Social Psychology Midterm -

Social Psychology

The scientific investigation of how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.

confirmation bias

the tendency to seek information that confirms or supports an existing explanation.

external validity (mundane realism) vs internal validity in experiments

experiments should have high internal validity and intentionally have low external validity.

--> this is because if the experiment takes place in a lab or highly controlled environment that doesn't necessarily reflect the true environment in the outside world.

subject effects

a participant's awareness of being studied, their expectations, or individual characteristics influence their behavior in an experiment, altering the outcome and potentially biasing the results

experimenter effect

the researcher may unintentionally communicate cues and cause participants to behave accordingly to researcher's expectations (confirmation bias)

double blind

Procedure to reduce experimenter effects, in which the experimenter and participants are unaware of the experimental conditions.

Examples of non-experimental research

1. Naturalistic observation

2. Survey Research

Archival Research

What are the core ethics in experimentation

1. Informed consent

2. avoid harm

3. confidentiality

4. debriefing

Experiment: Muzar Sherif (1935) - Norm Formation

- participants were placed in a room individually and were asked to estimate a stationary light's movement

- participants repeated the task in group setting, sharing their estimates aloud --> within each group answers converged

Experiment: Soloman Asch (1951) - Group Pressure & Conformism

- participant was asked to compare length of 1 of 3 lines but was surrounded by actors (confederates) who gave incorrect answers

- people conformed in group setting to group's wrong answers

- showed impact of group pressure on individual behavior and judgement

Experiment: Festinger (1957) - Cognitive Dissonance based on the size of the reward

- participants were paid either $1 or $20 to lie to other participants that the experiment was fun

- those paid $1 or $20 both reported that experiment was fun

- those paid $1 changed their attitudes on the task to reduce cognitive dissonance

Experiment: Milgram (1963) - destructive obedience

- participants instructed to deliver increasingly painful electric shocks to person

- revealed many obey people of authority even when it conflicts with personal conscience

Tajfel (1970) - Intergroup discrimination

- boys randomly assigned, consistently favored their own group when distributing rewards

- showed how easily in-group bias forms

Zimbardo (1971) - Lucifer effect in Stanford Prison Experiment

- participants quickly adopted abusive or submissive roles demonstrating how ordinary people can commit harmful acts when situational power and dehumanization take over (Lucifer effect)

internal validity (ch. 2)

extent to which experiment measures what it intends to measure

external validity (ch. 2)

extent to which results apply to real-world setting/world

Nature vs nurture (ch. 2)

nature: genetics

nurture: environment/life experiences

thought (ch. 2)

the internal language and symbol that we use. It is often conscious or very close to awareness

cognition (ch. 2)

refers to mental processing that can largely be automatic and that is much more strictly related to how the brain is "wired"

social cognition (ch. 2)

the approach in social psychology that focuses on how cognition is affected by wider and more immediate social contexts.

Asch's Experiment (warm vs cold)

- had students read one of 2 lists with 7 adjectives describing a hypothetical person (lists differed only by 1 word being warm vs cold)

- results showed that the brain is wired to give more weight to certain traits rather than others

- warm/cold = power characteristics because they tell us abt a person's safety and whether or not we should trust them

Configural Model by Soloman Asch (1946)

- we first form impressions by latching on to certain pieces of information (central traits) that have a disproportionate influence over the final impression

- people tend to employ 2 main and distinct dimensions for evaluating other people:

--> socially good/bad

--> intellectually good/bad

Bias in the Formation of Impressions

Primacy Effect: the traits presented first have a disproportionate influence on the final impression of if the person was overall good or overall bad

Recency Effect: the information presented last has a disproportionate influence on the final impression of a person

Physical appearance and first impressions

- people assume physically attractive people are good interesting, warm, outgoing, and socially skilled

steryotypes

assumptions based on widely accepted assumptions

schema

a cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus and includes the relations among those attributes

--> allow people to make sense of a situation in an efficient way

scripts

schemas that represent knowledge about events

person schemas

knowledge structures about specific people

role schemas

specific to roles

self schemas

beliefs and ideas people have about themselves

anchoring and adjustment (ch. 2)

when making inferences we often need a starting point (anchor) to use as a baseline and adjust subsequent inferences

*people use themselves as anchors

attribution (ch. 3)

a process in which we assign characteristics, causes, and values to understand the social world around us

--> allows us to interpret and evaluate someone's behavior

The Naive Psychologist Theory (ch. 3)

Based on 3 principles:

1. because we feel that our own behavior is motivated rather than random, we look for the motivation in other people to understand their behavior.

2. We tend to look for stable and enduring properties of the world around us: personality traits and abilities

Correspondent Inference Theory (ch. 3)

Jones and Davi's theory (1965) explains how people infer that a person's behavior corresponds to an underlying disposition or trait

Attributional styles (ch. 3)

People differ in the amount of control they feel they have

- internals believe that they have significant personal control over destiny

- externals believe they have little control over what hapens to them

Actor-Observer Effect

the tendency to make situational attributions for our own behaviors while making dispositional attributions for the identical behavior of others

why is a persuasion strategy to repeat the same message over and over again?

- people in groups are not always smart

- if you keep repeating the same event over and over again eventually they will buy it --> sleeper's effect

Relationship between attitudes and behaviors

the relationship is generally weak

- but under the right circumstances, attitudes can predict behaviors

persuasion and attitude are central components in ______ and __________

propaganda; comercial interest

Yale Approach (persuasion and attitude ch. 6)

1. the Communicator

-- great expertise, good physical looks, and extensive interpersonal and verbal skills make a communicator more effective

2. The Message

properties of the message also affect persuasion

--> if intelligent crowd: more effective to present both sides of argument

--> if less intelligent audience: better to present only one side

3. The Audience

people with low and high self esteem are less persuaded then those with moderate self esteem

Dual Process of Persuasion involves

1. Elaboration Likelihood model: when people receive a persuasive message they think about the argument it makes

messages follow two paths

-- central: where points in the message need to be put convincingly

-- peripheral: in a more superficial manner

2. Heuristic-Systematic Model: same phenomenon using different concepts. People switch from heuristic to systematic when they lack sufficient confidence to process the message

* merely being in a good mood changes the way in which we attend to information

Tactics of Compliance/Conformity

1. intimidation - illicit fear by getting others to believe you are dangerous

2. exemplification - elicit guild by getting others to regard you as morally respectable

3. supplication - elicit pity by getting others to believe you are needy

4. self-promotion - illicit respect and confidence to look competent

5. integration - attempt to get others to like you in order to secure compliance

6. multiple requests - 2 step procedure used with the 1st request functioning as a set up and the 2nd being the real request

--> foot in the door: small request first, more likely to comply with larger request

--> door in the face: large favor first, and small request (original target) after first one is refused

--> low ball: the influencer changes rules halfway and gets away with it. Once people are committed more likely to accept a slight increase in cost.

Cognitive Dissonance

unpleasant state of psychological tension generated when a person has 2 or more cognitions that are inconsistent (thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors)

options to minimize cognitive dissonance

1. Ignore

2. Push it down

3. Minimize the impact