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Assumptions of Social Psychology
Behavior = Person x Situation; Behavior depends on socially constructed reality; Behavior is strongly influenced by social cognition; Behavior is best understood through the scientific method; Social psychology relies on the scientific method to understand human social behavior.
Collectivistic Cultures
Value group harmony even at the expense of personal views; Interdependent self-construal; Holistic mental style:sensitivity to connections and context.
Individualistic Cultures
Express own views even at expense of social harmony; Independent self construal; Analytical mental style:sensitivity to separation and contrast.
Self-Concept
A person's knowledge or beliefs about who they are; includes traits, social identities, and experiences.
Self-Schemas
Specific beliefs about the self that organize and guide the processing of self-relevant information.
Accessibility
The extent to which something in memory is easily retrieved; Greater accessibility has a greater influence on attention, memory, and judgment.
Self-Reference Effect
Information about self is remembered particularly well.
Social Comparison Theory
People acquire knowledge about who they are by comparing themselves to others, especially when no other objective information is available; Motivation to self-evaluate; Downward comparison; Upward comparison.
Self-Esteem
The belief that one is a person of worth; positive feelings about oneself; Acquired by living up to standards that a person deems important; Shows "trait" and "state" like properties.
Self-Awareness Theory
When we focus on ourselves, we evaluate and compare our current behavior to our internal standards and values.
Attributions and Attribution Theory
Three Stage Model of Attributions; Form internal/dispositional attribution; Attempt to adjust by considering situation.
System 1 Thinking (Experiential)
Emotional, automatic, quick, not intentional, largely non-conscious.
System 2 Thinking (Cognitive)
Reason and rational, slow, controlled with conscious intention, deliberative.
Confirmation Bias
The tendency to favor information that confirms or strengthens one's beliefs or values.
Priming
Exposure to one stimulus may influence a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention.
Elaboration Likelihood Model
Identify the motivation and ability of your audience; Use the central route for high motivation and ability; Use the peripheral route for low motivation and ability.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Motivated to maintain consistency between cognitions, sentiments, and actions; Dissonance occurs when we detect inconsistency, which prompts efforts to restore it.
Conformity
Changing behavior/beliefs to be in line with others (majority).
Compliance
Responding favorably to another's request.
Obedience
Changing behavior/beliefs in response to someone who has power.
Informational Social Influence
Special influence that results from the use of other people's comments/actions as a source of information; Conform to be correct.
Normative Social Influence
Social influence that results from the use of other people's comments/actions as a cue to what is desired; Conform to be accepted/liked by others.
Social Norms
A group's implicit (or explicit) rules for acceptable behaviors, values, and beliefs.
Group Size and Conformity
Conformity decreases after the group grows larger than three individuals.
Compliance Techniques
Private acceptance, public compliance.
Need to Belong
Humans have a strong, fundamental need to belong; Ostracism undermines people's sense of belonging, control, self-esteem, and meaningfulness.
Social Facilitation
Being in the presence of others improves individual task performance.
Social Loafing
The phenomenon of a person exerting less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when working alone.
Stereotypes
Generalized beliefs about the attributes of a group.
Prejudice
Preconceived negative orientation to an individual based on their membership in a group.
Realistic Group Conflict Theory
Prejudice results from negative feelings based on a real or perceived conflict over resources.
Discrimination
Unjustified negative behavior toward an individual just because they're in a group.
Social Categorization
Ingroup vs. Outgroup; Ingroup can be a source of self-esteem.
Perspectives on Stereotypes/Prejudice
Economic Perspective, Motivational Perspective, Social Identity Theory.
Being Target of Stereotypes/Prejudice
Stereotype Threat, Self-Affirmation.
Spending money on others
The act of using money to benefit someone other than oneself, which has been found to increase levels of happiness.
Gratitude
The recognition and appreciation of a gain that someone else is responsible for, which can promote wellbeing.
Prosocial behavior
Actions and thoughts focused on enhancing the well-being of others, which promotes psychological flourishing and increases well-being in the short and mid-term.
Practicing Forgiveness
Actively telling a person that you forgive them for their actions, leading to higher subjective well-being.
Morality
Functions to constrain behavior, improve cooperation, and bind people together.
Moral Disengagement
Mental strategies used to justify immoral actions, reducing cognitive dissonance and maintaining positive self-views.
Fairness
Investment in fairness norms, including distributive fairness (judgment of fair share of rewards) and procedural fairness (fairness of processes to receive rewards).
Belief in a Just World
The belief that the world is fair, which can lead to distortions in interpreting events and reactions to fairness violations.
Morality and Self-Control
Immoral actions often result from self-control failures, where the ability to override selfish impulses depends on one's capacity.
Optimism and Control
Optimism and self-control are traits linked to positive life outcomes, including physical health.
Self-Affirmation and Health Decisions
Self-affirmation reduces defensive resistance to health-risk information and increases readiness for health behavior change.
Terror Management Health Model
Conscious thoughts about death can lead to health-oriented responses aimed at removing death-related thoughts and maintaining a sense of meaning and self-esteem.
Emotion Regulation Strategies
Cognitive reappraisal involves reinterpreting negative emotional events, while rumination keeps individuals stuck in repetitive thoughts about the event.
Heuristics
People intuitively cooperate or defect depending on which behavior is beneficial in their interactions.
Inconsistent actions trigger dissonance when:
Our behavior is freely chosen.
Our behavior wasn't justified.
Behavior has negative consequences.
Negative consequences are foreseeable.
informational social influence is often used when:
in ambiguous situations, when a situation is a crisis (war atrocities), or when others are experts.
private acceptance
continuing to report the group norm even in private
public compliance
reverting back to individual judgment in private
ostracism
the action of intentionally not including someone in a social group or activity, which undermines people's sense of belonging, control, self-esteem, and meaningfulness
Stereotype Content Model
stereotypes fall along two continuums, warmth and competence (allowing for complexity/ambivalence).
Competition drives ____?
warmth. Non-competitive others are judged to be more warm than competitive others.
Status drives ____?
competence. High status others are judged to be more competent than low status others.
competition can be reduced by _____?
cooperation towards a shared goal. (Robbers Cave study).
Aggression
physical or verbal behavior (or lack of behavior) intended to hurt someone.
hostile/affective aggression
driven by anger; aimed at inflicting pain or injury.
More commonly thought of in terms of aggression.
Goal is to inflict harm.
instrumental aggression
aggression that is a means to some goal other than causing pain.
Goal is something other than causing pain, more akin to war, where aggressive acts are being engaged in, but they are a means of achieving some other political or economic goal.
alcohol and aggression
Alcohol disrupts executive functions– reducing the person’s ability to control their aggression.
Frustration Aggression Theory: The FAH theory
holds that when people are frustrated, they have a need/drive to aggress against objects of frustration… but not always possible.
the fah theory results in:
Displacement: transferring hostile feelings to other targets.
Triggered displaced aggression.
Frustration must be arbitrary.
frustration occurs when:
occurs when goal-directed behavior is blocked, which in turn triggers aggression.
Turns itself into anger. When people experience frustration, it puts them into a position where they are more likely to aggress.
triggers of aggression
Ostracism: people are very sensitive to threats to status and social standing.
Physical heat and overcrowding
Unpleasantly warm environments and population density predict more violent crime (correlation).
Income Inequality
The more income inequality that is within a country, the more homicides are committed in that country.
These contexts are more likely to cause feelings of social rejections, mistrust, frustration, and anger
effects of violent media on aggression
Watching violent television is consistently linked to higher rates of aggression.
*effect larger than the link between calcium and bone mass.
Fairly consistent across cultures.
catharsis
the discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.
Not effective— when people are angry, the extent to which they engage in an aggressive act to release that anger only increases the feelings of anger and likelihood of aggression.
negative state relief hypothesis
we help to reduce our own distress. (Cialdini).
We experience distress when we observe others in distress, which drives an egoistic motive to reduce our own distress— behavior to help in order to soothe our own distress.
Bystander Intervention Model
Five steps to helping in an emergency:
Notice help is needed
Interpreting as an emergency:
Assume responsibility:
Know appropriate forms of assistance.
Choose to implement a decision.
pluralistic ignorance
assume others are interpreting an event in a certain way and using that assumption to determine our own ignorance of the situation; private beliefs diverge from what people think the group believes.
diffusion of responsibility
people are less likely to intervene as the number of people who could help increases.
the 3 fundamental psychological needs are essential for growth and expansion:
Autonomy: experience authorship and ownership over one’s life.
Relatedness: experience mutually beneficial relationships.
Competence: experience control and mastery of knowledge and outcomes.
Intrinsic motivation
inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise one’s capacities, to explore and learn. Provides fulfillment.
distributive fairness
refers to our judgment about whether a party is receiving fair share of the available rewards.
procedural fairness
refers to the fairness about the processes taken to receive the available rewards.
blaming the victim
interpreting the negative outcomes that occur to others internally so that it seems that they deserved them.
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