrary criteria so that there is no real difference between the groups

According social identity theory, Jasson is more likely to stereotype others and express prejudice when

his own self-esteem is threatened

Which of the following scenarios illustrates “basking in reflected glory”?

wearing your school’s T-shirt whenever its football team wins

In one study, participants listened to a play-by-play account of a college basketball game. Results showed that participants who thought one of the players (Mark) was black, compared to participants who thought he was
white, believed that Mark

was more athletic and played better

Patricia Devine’s research indicates that the activation of stereotypes is typically a(n) ________ process, and thus stereotypes ________.

automatic; are difficult for people to control

In one study, white participants had to decide as quickly as possible whether an object depicted in a photograph was a handgun or a hand tool. Each photograph was immediately preceded by a picture of either a black face or a white face. The results showed that participants were faster to identify the

handgun when it was preceded by a black face, and a hand tool when it was preceded by a white face

________ is the fear that one will confirm the stereotypes that others have regarding one’s own group

Stereotype threat

attribution theory

examine how people explain the causes of behavior

internal attributions (and example)

personal/dispositional- attribute a person’s behaviors to their internal characteristics such as ability, personality or effort
→ Example: your student turns in an assignment late; a dispositional attribution would be to attribute it to their individual characteristics of laziness or stupidity.

external attributions (and example)

situational- Attribute a person’s behavior to factors external to the individual, such as the situation, other people, or luck.
→ Example: your students turns in an assignment late; a situational attribution would be to attribute it to a possible family issue at home that may have led to this.

Covariation theory:

High consistency, high distinctiveness, high consensus →external attribution

High consistency, low distinctiveness, low consensus → internal attribution

Covariation principle

The idea that behavior should be attributed to potential causes that occur along with the observed behavior (Does the behavior correlate uniquely with this person or with the situation?)

Consistency:

does the person act the same way in this situation at other times?

Distinctiveness

does the person act the same way in other situations?

Consensus

do other people act the same way in this situation

The Augmenting Principle

People tend to attach more weight to a particular cause of behavior if opposing forces are present that normally would produce the opposite outcome.

Example: I propose to Jill even though her family hates me. The augmenting principle makes us more confident that I love Jill and that caused me to propose.

The discounting principle

People tend to assign less weight to a particular cause of behavior if other plausible causes might have produced it

Example: Joe gets a bad grade on a test; potential causes could be that he is a bad student or that he didn’t study. The discounting principle makes us less confident that joe’s performance is due to lack of ability because there is another cause present.

Fundamental attribution error

Tendency to make internal attributions for others’ behavior even in the presence of clear external causes

Masuda and Kitayama Study on FAE

-Tested US and Japanese college students.

-Speakers randomly pick an envelope and forced to make a pro or anti nuclear testing speech

-Observers watch the speech and infer whether or not the speech reflects the speaker's attitude

-Americans showed FAE, attributing the speeches to the speaker’s personal beliefs instead of any external causes

Cultural differences in attending to context

-            Fundamental attribution error occurred among American participants

-              Westerners are more likely to commit the FAE

-              Collectivists understand situations more and have an interdependent self

Differences between Devine’s dual process and Gilbert’s dual process

Gilbert- for fundamental attribution error

Devine- for prejudice

Gilbert’s dual process model of FAE

Step 1: Automatic internal attribution

Step 2: Correction for situational/external causes

According to this theory, attribution is a two-step process:

Step 2 requires cognitive resources and motivation

FAE occurs because we make automatic internal attributions and then fail to sufficiently correct for situational causes

Actor- observer difference:

Tendency to attribute our own actions to external situational factors but other people’s actions to their internal personality traits

Self-serving attributions

tendency to accept credit for our own successes but deny responsibility for our failures

False consensus effect:

Tendency to overestimate the commonality of our own opinions,beliefs, and behaviors.

3 explanations for False consensus effect

• Selective exposure: only exposed/hang around those who share their own values, so they assume that is the general population

• Egocentrism: You assume you are right so everyone is right with you

• Self-enhancement motive: You want tbelieve that other people feel the same

Effect of schemas on perception and memory (e.g., Librarian/Waitress
study):

Participants watched the same video of the same woman; some participants were told she was a waitress, and some were told she was a librarian. This altered their memory into fitting her actions within a category or stereotype of those two careers. Ex: was she drinking beer or tea? Etc

Schemas and their functions:

Cognitive structures representing a person’s knowledge about a concept

-  Direct attention based on expectations (gorilla study)-  sAffect what we remember (Librarian/waitress study)Mnemonic: my adhd stops me from functioning, it affects my memory and attention

Effect on schemas on perception and memory (Librarian/Waitress):

Participants watched the same video of the same woman; some participants were told she was a waitress, and some were told she was a librarian. This altered their memory into fitting her actions within a category or stereotype of those two careers. Ex: was she drinking beer or tea? Etc

Priming

a technique used to activate a schema: Priming affects social perception

 “Donald” study:

The study used a version of the stroop task to prime participants with positive or negative words; Positive: adventurous, self confident, independent, persistent. Negative: reckless, conceited, aloof, stubborn

→ then read a paragraph about an individual with both positive and negative attributes, and then asked to characterize his personality

→participants who were primed with applicable positive traits were likely to characterize Donald positively whereas participants who were primed with applicable negative traits were likely to characterize him negatively

First impressions:

Asch (1946)- warmth and competence

Todorov (2000’s)- trustworthiness and dominance

Research on accuracy of snap judgments: talking without sound with professor, was pretty accurate. We can make snap judgments sometimes

Example of showing videos of a professor talking without sound and rating them, which often matched their later rating after having had their class. This showed that snap judgments can sometimes be accurate.

Gilbert’s dual process model of fundamental attribution error

According to this theory, attribution is a two-step process:

Step 1: Automatic internal attribution

Step 2: Correction for situational/external causes

Step 2 requires cognitive resources and motivation

FAE occurs because we make automatic internal attributions and then fail to sufficiently correct for situational causes

Self-serving attributions

tendency to accept credit for our own successes but deny responsibility for our failures

False consensus effect (and 3 explanations)

Tendency to overestimate the commonality of our own opinions,beliefs, and behaviors.

Why does this occur?

• Selective exposure

• Egocentrism

• Self-enhancement motive

Top down processes

“theory driven” mental processing, in which an individual filters and interprets information based on preexisting knowledge and expectations

Bottom up processes

“data driven” mental processes, in which an individual forms conclusions based on stimuli encountered in the environment

Confirmation bias

tendency to test a proposition (hypothesis) by searching for info that would support it

Self fulfilling prophecy: intrapersonal vs interpersonal

Intrapersonal: expectations for oneself bring about behavior that is consistent with expectations

Interpersonal: expectations about another person lead that person to behave in ways that confirm one’s expectations

Rosenthal & Jacobson’s study of SFP (teacher expectations)

Told teachers that certain students were doing well and would improve, so teachers gave them more attention and support, and, in turn, they did better.

Snyder et all Study of SFP (male/female interactions)

Talking to females over the phone, showing a photo of either an attractive or an unattractive woman, leading males to have different expectations of how the interaction would go

Primacy effect and Asch’s study of primacy effect

What you hear first is what you are leading with/remembering, primacy effect

Asch; said list of positive words and list of negative words and then judge the person. positive words first more positive feelings and vise versa

Positive and negative framing

Since many things in life are mixed nature, the way it is framed can change the judgement of it. Glass half full, Glass half empty, 75% lean mean vs 25% fat meat, etc.

Heuristics

Cognitive rules of thumb that allow people to think in ways that are quick and easy

Availability heuristic

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory

Representativeness heuristic

Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to match a prototype- matching/guessing based on the archetype

(Social justice woman example)

Base-rate information: information about the relative frequency of events

Base-rate neglect

Ignoring what is actually more likely to be possible in favor of what better fits the stereotype

anchoring heuristic

When making a prediction, people sometimes start with a beginning reference point (or anchor) then adjust it to reach a final decision. This helps explain: fundamental attribution error, and false consensus

Prejudice

a negative attitude or affective response toward a group and its individual members

Discrimination

unfair treatment of individuals based on their membership in a particular group

Micro-aggression:

Intentional or unintentional slights, insults, invalidations, and offensive behaviors that communicate hostile or derogatory messages to minoritized populations.

Modern racism:

Prejudice directed at racial groups that exists alongside the rejection of explicitly racist beliefs

→Discomfort

→Rationalizations

→ Denying the impact of systemic oppression

Cognitive approach to understanding prejudice:

Prejudice stems from stereotyping, which is a part of our human nature and somewhat inevitable.

Stereotypes

beliefs that associate a group of people with certain points

Social categorization

classification of people into groups based on common attributes

Outgroup homogeneity:

perception that members of an outgroup are more similar than members of an ingroup

Illusory correlation

overestimation of the association between two variables- blow up the proportion in your head based on what you distinctly experience

Subtyping

explaining away exceptions to a stereotype by creating a subcategory of people who can be expected to differ from the group as a whole

Self Fulfilling Prophecy (in cross race interviews)

A study in which a white interviewer interviewed a black interviewee was often observed to act in a certain way: sitting farther away, shorter interview, more speech errors.

So in part 2, they got an actor to act in this certain way and showed that the behavior of the interviewee was impacted by that behavior pattern

Shows how the projection of the interviewers behavior created the interviewee to fulfill the prophecy/stereotype expected of them

 Automatic stereotyping/implicit bias

Stereotypes can affect judgments and behavior without our conscious control.

Implicit Association Test

-              Test developed to assess subtle often subconscious stereotypes on prejudice

-              Reaction time task to see how quickly people associate groups with stereotypes

-              Even without explicit prejudice these automatic biases may still exist

Devine dual process model of prejudice

Knowledge of stereotypes is not correlated with prejudice

But stereotypes can be automatically activated and affect judgment even if you are not prejudiced

Level of prejudice→ st activated →controlled process (controlled, corrected or not corrected) → outcome, stay prejudiced become non prejudiced

When your cognitive load is overloaded, it’s harder to do the correction process, making someone with low prejudice prejudiced.

Weapon bias (Payne)

-              Black people are stereotypically associated with violence

-              Hypothesis: black faces prime thoughts about weapons

-             Method:

→Instruction: Identify the object as a gun or tool

→Independent variable: race of target person, self-paced vs snap judgment

-              Results:

→ Self-paced condition: no effect of race

→Snap judgment condition: participants were more likely to erroneously identify a weapon after being primed with a black face rather than a white face

Shoot vs Don’t shoot (Correll et al 2002):

IV 1: Armed vs Unarmed target

IV 2: Black vs White Target

DV: decide as quickly as possible to shoot (if armed) or not shoot (if unarmed)

Results: People more likely to shoot unarmed Black people on accident and shot white armed people less on accident

Realistic group conflict theory (Worchel, 1977):

Prejudice arises when groups are in competition for scarce resources

Robber’s cave experiment

Boys summer camp split up in group and outgroup

On surveys, they said that their friends were those from their own ingroup and begun to call outgroup boys other names and such

Motivational approach to understanding prejudice:

Competition is not necessary! Prejudice can arise whenever there are ingroups and outgroups

Minimal group paradigm

ingroups and outgroups have arbitrary separation (like over and under thinking) but people will still show ingroup bias

social identity theory

group memberships and connections between self esteem and group memberships. Want to affiliate w attractive groups and be proud of them

The Contact hypothesis (& 3 conditions)

Increased contact and interaction between groups will reduce prejudice

-              Equal status

-              Cooperation (shared goals)

-              Equity and inclusion

Basking in reflected glory

enhancing one’s affiliation with attractive groups (ex. Sports fan)

Fein et al Study on denigrating outgroups

-  Study on how discrimination against the Jewish group was more common when self-esteem was threatened.

-  Threat manipulation: test feedback (either got negative or positive feedback unrelated)

-  DV’s Rate job applicant from negatively stereotyped group (Jewish) or neutral group (non-Jewish)

→Told them either negative or positive feedback on a test. Then told separately to evaluate a job candidate (one had a Jewish name, one had an Italian name)

→Negative feedback→ lower self esteem→ chose non Jewish applicant → brought self esteem up

Stereotype threat (and two effects)

a situation in which one could be negatively stereotyped

Effects:

-              Lower performance (under performance)

-              Disidentification

Jigsaw classroom

A cooperative learning environment in which students from different groups work together to learn class material

Reduce prejudice and school violence