Social Psych Exam 2

Conformity

change one’s beliefs or behaviors to align more closely with those of others, in response to some (real or imagined) pressure to do so

Implicit types of conformity

• Automatic mimicry-our tendency to mindlessly imitate other people’s behaviors and moments

  • Posture, mannerisms, expressions, etc

  • Confederate mimicry study

    • Participant and confederate sitting across from one another

    • Half of the conditions confederate would rub their face, other half they shook their foot

    • Film their interactions, participants were more likely to rub face when confederate rubbed face, and shook foot more often when confederates also shook foot

    • When we start thinking about a behavior we are more likely to do it

    • Fosters good social interaction, increase feelings of liking

  • When do we do this?

    • Feel the need to affiliate

    • Other person is well liked

Explicit types of conformity

Informative social influence

Reliance on other people’s comments/actions as an indication of what is likely to be correct/proper/effective

Example: if we did a class quiz via raising hands, looking around to see how others are responding

Normative social influence

Desire to avoid being criticized, disapproved, or shunned

Example: going along with hazing because you don’t want to be shunned from the group

Factors influencing conformity

Group size-we are more likely to conform to a bigger group (but this levels off~4 people)

Group unanimity-when we have an ally, conformity goes down

Anonymity-when we can remain anonymous, conformity goes down

expertise/status-we are more likely to conform to someone who is an expert or has higher status

Culture-interdependent cultures are more likely to conform than independent cultures

Compliance

When a person responds favorably to an explicit request from another person

When conformity pressure is sufficient enough, it blends into compliance

Normally comes from people with some power over you

Eg your boss asks you to run an errand for her

Foot-in-the-door

ask for a smaller request first that nearly everyone would say yes to, then follow up with larger request (real behavior of interest)

Norm based compliance

Tendency to act like those around us can be harnessed to achieve compliance with explicit requests or implicit suggestions

Descriptive norms

descriptions of what is typically done in a given context

Prescriptive/injunctive norms

what one is supposed to do/ought to do

Reciprocity

people are expected to provide benefits to those who provide benefits to them

Door-in-the-face

1st request is so large/unreasonable, so the second smaller request sounds more reasonable

Compliance/mood

Better to request a favor when someone is in a positive mood

Mood colors how we interpret the favor

Mood maintenance-to sustain our positive mood, we will do something good for another person

When to utilize someone’s negative mood

Not when they’re angry/grumpy

Do when they feel guilty

Obedience

when a more powerful person or authority figure, issues a demand (rather than a request) to which a less powerful person submits

Reactance theory

people experience an unpleasant state of arousal when they believe their free will is threatened and will try to reduce this discomfort by reasserting their autonomy

Social influence

the ways people affect one another, changes in attitudes/beliefs from other presence

Conformity

changing one’s beliefs or behavior to more closely align with those of others in response to some real or imagined pressure to do so

Compliance

occurs when a person responds favorably to an explicit request from another person, can come from people with power over you or even your peers

Obedience

more powerful person issues a demand to which a less powerful person submits

Automatic mimicry

We mimic those around us

Tendency to mimic posture, mannerisms, expressions, and other actions of those around us

Informational Social Influence

reliance on other people’s comments and actions as an indication of what’s likely to be correct, proper, or effective; happens most when we are uncertain about what is correct or how to behave

Normative Social Influence

desire to avoid being criticized, disapproved of, or shunned

Internalization

private acceptance of the position advanced by the majority

Foot-in-the-door

small request to which nearly everyone complies, (person requesting gets a foot in the door), then follow up with a larger request

Pluralistic ignorance

tendency for people to act in ways that conflict their true beliefs or preferences because they think they are not widely shared with others

Descriptive norms

descriptions of what is typically done in a given context

Prescriptive norms

injunctive norms, what one is supposed to do

Norm of reciprocity

people are expected to provide benefits for those who have provided benefits for them

Usually highly effective to elicit compliance

Reciprocal concessions/door-in-the-face

first favor super large, unreasonable, target refuses, then asking a smaller request which usually is granted

Negative state relief hypothesis

taking an action to benefit someone else is one way to make ourselves feel better

Reactance Theory

people experience an unpleasant state of arousal when they believe their free will is threatened, and they often act to reduce

Attitudes definition

Evaluations of a target along a positive-negative dimension

Attitudes – explicit vs. implicit

Explicit: consciously held

Implicit: non-conscious, but still influence our behavior

3 components of attitudes

Affect: how much someone likes/dislikes a target attitude, getting at emotions

Behaviors: tendency to approach vs avoid, something you do

Cognitions: thoughts that typically reinforce a person’s feeling

How to measure attitudes

Likert scale

• People engage with social desirability responding: want to respond in a way that looks best

• Sometimes people don’t know their attitudes about something

Accessibility

• How readily an attitude comes to mind

• Measured via response latency

• Stronger attitude=quicker response

Centrality

• Measure of a variety of attitudes within a domain

• Assess the strength of the associations

• May ask for a bunch of topics like feelings on access to abortion or gun rights instead of asking democrat or republican

Implicit

• An indirect measure of attitudes that doesn’t involve self-report

• Use when people are unwilling or unable to respond

• Ex: IAT

Specificity/generality principle

any single specific behavior will be determined by multiple causes

Belief based

depend on features of the attitude object, our reason for liking it (eg dell computers are reliable)

Usually consciously held

Affect based

depend on how you feel about the attitude object (eg chocolate chip cookies)

Not based on conscious beliefs but rather emotional experience/association

Often more based in automatic associations instead of reasons

Unconscious influences on attitudes

Influences how we feel, not what we believe

conditioning/associations

Associating an attitude object with irrelevant positive or negative things

associate dawn dish soap with baby ducks, make you feel happy when you think of dawn

Embodied cognition

in figuring out what we think, feel, or believe, we will draw on whatever cues are available to us, including what our body is doing

Mere exposure

repetition of a neutral stimulus leads to increased liking of that stimulus-even (especially) when repetition is unnoticed

Beliefs

things you think are true-based on information or knowledge you have about something

Automatic gullibility

We automatically believe everything we hear and see initially-even if we are forewarned it is false

Assumptive worlds

There is a group of assumptions/beliefs about the world (and one’s place in it) that are broadly shared and essential for well-being. Not necessarily conscious

The world is benevolent (rather than evil or dangerous)

The world is fair (good things happen to good people)

I am good, deserve good things, and have control over my life

Attitude

evaluation of an object along a positive-negative dimension

Three components

involve affect, how much someone likes/dislikes an object

Involve cognition-thoughts that typically reinforce a person’s feelings

Involve behaviors-behavioral tendency to approach or avoid

Measuring attitudes

Likert scale-set of possible answers with anchors on each extreme

Response latency- time it takes a person to respond to an attitude question

Quicker, more defined opinion on subject

Implicit attitude measures-measures of attitudes that doesn’t involve a self report

• Affective priming

• Implicit association test

• People might not even realize their attitudes are being measured

• Taps into nonconscious attitudes

Mismatch between general attitudes/specific targets

Highly specific attitudes do a better job at predicting specific behaviors and general attitudes do a better job of predicting how a person behaves in general

Attitudes can predict behavior but not as well as people expect

Cognitive dissonance theory

when people are troubled by inconsistency among their thoughts, sentiments, and actions, then they will expend psychological energy to restore consistency

Effort justification

devote more mental energy to justifying what you’ve done

Induced (forced) compliance

when people are induced to behave in a manner that’s inconsistent with their beliefs, attitudes, or values

When does inconsistency produce dissonance? – want to know the different components here

a given inconsistency will arouse dissonance if it implicates our core sense of self

Also maybe when behavior results in harm of some way; or foreseeable of the negative consequence of our action

Self-perception theory

people don’t always come to know their own attitudes by introspecting about what they think or how they feel about something, but instead look outward to the behavior and the context in which it occurred, and infer what their attitudes must be

Dual-process approach to persuasion

two routes to persuasion: central and peripheral

Elaboration likelihood model

people sometimes process persuasive messages pretty mindlessly and effortlessly and on other occasions deeply and attentively;

Central route – think about when we will use each route

persuasion happens when people think carefully and deliberately about the content of a persuasive message, factors promoting attitude change are quality of argument; motivation and ability factors include if the issue is personally relevant or if the person is knowledgeable in the domain

Peripheral route – think about when we will use each route

people primarily attend to peripheral aspects of a message; superficial, easy to process features of communication that are tangential to the persuasive information itself; motivations and ability factors: issue is not personally relevant, person is distracted or fatigued, message is incomplete or hard to comprehend; factors promoting attitude change: source attractiveness, fame, expertise, number and length of arguments, consensus; rely on heuristics

Elements of persuasion – source, content, and audience

Attractiveness is persuasive when the message isn’t personally important to the people hearing it and when the people don’t have much knowledge about the issue

Message quality: high quality messages are more persuasive in general; want conclusions to be explicit

Vividness: more effective if colorful, interesting, memorable

Fear: advisable to make ad campaigns frightening but include clear concrete info to address source of fear

Culture: individual oriented ads are more effective for independent cultures

Media – agenda control, hostile media phenomenon

Agenda control-efforts by the media to emphasize certain events and topics, thereby shaping which issues and events people think are important

Hostile media phenomenon-we all tend to believe the media are biased against our preferred causes

Attentional biases/resistance

We are inclined to attend selectively to information that confirms our original attitudes

Selective evaluation

selectively evaluate information in ways that bolster our existing beliefs in our propensity, to selectively frame issues in a manner that shines a more positive light on positions we support and a more negative light on positions we oppose; example: patients who receive an unhealthy diagnosis are more likely to downplay the seriousness and validity of the test

Cognitive dissonance

inconsistency between a person’s thoughts, sentiments, and actions creates an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency)

If you are asked to donate at the store and you don’t you may think I may not have donated right now but no one volunteered more than I do, or well, that money wasn’t likely going to charity anyways

Self-affirmation

taking stock of other good qualities/values

Self-perception theory

people come to know their own attitudes by looking at their behavior in the context in which it occurred and then inferring what their attitudes may be; think about how acted, our behaviors are indicative of our attitudes; more likely to happen when our attitudes are weak, ambiguous, or uninterpretable

Effort justification

justifying the time, effort, or money devoted to something that turned out to be dissappointing/unpleasant (lots of looking at this with frats and sororities)

How cognitive dissonance vs. self-perception theory work together

Cognitive dissonance is activated when our attitudes are clear cut and important to us, and we act in a way that goes against those values

Self perception is activated when a behavior conflicts with attitudes that are relatively vague or of less importance to you

Message learning approach

first need to capture attention, then need them to receive/understand what we are trying to convince them of, then retention, need them to remember message and take it with them,

Depends on source, message, and audience

Who says what to whom and with what effect

Effects of source – attractiveness & credibility

Source attractiveness increases attention

Source credibility increases attention and reception

Based on 2 factors

Expertise (issue dependent)

Trustworthiness (what do they have to gain)

Inverted U of Knowledge

must tailor complexity of message to audience; sweet spot between persuasion of message and middle knowledge: can comprehend message but can’t counterargue message

Know your audience matters when creating/targeting an ad

Convince you to buy cookware, may have a very different ad for very specialized people who like to cook eg bon appetite website vs people magazine with a huge variety in audience

Effects of audience

self monitoring and need for cognition

Self-monitoring & interactions with the message

wanting to adapt to be appropriate for that environment; higher in self monitoring would say I am not always the person I appear to be and say yes I would change my opinions or the way I do things in order to please someone else or win their favor; want to keep up with what is popular

As an advertiser, where do you think we would find high self monitors or high in need for cognition

Frequent social media use (high self monitoring)

Certain magazines (high self monitoring)

Low in self monitoring are more convinced for values/functions of items and report more likely to read the arguments/descriptions

High self monitors purchase on the basis of external values such as appearance or status

Need for cognition & interactions with the message

high in need would agree I end up debating issues when they do not affect me personally, it isn’t enough for me that something gets the job done, I care why it works

As an advertiser, where do you think we would find high self monitors or high in need for cognition

colleges/universities (high need for cognition)

Discovery channels (high need for cognition)

Lower need for cognition are more likely to buy on basis of easy heuristics/associations (emotions, close other says it, discounts, celebrity endorsements)

High need for cognition are more likely to buy based on having a strong argument regardless of the source

Effects of message

Attitude change= message relevant (actual content) + message irrelevant factors (eg associations with the source or positive conditioning)

Elaboration likelihood model of persuasion: the likelihood of elaboration about the message arguments and the quality of those arguments will determine persuasion

Elaboration likelihood model of persuasion

the likelihood of elaboration about the message arguments and the quality of those arguments will determine persuasion; two routes to persuasion

Central route

Elaboration (thought) about the message -> conscious system

Favorability of thoughts is determined by the strength of the message

Strong messages (eg more logical arguments) are more convincing than weak messages

Central route attitude changes is both

Persistent across time

Resistant to change in face of future persuasion

Takes a lot more to convince someone based on central route, thinking about message, evaluating solidness of argument, makes outcome much more persistent

Use for: Health related

Safety

Use long term

Price

Peripheral route

Depends on message irrelevant qualities

May change attitude because of association with an attractive/celebrity source or conditioning effects -> automatic system

Because peripheral cues are message, irrelevant, persuasion does not depend on the strength of the message

Peripheral route change is neither persistent across time nor resistant to change

Use for: drinks/food

Beauty products

Less serious (people have good time using products)

What determines elaboration

Motivation and ability

Important to us long term motivates us more

Self relevance-increases elaboration through motivation to process

Pen study: told to evaluate an ad for a pen that had strong or weak arguments about the pen, also told either pen is your gift or not your gift

Strong argument made them feel better about pen especially when it is a gift to you

Positive mood-decreases elaboration, reduced motivation to process

Happy = automatic mind more, more automatic processing so persuaded by more peripheral cues

Need for cognition: highs generally motivated to think so take central route all the time if they have the capacity

Distraction: decreases elaboration by reducing ability to process the message