Social Psychology TEST 2 !!

Social cognition

• The investigation of how people think about others

  • Doesn’t matter if the “others” are real or imagined

• Comes from the accuracy motivation

  • We want to be proven right about how we think about ourselves and others

  • Prefer the perception of accuracy rather than actual accuracy

Cognitive Misers

Humans are these, meaning our brains prefer to preserve cognitive resources rather than use them

Information Overload

When our demands in our cognitive system are greater than resources available

Sacrificer

• Use decision criteria that is good enough for the situation (stronger cognitive misers)

• Often make mistakes 

• Tend to be happier

Maximizer

• Spend more cognitive resources to think things through at a greater rate (weaker cognitive misers)

• Often worried about making the wrong decision

• Tend to have a lot more anxiety and a lot more negative emotionality

Automatic System

• does not require awareness

• lacks intention

• Requires no effort

• Has a huge amount of efficacy 

• Relies on knowledge structures

Deliberate system

• does require awareness

• system requires intention

• Requires effort

• More control

Knowledge structures

Organized packs of information stored in memory

Types of knowledge structures

Schema, script, priming, framing, and thought suppression

Schema

• Shortcuts of the mind

• Packs of information that your brain accesses to fill in gaps/unknowns

• Can be wrong

• When something doesn't fit in with the schema it makes us uncomfortable

  • Makes rethink the schema – maybe even the entire world

  • Often find ways of talking around the violation to ignore trying to get rid of it

    • Confirmation bias

Stereotypes

Person version of a schema

Kelley (1950) - Schema experiment

• Gave students a biography of a guest lecturer

• Half the students got a biography that activated the warm and friendly stereotype

• Half the students got a biography that activated the cold and unfriendly stereotype

• All watched the same lecture

• They were asked to rate the lecturer on their traits 

• Those who got the warm biography rated the lecturer as more friendly and those who got the opposite biography rated the prof as more unfriendly 

Scripts

• Expectation on how an event should go

  • Birthdays, Christmas, morning routine, experience at the movie theater,...

Priming

Where you are activating a stereotype with the expectation that it will influence your behavior. Most research is focused on behavior components.

Bargh, Chen, & Burrows - Priming experiment

• People being primed with words in relation to being rude, polite, or neutral

• How often the participant would interrupt the researcher while they were talking to a confederate

• People who were primed with rude words interrupted about 66% of the time

Framing

• The way that a question is asked, influences the knowledge structure that is activated

• Generally separate questions in either:

  • Gain-framed

  • Loss-framed

Gain framed

Focused on the positives

Loss framed

Focused on the negatives

Thought suppression

• Trying not to think about something

• Utilizes the automatic

  • Looking out for potential triggers and trying to avoid them

• Utilizes deliberate

  • Trying to divert your attention 

• Humans are really bad at this

Types of decision structures

Heuristics, available, simulation, and anchoring

Heuristics

• Hallmark of a decision structure

• Short cuts for decisions

Representatives

• Tied to heuristics

• Making a decision based on how similar it is to the “typical” case 

Prototype

The typical case that you are comparing to in heuristics

Barnum Effect

Idea that you can make statements that are so vague and so representative, that they could apply to almost anyone. This is something that fortune tellers utilize.

Cause to Effect (Heuristics)

• Assumes that the magnitude of the cause will be approximately the same magnitude of the effect

  • EX) Don’t expect something that's a small event to cause big consequences and vise versa

  • More common in North America vs Asia

Available

Usually make a decision based on how easily it comes to mind

Schwarz et al. (1991 - Available

• Asked people to think of 6 times they were assertive or 12 times they were assertive

• They then asked the participants to rate themselves on how assertive they are

• The 6 group rated themselves as more assertive

  • This is because 6 instances are easier to come up with than 12

  • Leading to the conclusion that they are quite assertive 

  • Where when asked to think of 12 times people were assertive, it took longer to think of leading to doubt in assertiveness

Emotion vs Fact

• Factual based decision focused on the amount of information

• Emotional decision is based on how easy it is to get the information

Chou & Edge (2012) - Available

• More people who spend time on facebook believe that their friends lives were happier than they are and the world was less fair 

• This is all based on curated information vs personal experience  

Simulation

• Making a decision based on how easy it is for you to simulate in your head

• EX) Belief that you are more likely to die by a shark attack vs a vending machine because its easier to simulate a shark attack than death by vending machine

Archoring

• Using other people's decision to make your own decision that's going to be similar to theirs

• EX) if you are at a trivia and the question is how many miles is the earth away from the moon, the first person to answer anchors the rest of the answers (1st person says 100,000 miles, 2nd person says 120,000, 3rd person says 150,000 etc…)

Englich, Mussweiler, & Scratch (2006) - Anchoring

• Judges were given recommendations (anchor) from an irrelevant source (journalist) and a relevant source (prosecutor)

• They either received a high anchor (sentence of 25 years) years and a low anchor (sentence of 5 years)

• Not a large difference between the relevant and irrelevant groups despite being from different sources and one being more trusted than the other

Attributions

• Explanations that we make for ourselves for why people do things and events occur

• These explanations are not exactly based in reality

Self Serving Bias

• We take credit for our successes and we blame others for our failures 

• It's because of who we are that we succeed

• It’s because of the situation that we fail 

Weiner (1972)

• Internal vs External Attributions

• Stable vs Unstable Attributions

Internal vs External Attributions

• Internal attribution is about the person (we got a good grade because we are smart)

• External attribution is about something outside of the person (we got a bad grade because the professor grades harshly)

Stable vs. Unstable Attributes

• A stable attribution is unlikely to change

• An unstable attribution is likely to change

Fundamental Attribution Error

• Says that we have the tendency to over emphasis internal attributes and under emphasis the external attributes 

• More common in individualist cultures than collectivist cultures

• More likely to make internal attributes about ourselves and external attributes about others

• Tied to the actor/observer bias

Actor/Observer bias (fundamental attribution error)

• When we are the actor it is easier to blame the environment because we have a wealth of knowledge about ourselves and our situation

• Whereas an observer only has so much information and makes an assumption about the individual rather than the situation

Covariation Model

• Created by Kelley in 1973

• Goes into

  • Consensus

  • Distinctiveness

  • Consistency

Consensus (Covariation Model)

• Ask yourself: Do others act the same way towards the target? 

• If the answer is yes we are more likely to make an internal attribution

• If the answer is no we are more likely to make an external attribution

Distinctiveness (Covariation Model)

• Ask yourself: Is this how this person always behaves?

• Assuming this is how a person always behaves = stable attribution is made

• Assuming this is not how they always are they = unstable attribution is made

Consistency (Covariation Model)

• Ask yourself: Does the actor and environment always interact in this way?

• If the answer is yes then an external stable attribution is made

• If no then an internal unstable attribution is made

Actions vs Intentions

• Tendency to judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions

• Relates back to the actor/observer bias

Conformity vs Individuality

• We assume that others are conforming

• We assume that we are acting from a place of individuality

• EX) when something becomes popular you engage with that product because you genuinely like it and others are engaging because they want to fit in with the crowd

Confirmation Bias

• Tend to process information that fits with our beliefs and tend to ignore/forget information that doesn't fit with our beliefs 

  • Gives us more strength in our conviction

Optimistic Bias

• Generally believe that bad things wont happen

  • Both to us and in general

  • Way of protecting us from the bad and chaos of the world

Overconfidence Bias

• We have far more confidence and belief in ourselves than we should

• Overconfidence in our own abilities 

• Especially occurs with things that we don’t have a lot of knowledge about 

• Growth in expertise nips this in the butt

Negative Bias

• We have a tendency to remember negative things more than positive things

• This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective 

  • We need to remember things that could hurt us so we can avoid them in the future 

  • Self-preservation

Illusory Correlations

• Beliefs that we run into more instances that support our stereotypes/beliefs than we actually do

• EX) people over 6’4 really like broccoli, therefore you believe that more people over 6’4 really like broccoli 

• Creating evidence that is not truly supportive to your argument

One-shot (Illusionary Correlations)

• Weird and extreme event that you don't have an explanation for and to explain the event you create a stereotype 

• People who like x must also like x (thus explaining the extreme event)

Person-who reasoning

• Question a well established finding, because you know someone who violates that finding

• EX) Victoria with the Nexplanon

Base-rate Fallacy

• We ignore base rates and think that we are the acception

• Acknowledge it most of the time but just think we are the exception

• EX) people still buy lottery tickets and still smoke cigarettes because they think they are the exception to losing or getting the adverse health effects

Alternative Outcomes Effect

• Where one thinks that a random previous event has impact on a future random event 

• EX) If you flip a coin and it lands on hands 5 times surely the next flip should be heads as well

Hot Hand Effect (Alternative Outcomes Effect)

• Ways of explaining why people keep gambling regardless of the risks

• If people keep winning (4 in a row) they assume they will keep winning 

  • The idea of if they give up now they're missing out on their next win

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

The idea that because we believe something will happen we end up making it happen

False Consensus

• Believe that more people agree with us than they actually do

• EX) Flat earthers believe there are a large number of flat earthers

False Uniqueness

• We assume that we are more unique than we actually are

• More prominent in individualist cultures

Perseverance

Once we have a belief/expectation we don't want to abandon it so we will do things to preserve that belief

Darley & Gross (1983) - Perseverance

• Gave people a file that said that the child was academically gifted or academically poor

• Participants watched a video where the child mentioned in the file did pretty mid on a verbal academic test

• Participants were then asked if the child should be admitted to the gifted program or in a program for students who need more academic help

• Those who were given the gifted file stuck with the belief that the child was gifted and should be submitted to the gifted program even remembering them getting more answers right than they actually did and the opposite happened for the academically challenged file.

Illusion of Control

• Believe that we have more control/impact than we actually do

• This can be about ourselves and the world

Counterfactual thinking

• Where we imagine alternatives to past events 

• Upward

  • Where we think of a better instance than what actually occurred 

  • EX) if i didnt spend 10 dollars last night then i could buy coffee today

• Downward

  • Where we can think of a worse outcome than what actually occurred 

  • EX) if I hadn't been 5 minutes late I would have been stuck on the highway

First instinct Fallacy

• Shouldn't change our answers on exams/Go with our first instinct 

• EX) Times when we changed our answer and got it wrong stick out a lot more than when we change our answers and got it right

• In actuality, when we go back we have more information, making our second answer more likely to be correct

Bodenhausen

• When we are going to have a lot more error and biases on our off time (when the brain is not necessarily running on 100%)

• EX) more likely to fall prey to error and biases in the morning if you are a night owl

How to avoid failure

• Deliberate processing

• meta cognition

• Being humble

Deliberate processing

Most errors and biases happen during our automatic processing so if we take the resources and time to use our deliberate system we can prevent these errors and biases from being influential

Meta-cognition

• Thinking about our thinking

• Asking ourselves why we think x?

Emotion

• Conscious state that is a reaction to an external event or stimuli

• Requires a precipitating incident (a trigger)

• Because emotions are tied to specific external factors they tend to be shorter 

• Usually specific

Mood

• State that is not connected to some external event or stimuli 

• Moods tend to be longer

• Usually general

Affect

Positive or negative feelings that are a reflexive reaction

Emodiversity

• Degree to which you experience a range of emotions

• Even though emotions are a reaction there are people who experience emotions more strongly than others (tend to be more happy/tend to be more sad)

  • These people have less emodiversity

Stimulus (ES) - External Stimulus

Thing that is causing the emotional reaction

Arousal (PA) - Physiological Arousal

What is happening internally in your body

Appraisal (CA) - Cognitive Appraisal

What is happening in your mind/brain

James-Lange theory of emotion

• ES → PA → CA →Emotion

• Assumes that all emotions create a unique emotional arousal when this is not the case

• Good for studying diverse emotions

• Facial Feedback hypothesis

  • Pen in mouth experiment 

  • You are stimulating physiological arousal which exposes you to that emotion 

Schacter Singer theory of emotion

• PA → ES → CA → Emotion

  • Experience the PA, you attach it to a ES, then your CA is going to take into account the ES that you have attached, and determine how you feel based off your relationship to that ES

• Still are reacting to a stimulus but you aren’t exactly aware of what that stimulus is 

• EX) Walking along and then all of a sudden you get creeped out, you look around (for the ES) that is triggering this emotion

Negative strength

• Negative emotions are stronger than positive

• Feel negative emotions more intensely, they last longer, and matter more to us

Misattribution of appraisal — Seek Understanding

• We want to understand the PA

• We don't like experiencing a change to our homeostasis without explanation so we seek understanding

• We are often wrong in our understanding

Misattribution of appraisal — Excitation Transfer

Sometimes have a very high level of PA and end up attributing it to a different ES than actuality 

Dutton & Aron (1974) -- Misattribution of appraisal

• All male participants

• Either have participants cross a rickety bridge or a secure bridge (independent variable)

• At the end of the bridge was a very attractive women asked them to fill out a survey, they were then given a number to call if they had any more questions (dependent variable)

• Those who crossed the scary bridge were more likely to call the woman

• Those who crossed the scary bridge misattributed their PA from the bridge onto their feelings for the woman

• NOTE: watch a scary movie with your date!

Arousal and performance

• Yerkes-Dodson Law

• Arousal allows you to focus your attention

  • Too little arousal and you aren't paying enough attention to what's around you

  • Too much arousal and you're not attentive to what's around you 

  • Being right in the middle allows you to have balance be able to focus

Yerkes-Dodson Law

• Optimal level or arousal for an optimal level of performance 

• One of the reasons why people may be performing really well all season but when they get to the finals they fall behind

  • They get to a really high level of arousal and forget how to play

Happiness

• Strongest and most researched emotion

• What matters?

  • Things that are recognized as a success (either culturally or biologically)

  • Research shows that children do not make you happier

• How do you increase?

  • Increase our social connections

    • Really important for happiness

    • Humans are very social creatures

    • Huge amount of consequences when not around people

  • Money (?)

    • Money does increase happiness up to a certain amount 

    • If you make enough money to take care of your needs with a little left over you increase happiness but after you make more money than that it plateaus and it doesn't make you happier 

  • Think positively

    • Actually works (ugh)

    • Positive outcomes, hopes, goals, things you love and care about

Abel & Kruger (2010) - A happiness study

• CORRELATIONAL STUDY

• Coded rookie baseball cards

• Either coded them as a full smile(FS), partial smile(PS), and no smile(NS)

• They then looked at the lifespan of the rookie baseball players 

• They found that people who smiled in their card lived 7 years longer than those who didn't

Infants and happiness

• At 3 months infants are able to differentiate happiness from other negative emotions

• At 7 months infants can tell the difference in intensity of their emotions

• Wired for sociality 

  • The first development of vision is near sited because reading faces is very important for infant development - especially reading happy faces

Anger

• Response to a threat or provocation 

• Unique

  • Most negative emotions are avoidance emotions – you want to ignore/avoid the stimulus that causes the emotion

  • Anger is unique because it is an approach emotion and causes you to go towards the emotion  

• Adaptive

  • A way of notifying those around you that you are reading to fight

  • By showing anger it encourages ES to back away

  • Anger superiority effect

    • People tend to be able to recognize anger more quickly in other people than other emotions and tend to look at anger for longer 

• Dealing with anger

  • Conceal

    • Hide our emotional response

    • We are bad at this – especially for anger

  • Catharsis

    • Let out our angry response

    • Oftentimes prolongs that anger 

  • Rid

    • Overcomes/override the approach motivation and leave the situation

    • Tends to be the most successful

Disgust

• Quintessential avoidance emotion

• Feel a very strong avoidance reaction(closing our eyes, our mouth, turning away, pinching our nose)

• Emotion has the strongest gender difference

  • Women experience disgust more often and more longer amounts than men  

Ekman et al. (1987) - Culture and Emotions

• The person who is recognized as determining which emotions are universal and which are not

• Did this by visiting 37 countries over 5 continents, including countries that have very little exposure to the outside world

• Shows people from these countries photos of people experiencing different emotions and asked people to identify these emotions and took photos of them expressing those emotions 

• FINDINGS: found there were 6 emotions displayed and recognized across these different cultures

  • Happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise

    • Later Ekman added contempt as the 7th emotion

6/7 universal emotions

Happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise

• contempt was added later as a 7th

Matsumoto & Willingham (2009) - Culture and emotions

• Compared people who were born blind to seeing individuals during a series of different events such as winning a race vs losing a race

• Found that both seeing and blind people experienced and displayed recognized universal emotions

  • Suggesting that these emotions are innate

Larson & Pleck (1999) - Gender, culture, and emotions

• Wanted to look at gender differences

• Gave adult men and women beepers that could go off and when they went off they would have to fill out surveys about their emotional response 

• Independent variable = gender

• Dependent variable = emotional response

• Found no gender difference with some evidence to suggest men found a stronger emotional response

Love and Gender difference

• Research says that men are more emotional about love

  • Record it first

  • Happier about it

  • Stay in love for longer

  • Experience more distress when it ends

• Suggested reason

  • Women tend to have stronger social circles than men

  • Women can find this emotional connection through their friends where men find their emotional connection through their primarily partner 

Self-Conscious Emotions

• Require conception/recognition of self

  • Comparing yourself to others

• Motivation & Regulation

  • Self conscious emotions are important for motivating us for various tasks and behaviors and regulate behaviors and tasks 

• Tend to emerge Later

• Facial Expression

  • Very different from the 6th universal emotion

  • There are typical regulated expression for these emotions 

• More about others than self preservation

Social Comparison Emotions

Where you are comparing yourself to someone else

• envy and jealousy

Envy

• Requires to people (at least)

  • Envier (person experiencing envy) 

  • Person being envied (typically someone similar to the envier)

• We want something that this other person has

Benign Envy

• Self focused

• Feel disappointment that we don't have the object of our desire 

  • Motivates us to work to achieve it

Malicious Envy

• Other focused

• Feel anger that you don't have the object of your desire

  • Want to destroy that thing 

    • “If I can't have it, nobody can”

• Often feel malicious envy when you can’t get the object of your desire

Jealousy

• Specifically about relationships

  • You feel there is a threat to your relationship

  • Requires 3 people minimum

    • Person experiencing the jealousy 

    • Person with whom they ^ have the relationship

    • Person threatening the relationship

      • Does not have to be an actual person can be imagined

Gender differences in Jealousy

• Women tend to report feeling more jealous in regards to an emotional threat

• Men tend to report feeling more jealous in regards to a physical threat 

• Evolutionary perspective can explain these differences

Self Evaluative Emotions

Evaluating how you are vs another person in a cultural rule

• Guilt/shame

• Embarrassment

• Pride/hubris