Psychology 160 Final

Flashcards for Iris Mauss Psych 160 class (7 cards are Works In Progress)

Describe the 5 Big Themes in Social Psychology and to provide one empirical study illustrating each (WIP)

1. Humans are inherently social

2. Situationism vs. dispositionism

   • Stanley Milgram 1963, 1974

   • Ppl shocked others not because they were bad people, but because of the situation they were put in by the experimenter

3. Construal and schemas

   • Correll et al, 2002

   • Black/white guy holding smth & participants have to decide if its a gun or not

   • Ppl construct their reality which is impacted by social factors

4. Automatic and controlled processes

5. Universals vs. cultural variation

   • Paul Eckman 1967

   • Goes to Papua New-Guinea to see how ppl unexposed to western media express emotions (are they universal or cultural?)

Chapter 10: Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Name and define the three types of intergroup and understand the differences between them

Stereotypes: The thought/belief component

• Beliefs about a group, wherein particular traits are thought to be characteristic of the entire group (can be positive or negative)

Prejudice: The attitudinal/emotional component

• A generalized attitude or affective response toward members of a social group

Discrimination: The behavioral component

• Unfair treatment of members of a particular group, simply because of their membership

Name the three most important theories that explain social bias and or each theory, describe how it explains social bias:

Cognitive Theories:

• Activation of one element of a schema activates the whole schema (stereotype)

• Schemas are applied to incoming information (encoding) and to remembered information (retrieval)

Economic Theories:

• Groups are biased against each other because they compete for limited resources (literally economic but also power)

• Predict pronounced intergroup bias (ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation)

• Ex: Robbers Cave Experiment (Sherif et al., 1961)

Motivational Theories:

• Social identity can bolster self-esteem

• Social Identity Theory

• Ex: Brown Eyes-Blue Eyes (Elliot., 1960)

Explain IAT, what it measures, know how the procedure works and one point of critique

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is used to test a non conscious prejudice toward people by a difference between the average time it takes to respond to images/names with positive/negative association words (ex: older faces/positive words vs older faces/negative words)

Critique: If you do this back to back then the hesitation can be not because of prejudice, but because you’re used to a simple movement for specific words and how you have to adjust to using that movement for different words

Describe the “Robbers Cave” study. Which of the three theories does it support?

Study:

• Researchers separated a group of boys into two teams and had them compete for a pocket knife. The boys were aggressive and expressed lots of out-group bias

Theory:

• Economic Theory (groups are biased bc they compete for limited resources)

Define minimal group paradigm & describe the “Brown Eyes-Blue Eyes” demonstration (minimal groups). Which of the three theories does it support?

Definition:

• An experimental paradigm in which researchers create groups based on arbitrary and seemingly meaningless criteria and then examine how the members of these "minimal groups" are inclined to behave toward one another

Study:

• Kids in a class were divided by blue eyes vs brown eyes

• Brown eyes were said to be lesser than by their teacher

• Blue eyes were discriminated against brown eyes

• Brown eyes did better on a test than before while the opposite was seen for blue eyes

Theory:

• Motivational Theory (ppls social identity can boost their self esteem)

What is “Social Identity Theory”?

A person's self-concept and self-esteem derive from the status and accomplishments of the various groups to which the person belongs (Brown eyes - Blue eyes)

Describe evidence to suggest that derogating outgroup members can improve one’s self-esteem

Bolstering Self Esteem (Fein & Spencer, 1997):

• Participants had their self esteem lowered by IQ test

• Rated (thought to be) Jewish candidates negatively with lower self esteem and normally with normal self esteem

• After criticizing candidates low self esteem participants had an increase in self esteem

Describe construal processes and biased assessments, and how they are informed by stereotypes

Construal Processes: When a stereotype is strengthened due to "confirmation" by biased observations leading to construals that confirm these expectations, thereby reinforcing the stereotype

Biased Assessments: The way people assess others based on (sometimes) inaccurate or stereotypical expectations because of something they've been told, the implications of a joke they heard, or a statistic they misinterpreted

Name and describe the four reasons highlighted in lecture for why intergroup bias persists, sometimes despite people’s best intentions

• Immunity to Disconfirmation: Create an exception to the rule (ex. “Women aren’t good judges” BUT Sonya Sotomayor is a woman AND a good judge so ”Sonya is an exceptional woman”)

• Modern Disguises: Creating a positive stereotype (but not good bc it boxes ppl in & maintains group distinction)(ex. "I’m not biased…I LOVE Asian-Americans - they are so good at math!")

• Automaticity: Biases exist outside of our awareness (implicit biases)

• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Acting on a belief in a way that tends to support the original belief (ex. behaving more coldly toward member of a minority group leads that individual to behave less friendly therefore fulfilling biased beliefs)

Why might seemingly positive stereotypes have harmful effects?

• Gives stereotyped person limited roles and representations (boxes them into roles)

• Masks non-egalitarian behaviors (excuse for bias)

• Can be correlated with hostile attitudes (woman isn’t “feminine enough” so she must be punished)

Chapter 11: Living in a Prejudiced World

What is stereotype threat and what are its results?

The fear of conforming the stereotypes that others have about one's group which appears to undermine performance by increasing arousal (interferes with performance on complex tasks by disrupting concentration) and creating perception that one's group is "suspect" in the eyes of others (lead ppl to "play it safe" by being more obsessed with avoiding failure than striving for success)

Describe one study demonstrating stereotype threat

Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999:

• Some participants were told there was no gender difference on a test they were about to take while others were told that there was a gender difference in favor of men

• When participants were told the test showed gender differences women’s performance dipped because stereotype threats were activated

• When participants were told the test showed no gender differences women’s performance was the same as mens

Identify remedies to prevent stereotype threat (WIP)

Reappraisal —> ex. intelligence is malleable

Self-Affirmation —> ex. thinking abt ur most important values

Describe and critique the Eberhardt et al. (2006) article (“Looking death-worthy”)

Hypothesis:

• “In cases when race is most salient (with black defendants and white victims) black defendants who are perceived as more stereotypically black will be more likely to receive the death penalty than their class stereotypically black counterparts

Variables:

• IVs: Stereotypicality of Black defendants, race of victim

• DVs: Percentage of death sentences of defendants

Phase 1:

• Comparing cases w/ Black defendant &White victim

• Defendants whose appearance was perceived as more stereotypically Black were more likely to receive a death sentence than defendants whose appearance was perceived as less stereotypically Black

Phase 2:

• Comparing cases w/ Black defendant & Black victim

• The perceived stereotypicality of Black defendants convicted of murdering Black victims did not predict death sentencing

• Defendants who were perceived to be more stereotypically Black were more likely to be sentenced to death only when their victims were White

Critiques:

• Correlation vs. causation problem since just bc defendants with more stereotypically “Black” facial features were more likely to receive death sentences (in cases with white victims) doesn’t prove facial appearance itself caused the sentencing outcomes

• The article simplifies racial perception by not deeply examine gender, class, or age differences which can cause defendants to be perceived differently

Suggest one intervention combating intergroup bias, as well as support empirically or theoretically why you expect it to be effective (WIP)

Intervention:

• Creating superordinate goals (Goals that transcend the interests of any one group that can be achieved more readily by two or more groups working together)

Evidence:

• Robbers cave final experiment (making the boys fix a truck, find the leak in a pipe, etc)

Know the ‘don’t shoot study’ study by Carroll et al.(2002; discussed in lecture and the text book), its results, and implications

• Participants are shown pictures of a person with something in their hand (white vs black ppl)

• Measuring what mistakes people make under time pressure based on the race of the person

• Ppl are more likely to shoot black target who is either armed & unarmed

• Reveals implicit biases

In your opinion, is it better to focus on changing attitudes or behavior in addressing bias?

Changing behaviors is easier since many attitudes in ppl are implicit and automatic, changing how we behave in situations is a lot easier since we can take a moment to think before acting

What are the color-blind and the multiculturalism approaches to addressing bias?

Colorblindness: Group membership should not and does not matter

Multiculturalism: Group membership matters and should be acknowledged, respected, and valued

Chapter 12: Groups

Define “group”

A group is a collection of individuals who have relations to one another that make them interdependent to some significant degree (think of the elevator scenario)

What is social facilitation?

Social facilitation is the effect (positive or negative) of the presence of others on someones performance (has boundary conditions like when effort is devalued —> worse on easy tasks, social loafing —> less effort on easy tasks

What is social loafing? When is it most/least likely to occur?

Social loafing is the tendency to exert less effort when working on a group task in which individual contributions can’t be monitored

• More likely to occur in…larger groups where less people are observing

• Less likely to occur in…smaller groups where more people are observing

Identify ways to prevent social loafing

• Track individual contributions

• Reward & value individual contributions

Describe studies that pertain to social facilitation and social loafing

Social Facilitation Studies:

• Kids reel fishing line slower when alone than in the presence of other kids (enhancement)

• Pool players who were experienced played better when observed than unobserved, while pool players who were inexperienced played worse when observed than unobserved

Social Loafing Study:

• The more people playing tug o war, the less an individual tried to contirubte

What Zajonc’s Mere Presence Theory?

The mere presence of others tends to facilitate performance on simple or well-learned tasks, but it hinders performance on difficult or novel tasks

presence —> arousal —> dominant response (we do what we’re automatically inclined to do) —> bad at swimming? worse at swimming! or good at swimming? better at swimming!

What is the link between group and performance during easy vs. difficult tasks?

During easy tasks groups can help us to better, during difficult tasks groups can make us do worse

What is groupthink? What causes it?

Groupthink is when faulty thinking by members of highly cohesive groups in which the critical scrutiny that should be devoted to the issues at hand is overturned by social pressures to reach consensus

Causes:

• When leaders insist that their preferences drive the group's deliberation (intimidates accomplished group members, stifles vigorous discussion, undermines effective decision making)

• If the issue under consideration is so stressful that groups want the reassurance and comfort of premature or illusory consensus

• Strong leaders and the drive to find consensus breed self-censorship (the decision to withhold information or opinions)

What are some ways that groupthink can be prevented?

• Have group leaders refrain from making their opinions or preferences known at the beginning

• Making sure the group isn't cut off from outside input (can provide a fresh perspective and may be able to put the brakes on any rash actions that might otherwise develop)

• Designate a devil's advocate in the group (can help safeguard against rash action and unsound argumentation)

What is group polarization and what are the two main accounts explaining it?

Discuss how groups influence decision-making (e.g., groupthink, group polarization)

What is Zimbardo’s model of deindividuation? What evidence supports it?

Deindividuation is experiencing a loss of individual identity when part of a group

Anonymity + diffusion of responsibility +energizing effect of others —> lessened self observation/evaluation + weakening of internal controls (fear, guilt, etc) —> impulsivity + irrationality + antisocial activity

Evidence:

• Trick or treat experiment where kids in groups or alone were tested on whether or not they’d steal extra candy after being individualized (individualized-alone = least transgressions, anonymous-group = most transgressions

Chapter 13: Aggression

Define aggression

Behavior intended to harm another person who does not want to be harmed

What are some innate and biological factors involved in aggression

• Assisting the survival of one's own offspring increases inclusive fitness (an individual's own survival plus that of their children and other offspring who carry the individual's genes)

• Men are evolutionarily freer to go outside the primary relationship and compete with other men for mating opportunities (want to spread more genes)

What is instrumental aggression & emotional/hostile aggression

Instrumental aggression:

• Inflicting harm in order to obtain something of value (ppl harm others, to gain status, attract attention, acquire wealth, or to advance political and ideological causes)

Emotional/Hostile aggression:

• Inflicting harm for its own sake (the primary aim is to harm another person, either physically or

  psychologically)

What is violence and microaggression

Violence:

• Extreme acts of aggression

Microagression:

• Brief and commonplace daily verbal/behavioral/environmental indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults toward people from marginalized groups

• Perpetrators are often unaware that they engage in such communications

• Can be intentional or non intentional

What are the three sub-sets of microaggressions

Microassault: Explicit racial derogation or purposeful discriminatory actions

Microinsult: communications (verbal or nonverbal) demeaning a person's marginalized identity (ex: asking an employee of color "How did you get your job?")

Microinvalidation: communications that exclude or negate a person's thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality (if a person of color has a bad restaurant experience and someone tells them to "stop being so oversensitive")

Describe what leads to aggression

Situational Factors:

• Hot weather, violence in the media, violent video games, social rejection, economic inequality, and living in environments lacking green spaces

Cultural & Biological Factors:

• Men are more predisposed to violence while women are more predisposed to relational aggression

• Countries that have less inequality are less violent

• Cultures that devalue women have more female-directed violence

Describe the instinct, frustration-aggression, evolutionary, and social-learning accounts of aggression

These accounts explain aggression as an innate drive (instinct), a response to frustration (frustration-aggression), a survival mechanism (evolutionary), and a learned behavior through observation (social-learning)

• Instinctual Aggression Account: We protect offspring with aggression to preserve our spread of genes

• Frustration Aggression Account: Aggression is often a result of frustration:

• Evolutionary Aggression Account: Men are more aggressive in order to more successfully spread their genes

• Social-Learning Aggression Account: Aggressive behaviors can be learned through observation and imitation

Are there gender differences in aggression? If so, what do those gender differences look like? And why might those gender differences exist?

Differences:

• Men are physically more aggressive (80 to 90 percent of incidents involving forms of extreme aggression)

• Women display more relational aggression (gossip, form alliances, practice exclusion and social rejection to hurt others)

Why?:

• Physical aggression helps males in competing with other males

• Anger and aggressive reactions are made more salient to young boys than to young girls

Describe some cultural differences in aggression

• Southerners in the us are more aggressive after being insulted than Northerners

• Countries with a history of frequent warfare, and an emphasis on machismo/male toughness are more aggressive towards women

• Cultures in which stereotypes and biases demoted women to a lower status in society are more aggressive towards women

What is a “Culture of Honor”? (describe the “insult sensitivity study”)

A culture defined by its members' strong concerns about their own and others' reputations, leading to sensitivity to insults and a willingness to use violence to avenge any perceived slight

Insult Sensitivity Study:

• Southerners and Northerners bumped into someone in a hallway who insulted them

• Southerners had higher testosterone levels and shook hands firmer post insult than Northerners

• Southerners are more likely to be sensitive to insults

Describe and critique the Brescoll & Uhlmann (2008) article

Hypothesis:

• “For professional women anger expression leads to a decrease in status while for professional men anger expression leads to an increase in status”

• “people will tend to attribute women’s expressions of anger to internal factors (‘she is an angry person’) rather than to external factors (‘the situation was frustrating’)”

Variables:

• IVs: Gender, Emotion Expressed

• DVs: Ratings of status, salary, and competence of perceived target, assessment of attributions (internal vs external)

Study 1:

• Compared how ppl view men and women in the workplace when they express an emotion (sadness or anger)

• Women and men had similar placements (salary, status conferral, competence rating) when showing sadness

• Men had significantly higher placements (salary, status conferral, competence rating) than women when showing anger

Study 2:

• Compared how ppl view an angry or not angry man/woman in either CEO or trainee status

• Regardless of occupational status the angry woman was accorded lower status, salary, and competence than both the angry male CEO and angry male trainee

Study 3:

• Angry women with external attribution for anger don’t suffer status and salary loss (there was no change in relation to competence)

Critiques:

• The study oversimplifies emotional expression and therefore may exaggerate gender binaries

• The study mostly treats “women” as a single category & doesn’t examine race, class, sexuality, or cultural background which can change reactions to anger

Chapter 14: Morality, Altruism, and cooperation

Define altruism

Unselfish behavior that benefits others without regard to (or despite) the consequences for oneself

Describe why people help or do not help others

Typically people don’t want to get involved or inconvenience themselves OR they do help to relieve their own stress/because they feel empathetic towards the person in distress

Define empathic concern and empathic distress

Empathetic Concern: When we encounter somebody who is suffering or in pain, we imagine what that person must be experiencing (empathy), and that perspective results in an empathic state of concern, which motivates us to enhance that person's welfare, even at our own expense

Empathic Distress: In uncomfortable situations where another person is suffering, the most direct way to alleviate our own personal distress from that situation is to reduce the distress of the other person, and helping behavior is one way to do that

Be able to describe the “Jerusalem-to-Jericho” study & which factors determined helping behavior

• Seminary students are invited to talk about either the “Good Samaritan” fable or job opportunities for students

• In both conditions participants were told that their talk was in another building and “not to rush”, “we’re a little late”, or “hurry!” (time pressure)

• Encounter a slouched over person clearly in dire need of help

• Likeliness to help is determined by how much of a rush someone was in

• Theme of talk didn’t change results

What is the bystander effect?

The greater number of bystanders who witness an emergency, the less likely any one of them is to help (feel less responsible bc there are more ppl there)

Describe one study that illustrates the bystander effect

Darley & Latané, 1968:

• Person is doing a task and sees someone else come in & eventually that person experiences some kind of medical emergency

• 3 conditions, alone condition (2 ppl, confederate & participant), one more person (3 ppl, confederate & two participants), four more people (6 ppl, confederate & five participant)

• The more people present, the less likely the participant was to help or the slower they were to help

What are diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance?

Diffusion of responsibility:

• the phenomenon whereby each bystander's sense of responsibility decreases as the number of witnesses increases

• Mechanism that explains the bystander effect

Pluralistic Ignorance:

• Taking others behavior as a queue

• “no one else is doing anything so I must be overreacting about this”

Describe two strategies to use to minimize the bystander effect

• Identify someone to ask for help (counteract diffusion of responsibility)

• Make it very clear you need help (counteract pluralistic ignorance)

Describe evolutionary theories of altruism

Reciprocal altruism:

• The tendency to help others with the expectation that they are likely to help us in return at some future time (implicit expectations)

Kinship Selection:

• People are more likely to say they would help a close relative than a distant relative

Be able to describe the prisoner’s dilemma and know whether cooperation is a rational decision

The Prisoners Dilemma:

• You’re put into a small cubicle, and the experimenter tells you there's another participant (whom you'll never meet) in a cubicle nearby

• Independently, you both must choose to either "cooperate" with each other (do what will benefit both of you) or "defect" (do what will disproportionately benefit only you)

• If both of you cooperate, you'll each receive $5, if both of you defect, you'll each get $2, if one cooperates and the other defects, the defector will receive $8 and the cooperator will not receive anything

Is Cooperation Rational?:

• If both players choose to defect, they both receive only $2 rather than the $5 they would

  have earned through mutual cooperation

• The "best" choice for each person (defection) is a terrible choice from the standpoint of the two people in combination

Describe “hidden egoism” and “true altruism” psychological theories of altruism

Hidden egoism:

• We feel distress at others' suffering (empathic distress) and help others to feel better ourselves

True altruism explanations:

• Empathic concern for the other (an automatic, emotion-like impulse to help) directly leads to helping (not just to relieve our own distress)

Between the psychological theories of hidden egoism and true altruism, which theory do you endorse more strongly? (supply empirical evidence in support of your opinion)

• True altruism is more effective

• Batson et al.’s (1983)

  • Participants were placed in conditions of high vs. low empathy

  • They could either help someone in need, or escape the situation easily

  • When empathy was high, people helped even when escape was easy

  • Helping wasn’t just about avoiding personal distress

  • Supports the idea that empathic concern can produce other-oriented motivation

Describe Batson et al.’s (1983) study of altruism

• Participants told they would watch another participant (a confederate) complete several trials of a task and receive a shock after each mistake

• Easy-escape condition: Participant has to watch the confederate receive only two of the ten shocks and then can leave while the confederate finished the study

• Difficult-to-escape condition: Participant was told it would be necessary to watch the other person take all ten shocks

• After first two trials the confederate looks pale, asks for water, mentioned feelings of discomfort, and recounts a traumatic shock experience

• Participants report current feelings (used to divide participants into those who were feeling egoistic distress and those who feel empathic concern

• The experimenter gives participant the choice to take the confederate's shocks

• Participants who mostly who acted upon egoistic tendency —> took fewer shocks

• Participants who felt empathic concern —> took more shocks

Application Module 1: Social Psychology and Health

Define stress & fight-flight response

Stress: The sense that demands, threatens, or exceeds one's capacities and resources (we experience a situation that requires more than we can effectively handle)

Fight-Flight Response: Evolutionarily adaptive sympathetic nervous system activation that propels animals to either “fight” or “fly”

What is the relationship between stress and health: Is the stress response adaptive? If not, when is it maladaptive? And why do we have it?

Our stress response was adapted years ago to occur in small bursts (ex. run away from a lion), but now in the modern day it is maladaptive (ex. waiting for traffic, living in poverty, chronic stressors)

Describe the viral-challenge study (Cohen, 1996).

• 420 participants were kept in quarantine for 7 days (isolated from stress & illness)

• Measured stress from life events & perceived stress

• Half got nose spray with a cold while the other got placebo

• No participants w/ placebo got sick

• Ppl with higher life event & perceived stress had higher rates for sickness

• Negative effects of stress on health

What are types of coping and its effect on health?

• Problem-focused coping (healthy BUT only possible w/ control over the situation)

• Emotion-focused coping (can be healthy or not healthy depending on type of emotion focused coping)

What is “problem-focusing coping” and “emotion- focused coping”?

Problem-Focusing Coping: Change a stressful situation (only works if you have control over the situation)

Emotion- Focused Coping: Altering experienced distress (reappraisal, distraction, holding in)

Under what circumstances are the different types of coping adaptive? When might they be maladaptive?

Problem-Focusing Coping: Works quite well if you have control over the situation (adaptive), but not if its something out of your control (maladaptive)

Emotion- Focused Coping: Good for when you don’t have control over a situation (adaptive) but some forms of it can be unhealthy (holding in)

What types of emotion-focused coping appear to be maladaptive?

Adaptive:

• Relaxation

• Distraction

• Reappraisal

Maladaptive:

• Holding stress in

What do we know about the relationship between socioeconomic status and health?

Lower SES means higher annual death rates and infant mortality because of elevated levels and prolonged periods of stress

What is “social support”?

The support we get from people around us (instrumental —> literal physical) & emotional —> ppl to vent to)

Is social support generally good for you? What evidence is there to support your claim?

Yes, social support is good for you showed by Rosengren et al., 1993 (Swedish guys) study. This study showed that men with different levels of stress and high social support had lower mortality rates than men with different levels of stress and low social support

What are the two key ways through which the social context (e.g., social class) influences health outcomes?

• Having lower status can lead to chronic feelings of threat and stress, accompanied by activation of the HPA axis and elevated cortisol

• Lower-SES people may construe their lives in terms of occupying positions of lower status, and this construal may damage their health

What are “sense of control” and “optimism”? How do these two construal processes lead to better health?

Sense of Control:

• A feeling of mastery, autonomy, and efficacy related to influencing important life outcomes

• Diseases and other health problems threaten our basic beliefs about the control we have over our body and our life, and a sense of losing that control is stressful so perceived control can counter that stress and promote better health

Optimism:

• People who are more optimistic tend to have greater happiness, well-being and better health

• People high optimism tend to engage in better health practices and build stronger social support networks

Application Module 2: Social Psychology and Education

Describe interventions that have been shown to impact people’s lives, provide evidence in support of them, and have hypotheses about how they work

Intervention:

• Gave students information that worries about social acceptance are common for all students, regardless of ethnicity, and that their experience was likely to improve in the future

• The students made a videotaped speech that would allegedly be used to show new students what college would be like (standard dissonance manipulation to reinforce standard communication)

Walton & Cohen, 2007:

• Standard communication intervention to black students about social acceptance

• After the intervention, Black students reported studying more, making more contacts with professors, and attending more review sessions and study group meetings leading to higher grades

Hypothesis:

• More indirect social support & confidence —> more motivation to study/work —> better grades

Describe how social fears and academic achievement are linked

• Social fears like social acceptance or failing to make friends can make student begin to wonder whether they belong on campus causing their motivation to decrease, and their GPAs to suffer

• When this mindset is changed students begin studying more, making more contacts with professors, and attending more review sessions and study group meetings, leading to higher grades

Define Dweck’s incremental and entity theories of intelligence. What tendencies and outcomes are associated with these mindsets

Incremental Theory of Intelligence: Intelligence is a malleable quality that can be improved with effort

• Attribute failure to a lack of effort or to the diffculty of the task

• Work more toward goals that will increase ability (even at the risk of exposing their ignorance)

• Work less toward goals that would tend to document their ability

• Improved self esteem

Entity Theory of Intelligence: Intelligence is a fixed, predetermined "thing" people have to one degree or another and that there isn't much they can do to change it

• Blame their failures on a lack of intellectual ability

• Choose tasks that seem likely to indicate they have good intellectual ability (but that provide no opportunity to learn something new)

• Decreased self esteem

Application Module 3: Social Psychology and Law

Define the procedures before a case goes to trial, such as eyewitness testimony, false confession, factors affecting eyewitness accuracy (WIP)

1) Eyewitness testimony: when someone reports their memory of a crime or event.

How it is collected:

- Police interviews of witnesses

- Lineups (live or photo arrays) where witnesses identify suspects

- Written or recorded statements about what was seen

Why it matters:

- It is often highly persuasive in court but not always accurate.

2) Eyewitness memory is reconstructive and can be influenced by many factors:

Perception during the event:

- Stress/arousal: high stress can reduce encoding accuracy

- Lighting, distance, and duration: poorer conditions reduce accuracy

- Weapon focus effect: attention narrows to a weapon, reducing memory for other details

Memory after the event:

- Misinformation effect: misleading post-event information can distort memory

- Time delay: memories decay or become less precise over time

- Source confusion: people may remember information but forget where it came from

Identification procedures:

- Lineup bias: suspect standing out increases false identification

- Feedback effects: confirming feedback (“good job, you picked the suspect”) increases witness confidence, even if wrong

3) False confessions: occurs when someone admits to a crime they did not commit.

How they can occur:

- Coercive interrogation techniques (e.g., long questioning, pressure)

- Fatigue, stress, or fear during interrogation

- Misunderstanding rights or evidence

- Internalized false confessions: suspect begins to believe they may be guilty

4) Why false confessions happen (key psychological mechanisms)

- Compliance: agreeing to escape immediate pressure or punishment

- Memory distrust: questioning one’s own memory under stress

- Suggestibility: accepting information suggested by authorities

Define what jury selection, jury deliberation, jury decision rule and damage award is (WIP)

- Jury selection is the process of choosing individuals from the general population to serve on a jury for a trial.

- Jury deliberation is the process where jurors discuss the evidence and arguments in private after the trial ends.

- A jury decision rule is the standard that determines what level of agreement is required for a verdict.

- A damage award is the amount of money a jury (or judge) orders the defendant to pay in a civil case to compensate the plaintiff

Explain the difference between just desserts motive and deterrence

1) Just deserts motive

Core idea: People should be punished because they deserve it based on what they did.

- Example: A person who commits a serious assault should receive a severe sentence because the act itself warrants it, regardless of future consequences.

2) Deterrence

Core idea: Punishment is used to prevent future crime

- Example: Sentencing someone harshly so others will be less likely to commit the same crime

Define what procedural justice is and list 3 factors that shape a person’s sense of procedural justice (WIP)

Procedural justice refers to people’s perception of how fair the decision-making process is, regardless of the actual outcome.

- It focuses on how decisions are made (e.g., in courts, police encounters, workplaces), not just whether the result is favorable.

1. Voice: people feel the process is fair when they are given a chance to explain their side of the story, present evidence or concerns, and participate meaningfully in the process

2. Neutrality: the depiction-maker is seen as fair when they apply rules consistently, avoid bias or favoritism, base decisions on objective evidence

3. Respect: people care about whether they are treated with politeness and courtesy, dignity and respect, and the acknowledgement of their status as a person