140 exam 1

social

individuals, groups, family, cultures, and their socially learned beliefs

influence

how the real or imagined presence of others and their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors impact an individuals thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

social facilitation

how does the presence of another person impact out behaviors

first social psych experiment

children reeled in fishing line alone and together, 50% were faster with a coactor, 25% slower, 25% no difference

ants excavating dirt

DV = amount of dirt excavated per ant, did best when in pairs and in 3s

latency to begin excavating

DV = minutes before excavating, took least amount of time in pairs and in 3s

research that found the opposite of others helping

learning to solve a maze, rebutting philisophical arguments

the role of arousal

the mere presence of others increases arousal, arousal heightens activation of dominant responses

simple/well learned tasks

dominant response is correct, performance improves

complex/new tasks

dominant response is incorrect, performance worsens

cockroach dominant response

run from light to dark place

cockroach mazes

easy = straight line from light to dark hard = 90 degree turn to go from light to dark

cockroach study

easy maze = completed the maze much quicker when there was an audience than when alone, hard maze = took much longer to complete the maze when their was an audience than when alone

pool hall study

DV = % of shots made, good players got 10% better when watched and bad players got 8% worse

biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat

challenge = when resources meet or exceed demands threat = when demands exceed resources

physiology of social facilitation study

task learnedness (well learned vs unlearned) x audience (with vs without), physiological responses were measured along with performance, physiological states of challenge (more cardiac output less vasoconstriction) and threat (less cardiac output more vasoconstriction)

manipulation to physiology study

phase 1 = participants were trained to learn a rule of a task phase 2 = participants were randomly assigned to either continue a task with the same rule vs work on a new task while being observed or alone

results of phase manipulation

unlearned = got more correct when alone well learned = relatively = % correct when alone and when there is an audience

physiological pattern of social facilitation effects

when people are given a hard task (unlearned) → threatened state when people are given an easy task (learned) → challenge state, increases arousal

arousal and social facilitation

arousal induced by having another person explains social facilitation, arousal tends to help performing well learned tasks but hurt performing unlearned tasks

social loafing

the tendency for individuals to exert less effort when working in a group than when working alone

social facilitation vs social loafing

• individual outcome context → social facilitation 

  • Performance is judged individually 

  • Others are an audience 

  • Leads to increased effort and performance (especially on simple tasks)

•  Collective outcome context → social loafing 

  • Performance is judged as a group 

  • Individual contributions are less visible (especially in a large group)

    • Leads to reduced effort

choking

the failure of a person, or team, to act or behave as well as anticipated or expected

choking in a lab

working memory (btwn subjects) x task demand (within subject) x pressure (within subject), working memory was measured and divided into high vs low groups, task demand = high vs low difficulty of cognitive tasks, pressure = practice (low) vs real task incentive for good performance (high)

results of choking study

• Low working memory

  • Performance in easy task = high accuracy on tasks 

  • Performance in difficult task = high pressure -> performed better than low pressure 

• High working memory 

  • Performance in easy task = high accuracy on tasks 

  • Performance in difficult task = low pressure -> performed much better than high pressure 

choking in real life performance

video analyses were conducted of all penalty shootouts ever held in 3 major soccer tournaments, more prestigious players choked more

does having a supportive audience help or worsen performance

• People prefer a supportive audience 

  • Wins more satisfying, yet losses potentially more painful

• Home field advantage is real 

  • Teams win >50% of games at home across sports 

  • Contributing factors 

    • Crowd support -> increased confidence/arousal 

    • Familiar environment 

    • Referee bias 

• Sometimes home field disadvantage happens 

  • Under high pressure situations home advantage can weaken or reverse 

choking

• overthinking something you already know how to do 

  • Happens when you’re skilled and experienced 

  • Under pressure you start consciously controlling actions that should be automatic 

  • You think too much about mechanics instead of just doing 

  • Too much thinking 

panicking

• reverting to your most basic instincts 

  • Happens when you’re overwhelmed or outmatched 

  • Instead of overthinking you stop thinking strategically at all

  • You fall back on primitive, instinctive behavior 

  • Too little thinking

world series game results

• Home teams lose higher pressure games more than visitors 

  • Last game and game 7

choking under pressure of friendly faces

• Task of general intelligence 

  • Stand in front of another person 

  • Counting backward out loud by 13s starting from 1470

• IV = friend observing vs stranger observing 

• Friend 

  • Correct = 17.2

  • Number attempted = 18.9

• Stranger 

  • Correct = 23

  • Number attempted = 25.8 

• Results 

  • More correct in stranger condition (choking in front of friends)

  • People tried more in stranger condition than in friend condition 

  • Why = people are too cautious 

    • Don’t want to fail in front of people you know 

presence of others

alters behavior via arousal, direction of effect depends on task difficulty/dominant response, evaluation and pressure, attention and self focus, core principle = we are fundamentally sahped by the presence of others

conformity

changing one’s behavior or beliefs in response to some real or imagined pressure from others

automatic social influence

others’ behavior activates habitual/reflexive ways of responding, mimicking

informational social influence

others’ behavior provides info to guide our behavior, we conform because we assume others’ interpretation of the situation is more correct than ours

emotion contagion

the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person’s and, consequently, to converge emotionally

mechanism of emotion contagion

• Sequential order

1. Mimicry 

2. Physiological feedback 

3. Emotional convergence 

• Evidence 

  • Lab = facial mimicry predicts mood alignment 

  • Field = emotions spread in groups, teams, social networks 

  • Digital = emotional tone spreads via online interactions

chameleon effect study 1

• Participants interacted with confederates in a lab study 

• A confederate either periodically touched their face or shook their foot 

• Participants were videotaped and coded for mimicking behaviors 

• Results 

  • Yellow bar = subject shakes foot 

  • Grey bar = subject touches face 

  • Confederate touch face 

    • Subjects more likely to engage in behavior (grey bar)

  • Confederate shake foot 

    • Subjects are more likely to engage in behavior (yellow bar)

the consequences of mimicry

• Participants interacted with a research confederate and were randomly assigned to a mimicry or no mimicry condition 

  • mimicry condition = the confederate mimicked nonverbal behaviors of participants 

  • No mimicry condition = the confederate did not mimic 

• After the interaction participants were asked how much they liked the confederate and how smooth they thought the interaction was 

• Results 

  • Grey bar = confederate mimicked 

  • Yellow bar = confederate didn’t mimic 

  • How much did you like confederate and how smooth was your interaction 

    • Liked interaction more when the confederate mimicked behavior 

    • Makes you think that the confederate is like yourself 

      • Like people who behave like we do 

emotional convergence over time

• 60 heterosexual undergrad couples 

• Measures: time 1 and time 2 (6 months later)

  • Emotions measured in a lab 

    • Emotional responses to positive, negative, and mixed events 

  • Relationship satisfaction and outcome

• Eliciting emotions 

  • Thinking about a recent good event (0-8 scale)

  • Thinking about a current concern (0-8 scale)

  • Emotional similarity = correlations between partners’ responses 

• Emotion (correlation values)

  • Total 

    • Time 1 = .30

    • Time 2 = .56 

    • Increase = .31

  • Positive 

    • Time 1 = .32 

    • Time 2 = .51

    • Increase = .23

  • Negative 

    • Time 1 = .43

    • Time 2 = .61

    • Increase = .24

  • Correlation value increases the longer you have been in a relationship

    • Begin to feel emotions more similarly 

• Relationship outcome = the people who are more similarly compatible during time 1 stay together longer than those that do not 

• Power dynamics 

  • Total 

    • Participants with more power = .19

    • Participants with less power = .69

  • Positive 

    • Participants with more power = .12

    • Participants with less power = .50

  • Negative 

    • Participants with more power = .27

    • Participants with less power = .53

  • The people who have more power do not change very much but those that do not change more to become more like the other person in the relationship 

emotional similarity leads to

better relationships, better teamwork, greater empathy, greater interpersonal coordination, greater stress reduction

facts that impact contagion, mimicry, convergence

• Studies found that the process is not as automatic as one thought 

• Interpersonal closeness/liking 

  • Stronger emotional contagion occurs between people who like each other or who belong to the same group 

• Power 

  • Lower power individuals are more susceptible to emotional contagion than high power individuals 

conforming to an emerging norm

• In a dark room looking at a dot on a screen

• Asked how much the dot moved over time  

• 3 groups (A, B, C) began to converge over the sessions to give the same answer 

informational social influence

consensus building in uncertain situations, wisdom of the crowd, social learning

wisdom of crowd

• Many are smarter than the few 

  • Wisdom conditional to

    • Diversity in knowledge 

    • Decentralization (no one dominant voice)

    • Good aggregation methods 

  • Wisdom becomes vulnerable when 

    • Overconfidence 

    • Lack of diversity 

    • Herd behavior (too agreeable)

social referencing

• Comparing one’s emotional and behavioral responses to those of others in order to change the reaction to match the perceived appropriate response 

• Not automatic mimicry -> interpretation + decision making 

• Mostly studied in developmental psych 

  • Visual cliff study = role of nonverbal behavior in uncertain behaviors 

cultural learning

• acculturation 

  • A situation where a  person has to learn new cultural rules and norms 

  • Subtle interpersonal rules are mostly learned through repeated observations and correctly inferring patterns 

  • The rate of learning depends on a person’s implicit aptitude