Flashcards PSYC 221 midterm #2 review

According to Janis' study, participants who were asked to give a speech on a topic that opposed their own opinion on the topic ______.

changed their attitudes more than those who listened to the speech

According to dissonance theory, when making difficult decisions, people tend to ______.

exaggerate the negative features of the unchosen alternative

According to the passage, attitudes and behavior are more strongly correlated in _

individualistic cultures

Attitudes can be important determinants of behavior when they are

strong and specific to a behavior

How does the implicit association test (IAT) measure implicit attitudes?

through the speed of associating pairs of concepts

In the context of group decision-making, transactive memory refers to

the process of dividing a large body of information into smaller portions among group members

Replications of Norman Triplett's bicycle study on how the presence of others affect performance led to contradictory results, which can now theoretically be explained via ______.

the Zajonc solution

Social facilitation is a process whereby the presence of others enhances performance on easy tasks but impairs performance on difficult tasks.

True

The Bay of Pigs invasion is an example of how groupthink can operate successfully.

false

The degree and intensity of political polarization is greater than it has been in any of our lifetimes.

true

social loafing?

A group-produced reduction in individual output on tasks where contributions are pooled.

The reduction in individual motivation or effort when people work in group vs alone

Same person contributes less effort because they're in a group (because other people are available to do the work/job)

Believing that individual performance cannot be evaluated

Ringelman effect

According to evolutionary psychology, what is a fundamental reason for humans' need to belong to groups?

to ensure physical protection from predators

How can Zimbardo's principles associated with deindividuation explain why sports fans can be destructive following their team's win?

Negative emotionality is not a principle, so even excitement can lead to deviant behavior.

How can groups guard against groupthink, according to Irving Janis?

encourage criticism and avoid taking a strong stand early in discussions

What is one reason why people join groups?

to affiliate with others and engage in collective action

What is collective?

2+ people together engaged in a common activity

Little direct interaction with one another

Ex: ppl in a movie theater

Group?

2+ people together interacting with one another

Interdependence here

Interdependence?

The extent to which group members are dependent upon each other to reach a common goal

Ex: people on a sports team

How does the presence of others affect performance?

Presence could mean: being evaluated, people just around you, or being watched

Triplett?

Faster times were recorded when cyclist competed directly against each other compared to when they raced against solo against the clock

Social facilitation theory

Studied kids performed faster when they turned a fishing rod in a group vs when they did it alone

What was the social facilitation theory for Triplett?

That cyclist raced faster against others so performance was increased

Cockroach study: Zajonc et al., 1969?

Constant: cockroaches run a maze

IV: 1: either easy or difficult maze 2: yes spectators or none

DV: how fast they run

For easy roaches ran faster in the presence of others

For hard maze the roaches were more slow in the presence of others

Physiological arousal?

The presence of others can trigger an arousal response increasing heart rate, adrenaline etc

This can especially happen in an unfamiliar situation/ evaluation presentation

yerkes-Dodson:

A model that says some arousal can increase our attention, but too much can impair us

your performance is best when you have a moderate amount of stress or mental alertness (called "arousal"), rather than too little or too much

Social facilitation theory?

the tendency for people to perform better on simple, well-learned tasks and worse on complex or unfamiliar tasks when in the presence of others

the tendency for people to perform simple or well-practiced tasks better when other people are around

Cause the sense of arousal?

Mere presence of others (we feel uncertainty about what others might do that we might have to respond to)

Evaluation apprehension (we feel concern about being judged by others)

Distract conflict (it's about attention, not necessarily arousal, we get distracted from the task by the audience)

Evaluation apprehension: Sasfy and Okun

Extra pressure can interfere with the task at hand

Constant: students perform difficult motor task

IV: 1: non expert audience or expert audience 2: evaluation or non evaluation

DV: performance on the task

The direct and indirect weakened the performance was the results

Ringelman effect?

The tendency for individual members of a group to become less productive as the size of the group increases

(tug of war example)

Social facilitation vs social loafing?

When performance is evaluated we tend to feel higher arousal and social facilitation occurs

When not evaluated we tend to relax and increase social loafing

How to decrease social loafing?

Individualize, identification, rewards, challenge

Individualize in SL:

If you make individual performance identifiable and evaluated

Identification in SL?

Gives members a sense of "us"

Rewards in SL?

Gives members a reason to work hard, punish poor performance

Challenge in SL?

Make members feel like they must all work hard in order to succeed

Cyberloafing?

Online social loafing can include doing anything besides one is supposed to be doing for their work that they're being paid to do

Ex: shopping during work hours

Group polarization?

The tendency of the decisions and attitudes of groups to be more extreme than those individuals

Group discussion enhance the average opinions of its individual members

Group think?

Consensus within the group is encouraged and alternatives aren't considered

What happens to qualify of discussion when agreement becomes more crucial then the details there

Leads to faulty decision making

People tend to minimize conflict by thinking alike and publicly agreeing with each other

High group cohesiveness

Isolation

Strong and directive leadership

Stressful situations to resolve

Stereotypes of grouthink?

Collective rationalism

Stereotypes of outgroups as weak; evil

Self appointed mind guards

Belief in groups moral rightness

Bay of pigs invasion?

Example of group think

Eisenhower had CIA train Cuban exilers to infiltrate Cuba

There were clear warnings not to go through with it but the cabinet downplayed the really bad issues that would occur

1400 cuban exilers were killed or captured

Deindividuation?

People may engage in uncharacteristic behavior in a large group because we become less concerned by our actions in a group

Leads to uncharacteristic behavior

A reduced sense of individual identity

Accompanied by a self awareness, regulation restraint

Stealing candy on halloween Diener et al: (1976)

Had a bunch of candy in a bowl and told trick or treaters to take one

IV: alone identified, alone anonymous, group identified, groups anonymous

Being anonymous in a group makes us feel that we can get away with anything and do behaviors that aren't on character

Individuation?

Making individual self more noticeable

Focusing on self and being more self aware

Watching eyes image decreased littering and increase charity donation

Reduced sense of individual self

According to the contact hypothesis, under what conditions will direct contact between members of rival groups reduce intergroup prejudice?

when the contact is based on equal status and personal interaction

Belonging to multiple stigmatized groups ______.

increases the likelihood of experiencing discrimination

People may perceive outgroup members as homogeneous due to ______.

lack of familiarity and diversity of experiences with outgroup members

People with concealable stigmas may face the burden of ______.

deciding whether and when to reveal their stigma to others

Social identity theory suggests that people favor ingroups over outgroups in order to ______.

boost their self-esteem

Stereotype threat can affect individuals ______.

regardless of their belief in the negative stereotype

The division of the social world into ingroups and outgroups has led to

increased prejudice and discrimination

What is the term used to describe beliefs or associations that link whole groups of people with certain traits or characteristics?

Stereotype

What is the term used to describe the tendency to discriminate in favor of ingroups over outgroups?

Ingroups favoritism

What was one successful educational intervention that aimed to reduce gender bias?

watching high-quality videos that portray research on gender bias and effective methods of reducing it

Persuasion?

Communication with intentions to influence attitudes

Uses ELM

the act of using words, reasons, or feelings to convince someone to change their mind, believe an idea, or take an action

Elaboration Likelihood Model?

2 routes by which people process persuasive messages

Central

Peripheral

Central route?

Direct, explicit, requires logical thinking

Occurs when people think carefully about the content and logic of the argument

When people are influenced by deep cues (the quality of the argument)

An argument in the central needs a connection between its reasons and conclusions

Peripheral route?

Occurs when people focus on incidental information

Influenced by superficial cues (whether the speaker seems like they know what they're doing)

Audience member can be brought to a quick conclusion without honestly knowing what the underlying message of speaker is

When does the central route occur?

Motivation

Do the thinking carefully

We have time to actually consider what the speaker is saying

When does the peripheral route occur?

When we're distracted

Petty, Cacioppo and Goldman?

They studied issues student would care about

What are the IVs for Petty, Cacioppo and Goldman?

Involvement as in did the new rule come into effect when the students were in school or not

Expert so did the argument written come from a professional committee or a student

Strong argument in support of exams or a weak argument was given

What was the conclusion of the Petty, Cacioppo and Goldman?

In situations with high personal then students were more in influenced/ persuaded by the strong argument

In situations with low personal then try were more persuaded by the power of the expert aka if they were or not

Attitudes formed or changed via the central route area consequences?

Stronger (more accessible to memory)

Longer lasting

More resistant to attack

Better prediction of behavior

Attitudes formed or changed via the peripheral route area consequences?

Weaker

Less persistent

Less resistant to attack

Worse predictors of behaviors

Components of persuasion?

Message learning approach

You have independent variables: source, message, recipient, context

All of these are mediated by feelings, thoughts, behaviors

DV: difference in opinion

Persuasion: the message

Fear appeals

Primary effect

Recency effect

Fear appeals:

Persuasive messages that arouse fear in order to direct behavior through the threat of impending danger or harm

Primary effect:

Information presented first is most memorable and influential

Less cognitive load

Occurs when both arguments presented followed by a time gap before a choice is made

Recency effect?

Information presented last is most memorable and influential

Occurs when there is a time gap before reaching a decision

Characteristics of a message that can make it more or less persuasive including?

Whether the listener personally cares about the topic

How the message is presented as in is it face to face or over the phone (method of delivery)

Framing

Framing?

The process of changing the way information is presented to make it more persuasive

ex: making it positive framing

Recipient variables?

Attitude strength

Personality

Intelligence

Self esteem

Need for cognition

What is the need for cognition?

The tendency to enjoy and seek out affordable thinking

Context variable?

How a message is delivered can make it more or less persuasive

Distraction

Forewarning

Repetition

What is forewarning?

Changes what the listener expects

Repetition?

Can create psychological reactants

Mere exposure effect: we are more likely to be conceived by something repetitive

Source variable?

Characteristics of individual

Credibility is the source qualified or trust worthy

Attractiveness

Social power

Credibility?

Expertise

Trustworthy

The 2 factors we consider for the extent we'll be persuaded

How do you establish credibility?

Look and sound confident and certain

Look and sound competent and knowledgeable

Confident is a signal saying inaccurate claims sometimes though

Persuasion: the source

Psychical and or interpersonal attractiveness

Halo effect

Halo effect:

Cognitive bias that a favorable person affects our judgements on topics

Motivated reasoning?

We use reasoning strategies that allow us to draw our preferred conclusions

Conclusions which we are motivated to draw in order for us to selectively attend information that confirms our original attitudes and confirmation bias

Taber and Lodge?

Participants saw a matrix of 16 pro or anti gun control arguments and got to decide on 8 that they would read

Showed that people chose arguments that were conforming to their existing views

Previous commitments?

Persuasive messages have to overcome audiences existing commitments

Ex: brand loyalty or political party

Prior knowledge?

Shows that people who were pro the idea and had the information coming in didn't shift their attitudes

The pro idea people who came in with little information though shifted their attitudes more after hearing an anti message about that idea

Direct persuasion technique?

Norm of reciprocity

Foot in the door and door in the face

Free samples

Scarcity

Social proof

Attitude Inoculation: McGoire

The process of building up resistance to attempts at persuasion.

Small attacks on people's beliefs that engage their preexisting attitudes, prior commitments, and background knowledge, enabling them to counteract a subsequent larger attack

According to Albert Bandura's social learning theory, how do models influence behavior?

Models can influence both prosocial and antisocial behavior through observation.

How does alcohol contribute to increased aggression?

by lowering inhibitions against aggression

How does the homicide rate in the United States compare to that of other high-income countries for homicides involving firearms?

The rate in the United States is 25 times higher.

Reactive aggression is also known as ______.

emotional aggression

What type of aggression portrayed in the media has been linked to an increase in aggression among girls?

relational aggression

Which statement is true about gender and aggression?

Females are just as likely to feel anger, but less likely to act on it than males.

Aggression is behavior intended to harm someone.

True

Displacement is the act of aggressing against a substitute target because aggressive acts against the source of the frustration are inhibited by fear or lack of access.

true

What is the weapons effect?

the influence of weapons on increasing aggression merely by their presence

Rumination is the tendency to perceive hostile intent in others.

False

Social identity theory:

Made by Henry

Explains how individuals derive their self concept from a group

Provides a framework of understanding of how groups form

Ex: if a sports team win we say "we won" even though they didn't participate because the team becomes our self concept

Brewer expands it to include outgroups

Through its process of social categorization show how we see outgroups vs ingroups

Stereotypes:

Ruled in cognitive biases

They're also mental shortcuts to categorize people

Beliefs about traits, attributes, and behaviors of members of various groups

Prejudice?

Is affective (emotional)

Uses feelings of like or dislike

The attitude/ feeling directed towards others because they're members of a certain group

Discrimination?

Actions tell us what behavior we take