PSYC260 FINAL

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Correlational methods

• A method in which researchers systematically measure two or more variables with the goal of describing the relationship between the two variables

  • Ex. TV violence and aggression in kids

Advantages/Disadvantages of Correlational Methods

• Advantages

  • Quantify a relationship between 2+ variables

• Disadvantages

  • Need to pay attention to survey features like order effects to maintain accuracy

  • Correlation =/= causation

Experimental methods

• A method in which researchers have the goal of establishing causality and they can claim that one variable causes another because of two key features: random assignment, and holding everything constant except the manipulated variable (IV)

Advantages/Disadvantages of Experimental methods

• Advantages

  • Experiments can determine causality

• Disadvantages

  • More complex to conduct

  • Need to balance internal and external validity

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

Two routes to persuade people - to change their attitudes, beliefs, or behaviours

• Route 1: Central route

  • Direct, relevant, and logical messages

  • Useful when audience is motivated/able to listen to/pay attention to central argument, and when audience cares about the topic at hand

  • Results in thinking carefully on the content, and examining its logic and evidence + long-term change in thought

• Route 2: Peripheral Route

  • Surface level cues rather than logic

  • Useful when audience is not motivated to pay attention/think carefully, and when audience doesn’t care about the topic at hand

  • Results in use of heuristics and attention paid to superficial cues to draw conclusions

Cognitive dissonance

Feeling of discomfort caused by holding two conflicting cognitions or conflicting cognition and behaviour

Motivates people to remove the discomfort by either

• 1. Changing the thought (ex. Recycling isn’t that important)

• 2. Changing the behaviour (ex. Start recycling soda cans)

• 3. Making a special exception (ex. I would normally recycle, but there was just no convenient recycling bin to place the soda can in this time)

Normative Social Influence (NSI)

We conform to be liked and accepted by others

• We want to have relationships, be liked and belong, so we try to be similar (vs different) than others

• NSI leads to:

  • Public compliance: we match and do what other people are doing (ex. Rachel smoking)

• BUT NOT:

  • Private acceptance: a genuine belief that the copied thoughts or actions are correct (ex. Rachel doesn’t want/believe it is ok to smoke)

Asch Line Study

• Testing conformity in a social setting

• How far will people go to fit into the group, will they ignore obvious truths?

• Consisted of a number of trials in which participants were asked to match a line with another line in length, whilst 4 other confederates often voted unanimously incorrectly to mess their judgements up

• Very often the participants would vote incorrectly despite knowing the “other participants” were incorrect as to not stand out

• Participants publicly complied, but did not privately accept!

• When did people not conform?

  • When asked to privately write their answers

  • When even one of the “other participants” voted against the group’s decision

Milgram’s obedience experiments 

• Learner + teacher experiments w/electric shocks up to 450V

• 80% of people continued after learner verbally protested

• 62.5% of people delivered maximum shock

Social Impact Theory

Suggests that when and whether people conform will depend upon 3 key features:

• Strength: how psychologically important the group is to you

• Immediacy: how physically close/proximal people are to you in terms of time and space

• Number of people: the overall size of the group-- more people = more pressure EXCEPT after a certain threshold

  • In smaller groups, having 5v4 or 6v5 people can add pressure. Once the group is larger (ex. 25v26), more people doesn’t add much pressure

Informational Social Influence (ISI)

When people conform or follow others to gain information about how to act or think (ex. When we look to others for advice)

• Common in ambiguous or new situations when we don’t know how to act/think

• Informational social influence has both public compliance (ex. Do what others do)

• AND…

• Private acceptance (ex. Believe people are right and this is the right thing to do/think)

• We look to others for advice a lot, especially in unfamiliar situations!

• Hannah’s france train stop example (do i get off the train? Panic? Remain seated? Checked with other passengers to see what to do
  

More likely when…

• People are in ambiguous situations

• People are in crisis situations

• When an expert is present

Aggression

An intentional behaviour done to cause pain-- either physical or psychological (ex. verbal/emotional)

• Can be direct-- done face-to-face (ex. Physical assault, teasing right to face)

• Can be indirect-- not done face to face (ex. Gossiping and spreading rumors abt someone behind their back)

Types of Aggression

• Hostile aggression: goal is to inflict physical or mental pain, often due to feelings of anger

• Instrumental aggression: inflicting physical or mental pain is a means to achieve another goal

Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory

States that we learn to engage in various social behaviours-- like aggression and violence-- by observing and imitating others

Bandura’s Bobo doll experiments

• Kids came to lab and watched an adult interact w/bobo doll, then given chance to play with bobo doll w/their behaviour analyzed for aggression

• Control condition: watch a non-aggressive interaction between the adult and bobo

• Experimental condition: watch the adult beat, kick and throw bobo

• Kids in control condition w/o modeled aggression did not display aggressive behaviour

• Kids in experimental condition w/modeled aggression enacted that behaviour AND went beyond, coming up with new ways to harm the doll

Catharsis

• Blowing off steam by performing, watching or imagining an aggressive act in an inappropriate, non-threatening way

• Concept from Freud’s aggressive impulses-hydraulic system: if aggression builds and doesn’t get released in a safe way, it may explode

Reducing Aggression: effective strategies

• Provide non-aggressive role models

• Offer an immediate apology for any misdeeds (ex. Being late) to diffuse someone’s frustration to ensure it doesn't translate to aggression

• Empathy and perspective taking: putting yourself in someone’s shoes, imagining what their emotional experiences or personal circumstances might be like

Social identity theory

• Social categorization

  • Humans classify themselves and others into various social groups

  • Completely natural and inescapable

  • Functional: helps us understand our social world

• Social identity

  • group/category becomes part of self-concept

  • Groups provide meaning, guidance, self worth

  • Ingroups (us) vs Outgroups (them)

Stereotype threat

• When the anxiety of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group places pressure on the individual, which in turn worsens their performance on the stereotype-relevant task, thereby confirming the stereotype

• Can happen to anyone based on a salient negative stereotype

• Can happen without the presence of discrimination

• The target does not believe in or agree with the stereotype

• Happens to those most identified with the group being stereotyped

• Happens to those working at the frontiers of their ability

• It is possible to overcome

Prejudice

A judgement or evaluation of a group and its members, often a particular feeling toward a group

• Primarily affective

• They include emotions and evaluations

• Can be positive, though more often negative

• They are a normal-- albeit unfortunate consequence of social categorization and comparison

• Can be overt/covert (ex. explicit/implicit prejudice)

Explicit prejudice

Prejudice that is consciously held about a specific group

• We know we have these

• Can be consciously controlled

Implicit prejudice

Prejudice that is unconsciously held about a specific group

• We don’t know we have these

• Unconscious and automatic

• Based on quick associations that reflect internalized societal messages

• Can be held by ingroup and outgroup members

Stereotypes

Social beliefs shared by members of a group about the shared characteristics of members of a group

• Primarily cognitive (thoughts or beliefs about a group, including one’s own)

• The normal result of social categorization

• Can be positive, negative, or neutral

• Can be functional

  • Simplify our social world

  • Provide basic knowledge about groups

  • Guide our social interactions

Discrimination

Behaviours or actions, usually negative, towards an individual that are based on their actual or perceived membership in a certain group (e.g., gender, race)

• It is based in behaviours

• Is positive and negative

• Can be overt/covert 

• Can be perpetuated by individuals, groups, and institutions/systems (not always consciously or intentionally)

Method of reducing stereotype threat

Raising awareness of stereotype threat (Johns et al., 2005 experiment)

Contact hypothesis

Intergroup contact under appropriate conditions can reduce prejudice

Conditions:

1. Equality between groups

2. common/shared goals

3. Intergroup cooperation

4. Supportive social norms/authorities

Jigsaw classroom

A cooperative teaching method intended to desegregate classrooms and reduce prejudice by facilitating productive intergroup contact experiences

• 1. Lesson broken into chunks

• 2. Jigsaw groups & independent work

• 3. Expert groups & presentation development

• 4. Teach chunk to jigsaw group

• Conditions of contact:

  • 1. Equality between groups

    • All given same responsibilities

  • 2. common/shared goals

    • Learning the lesson and doing well

  • 3. Intergroup cooperation

    • Reliance on each other to put lesson material together and to learn

  • 4. Supportive social norms/authorities

    • Class structure and teacher

Bystander Intervention Decision Tree

• Notice event

  • In hurry/distracted → less helping

• Interpret as emergency

  • Pluralistic ignorance: a phenomenon whereby bystanders assume nothing is wrong because everyone else looks unconcerned

    • Feedback loop forms where nobody raises cause for alarm and people simultaneously use these cues to inform their own reactions. Thus, people in that context come to share an overall ignorance to the idea that an emergency may be happening

    • Recall smoke-filled room study where having confederates together in smoke filled room caused people to leave much slower than when alone

• Assume responsibility

  • Diffusion of responsibility

    • As more people are present at an emergency, people are less likely to help because there is a diffusion of responsibility: that is, each bystander’s sense of personal responsibility to help drops as the number of bystanders increases

    • Ex. as the only witness, more incentive to call 911

    • Ex. as one of many witnesses, less incentive to call as someone else might

• Know how to help

  • Lack of knowledge/skill

• Decide to help (weigh costs)

  • danger/embarassment

Ways to increasing helping

• 1. Positive mood

  • People who are in a more positive mood tend to be more willing to help

  • Ex. people who receive a windfall to boost their positive mood had higher helping rates than people who did not have their positive mood induced

• 2. Prosocial modeling

  • Seeing another person model prosocial behaviour can increase helping

  • Ex. people who do (vs don’t) see an instance of someone with car trouble being helped were more likely to stop and offer help to someone having car trouble down the road

• 3. Education

  • Greater education about prosociality (ex. The bystander effect) can increase helping rates

  • Ex. students randomly assigned to learn about the bystander intervention (vs. an unrelated topic) were more likely to help a student in need 2 weeks later, even among some unconcerned confederate bystanders

Tri-part model of subjective well-being (happiness)

• Positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) are your moment to moment feelings

  • PA and NA are orthogonal, meaning they are largely independent of each other

• Life satisfaction is a more stable, overarching assessment of your life

Does money buy happiness?

• Generally money is positively linked with happiness

• The happiest people experience the greatest benefits of higher income

• For the unhappiest people, the happiness benefits of money cap at 100k

• Depends on how you spend it!

  • Whillans, Dunn, Smeets, Bekkers, & Norton (2017)

    • Increasing wealth also leads to time scarcity

    • Buying time promotes happiness

  • Dunn, Gilbert, and Wilson (2011)

    • Buy experiences over things

    • Buy small pleasures instead of big ones

  • Dunn, Aknin, & Norton (2008)

    • Spending money on others (“Prosocial spending”) not on ourselves is associated with greater happiness

Goody Bag Paradigm (Aknin, Dunn, Proulx, Lok, & Norton, 2020)

• ~700 participants rated baseline happiness

• Received extra $2.50 for participation in form of a $2.50 voucher

  • Had the option to purchase goody bag or keep cash

• Randomly assigned to one of 2 spending conditions:

  • Personal spending vs Prosocial spending

• If purchased, received thank you note reinforcing condition

• Finally, rated their post-spending happiness

• Choosing to buy a goody bag for a sick child in the prosocial condition led to greater positive emotions than participants in the personal spending condition

5 key predictors of attraction

1. Proximity

2. Similarity

3. Reciprocal liking

4. Physical attractiveness

5. Misattribution of arousal

Social exchange theory

Sees relationships through the lens of costs and benefits

Feelings about your relationships depend on 3 things:

• Cost/reward ratio - how many good vs bad things there are about the relationship

  • Costs and rewards = what you are getting out of the relationship 

  • Ex. your outcomes will be poor if costs > rewards

• Comparison level - what you feel like you deserve (i.e., your standards)

  • How you expect to be treated

  • Ex. high comparison level - expect to be treated well, high standards

    • Predicts relationship satisfaction - if our outcomes are lower than our standards, = not happy!

• Comparison level of alternatives - alternatives to the relationship (other people you could be with, or being single)

  • High comparison level of alternatives

  • Has an attractive potential alternative to the relationship!

  • Predicts relationship stability - if costs > rewards and there are attractive alternatives = less committed!

Different types of love

• Companionate love

  • Intimacy + commitment

  • Feelings of care and motivation to stay in a relationship with that person

• Romantic love

  • Intimacy + passion

  • Close emotional bond, with passion/sexual arousal etc.

• Fatuous love

  • Passion + commitment

  • passion/sexual arousal, and motivation to maintain relationship

• Consummate love

  • Intimacy + passion + commitment

  • Close emotional bond, passion/sexual arousal, and motivation to maintain relationship

Investment model

• The level of investment in the relationship also matters for commitment!

• Investments can be both tangible and intangible

• Greater investment = people more committed

Equity theory

• = happiest in relationships where the reward/cost ratio is similar for both people involved

• People tend to feel uneasy when we are over or under benefited

• We don’t keep track of fairness in the same way across different types of relationships (ex. Short vs long-term relationships)

• Communal relationships = relationships with especially close others

  • Don’t like to be repaid immediately

  • Don’t keep track of who contributes what

  • Don’t feel exploited when contributions are not returned

• Exchange relationships = relationships marked by exchange of services

  • Repay debts immediately

  • Keep track of who contributes what

  • Feel exploited when contributions are not returned

Adversity and Conflict

• The commitment calibration hypothesis: impact of adversity depends on the strength of commitment and level of adversity faced

• If people are in a high commitment relationship and they face some low-level adversity

  • The relationship isn’t going to struggle very much and will likely be just fine

• If people are in a low commitment relationship…

  • And they face some high-level adversity

  • The relationship will be challenged and will likely end!

• If levels of commitment and adversity are equally matched, relationship will likely be strengthened!

The 4 horsemen

Avoid the 4 horsemen: the most harmful attitudes/behaviours that predict when a relationship will end

• Criticism: attack your partner’s character

• Defensiveness: whining, seeing oneself as the victim

• Stonewalling: withdrawing, silent treatment

• Contempt: treat partner poorly through mockery, body language, insulting names, complete disregard for them

The role of positive emotions

Interaction dynamics approach:

• Experiencing positive emotions matters for sustaining a relationship, and the absence of positive emotions can be harmful

• Within first 10 years of marriage, experiences of negative affect like contempt predicted the early demise of relationship

• But after 10 years, not experiencing positive affect was more likely to predict the eventual demise of a relationship