Psychology 135 Final Smurda

Escaping the Self (OSA)

Escape OSA by:

- Distraction/Engagement (hobby, sport, etc.)

- Brain Chemistry (drugs, sex, alcohol)

This diminishes reflective processing

- During escape the generalized other can't impose standards

- We tend to follow our impulses

What do we spend money on?

- Survival needs (food, clothing, shelter)

- Self-expansion (status-enhancing goods like a phone or watch OR information access like eduction, the internet, or the news)

We ultimately spend money on ways to escape the self

- Movies, TV, video games

- Sex, drugs, and rock n roll

- Meditation, skiing, reading

- Escape the pressure of life's standards

Deindividuation

Loss of self-awareness and individual identity (and thus individual accountability goes down)

- "Group mind" - ground act like they have one mind, mimic one another

What conditions cause deindividuation?

Precursors of deindividuation:

- Anonymity

- Lack of accountability

- Arousal

- A large group

- Sensory overload

- Altered states of consciousness (via drugs, alcohol, lack of sleep, etc.)

Like going to a crazy concert

What deindividuation does to our minds

- Minimizes self-awareness

- Minimizes concern for social evaluation

- Time distortion (only experiencing the present, there is not past or future)

- No subject-object dichotomy (less distinction between self and others)

- Uninhibited/impulsive behavior

- Behavior not guided by the "generalized other"

- Behavior of others is contagious (mimicry)

- reduced memory of actions (memory formation relies on self-awareness which allows memory tagging to occur)

What type of behavior does deindividuation lead to?

Postive behavior, negative behavior, a Dionysian state, and more automatic and less reflection

- It all depends on the context of the situation!

- Since individuation leads to diminished reflective processes, it also leads to a more Dionysian state

Deindividuation and Taboos

When invited to a group and asked to discuss the definition of pornography, participants that were deindividuated used a higher percentage of taboo language (aka talked more about ego taboo topic of pornography) than participants who were individuated

Deindividuation and inflicting pain

Zimbardo study

Those who were deindividuated inflicted higher shock intensity to participated compared to individuated participants

Deindividuation and transgression

Another Halloween study

- Individual vs. group of kids, anonymous vs. not anonymous

- Kids either gave their name and address or did not (experimenter repeated children's names for extra emphasis)

Results: in groups, anonymous children transgressed (went against the rules) more compared to their individuated counterparts

is losing self-awareness and self-control always bad?

No!

Just is different based on what is good for you versus what is good for society

Deindividuation in the dark

Experimenters left college students in a room withe lights on or lights off for an hour

Basically everything being measured (touching accidentally, hugging another, being sexually aroused, etc.) occurred at a much higher percentage in the dark room condition.

- This reflects a Dionysian state because we are able to let our guards down in the dark

Flow

Individuals and their peak experiences

- Complete immersion (what its like; positive and engaged in the moment)

- No self-evaluation

- Postive experience ( more than happy per se)

- In control without exerting control

- Automatics match behavioral demands

We all seek out flow, but this concept differs from deindividuation because it is controlled and the corresponding behaviors match demands

State of flow - Zen separation of self from self-evaluation

Zen & the Art of Archery (Eugen Herrigel, 1954)

"This state, in which nothing definite is thought, planned, striven for, desired, or expected, which aims in not particular direction... which is at bottom purposeless" Not living up to standards

Loss of self-awareness: good or bad?

- The context matters more

- We tend to do what others are doing

- We tend not to think about what others think of what you're doing (generalized other)

- Can be good or bad depending on the context and who is evaluating you (self or generalized other)

- Flow vs. Deindividuation

Deindividuation vs. Flow

Deindividuation:

- Less self-aware

- Less self-control

- Negative emotional impact

- Strong influence

- Externally driven behaviors

- Can be positive or negative

Flow:

- Less self-aware

- More control

- Positive emotional impact (rewarding)

- Weak social influence

- Internally driven behaviors

- Postive

Self as impulse vs. self as institution (Turner, 1976)

Are we most ourselves during self-control or when we lose control? is the self the controller or the controlled in "self-control?"

Do our impulses define us because they really come from within? Dionysian state and younger generation

Does our ability to control our impulses and be a constructive member of society define us? Apollonian state and the older generation

Different eras emphasize each (1950s: self-control, 1970s: connection and experiences)

- Different generations emphasize different values

Self-serving biases

"Where everyone is better than average"

- We overestimate how great we are in many dimensions, especially things that are important to us

Why do we give biased answers?

Cognitive mechanisms (thinking biases): We believe that ew are better than we are because of the way our brains process information

- Others don't give us negative feedback ( we don't say a lot of bad things to others faces)

- Think of how your friends would answer about you (bias)

- Hav more insights into your own attempts to be a good friend

Motivational mechanisms: We believe we are better than we are because it makes us feel good and protects our self-esteem (emotional protection; more accurate of given real feedback)

- Unconscious self-protective mechanisms ]

- Have unreasonably high self-esteem (thinking you're great at everything)

- We choose how to define comparison dimensions (what does a good friend mean?) in terms of our own construals

- Not good at something: reevaluate as lower

Self-serving biases and married couples (Ross & Sicoly, 1979)

Married couples rated how much they and their spouse took responsibility for 20 household tasks

Results: on average, subjects thought they were more responsible for handling 16 of 20

Explanations? You're always there for your tasks and don't always see your partner doing their tasks (cognitive bias), combination of cognitive and motivational explanations

Positive illusions and facial attractiveness

Actual face paired with range of unattractive to attractive faces

On average, participants rated themselves as picking the face that was 20% more attractive than they actually were

MOTIVATIONAL aspects of the self

Emotional protection of self-esteem

Thinking that we loo slightly better than we actual do can be healthy if mild (best version of self) - ideal self

What is Self-Esteem?

How we regard ourselves with respect

- The self is both esteemed and does the esteeming

- We are motivated to have high self-esteem

- MOTIVATIONAL and biased

What does self-esteem do for us?

- Sociometer hypothesis (Mark Leary): our estimate of whether we are meeting society's standards and thus likely to be accepted

- Can't know if we're actually esteemable (respected) to others

- Estimate in light of the GENERALIZED OTHER is our proxy

Coping;: Terror Management Theory (TMT): a psychological buffer against existential fears and distressing experiences (ex: 9/11)

- It helps us cope with anxiety, uncertainty, and existential threats, providing a sense of meaning and significance

- Reminders of mortality lead people to seek ways to boost self-esteem

Self-Esteem (Brown & Dutton, 1995)

Participants receive positive or negative feedback and are rated on how happy they feel after receiving the feedback if they have low SE or high SE

Results: negative feedback had a larger impact on the low SE group and they tended to feel much worse after receiving negative feedback. The high SE group felt better after failure because HSE folks focused on their strengths, while LSE folks focused on their weaknesses

Accessibility of Positive and Negative Cognitions after failure (Dodgson & Wood, 1998)

There was no difference in reaction time in recalling strengths in both failure and no failure conditions.

- For HSE group, strengths were more accessible and weaknesses were less accessible after failure. After failure in the LSE group, weaknesses were more accessible after failure and strengths were less accessible.

Summary: for the high self-esteem condition, failure makes strengths salient/accessible and makes weaknesses more remote = aids in recovery and prevents rumination.

Low self-esteem condition = failure makes weaknesses more accessible

Watching comedy after failure (Heimpel, Wood, Marshall, & Brown, 2002)

The high self-esteem group chose to watch comedy after failure to improve their mood. Low self-esteem chose to watch comedy after success.

Helping after Failure (Brown & Smart, 1991)

A higher percentage of people in the high self-esteem group volunteered to help after a failure to help them feel better

Summary: HSE have more favorable self-views and are better at maintaining and restoring favorable self-views.

After failure, more positive self-thoughts are accessible, they're more persistent after failure, more motivated to restore their mood, and more willing to help others

Gambling After Failure (Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1993)

In the no threat condition, both LSE and HSE groups won about the same amount of money when gambling. However, when their ego was threatening, the HSE group took bigger gambling risks, placed bigger bets, and lost more money than the LSE group, who made more money.

Threatened Ego & Aggression (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998)

Under the praise condition, both LSE and HSE groups had little aggression. However, in the ego threat condition, the HSE group was much more aggressive and blasted the noise much louder and for much longer (it makes them feel better to make others feel bad = not always positive outcomes with HSE)

Why isn't HSE always good?

There is more pride or ego to protect when threatened!

Does HSE lead to helping or hurting others?

We have seen both and HSE will do both!

It just depends on which opportunities to raise their self-esteem are available

- HSE folks will do anything from helping to hurting others to watching comedy to restore their mood

Should we try to increase self-esteem?

Benefits of self-esteem are shown through correlations (higher self-esteem is correlated with more positive outcomes)

- Gas tank vs. gas gage: because the gage and the car moving are correlated, we might believe that the gage causes movement rather than the gas (NOT true). Moving the needly by hand to make the car move is maladaptive (social psychology vs. estimable by others)

- Inflating self-esteem doesn't help people think that they are better

- We should try to be more estimable by changing our gas, not our gage, to actually earn this esteemability

Increasing Self-Esteem to enhance Education

Giving everyone a trophy to "increase" their self-esteem actually leads to the miscalibration of our responses in different areas

- Increasing self-esteem through manipulation does NOT improve academic performance

- Feeling of invincibility, which can lead to drugs use and other negative behaviors

How do we know what kind of person we are and how good we are at different things?

We COMPARE ourselves to others to find out where we stand

- BUT, we choose our standard of comparison or reference point (the whole game is in who we choose, like choosing the definition of a friend)

- We think the comparison is reasonable, but it may not be (reasonable person standard: anyone who does what I do is just doing the expected)

- Social comparison allows us to LEARN about ourselves or FEEL GOOD about ourselves (but rarely both) - HYPOTHESIS 5: accuracy and likability motives

Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954)

- Upward comparisons to someone better

- Downward comparisons to someone worse

Comparing ourselves to someone better or worse than us to see where we stand in comparison

Emotional Consequences (Affective):

- Downward comparisons make us feel good

- Upward comparisons make us feel bad

Cognitive/Informational Consequences:

- Upward comparisons are more informative (what are they doing differently/better than me?)

Making upward comparisons to people that are "better" than us lead to more informative consequences and more thinking

Basking in reflected glory (Cialdini, 1976)

- Sometimes we want our friends and those we are connected to, to do well (ex: school clothed when your team wins, "we" won and "they" lost)

- We feel good when friends succeed, but not always. Sometimes it makes us feel bad when our friends do well

Self-Evaluation Maintenance Theory (Abe Tesser)

in the weak social tie condition, participants felt the same amount of happiness if this stranger did well in domains that were relevant or not relevant to them. However, in the wrong social ties condition, participants were much less happy if their friend did better than them at something that was relevant to them, and were much happier for the friends if they did well at something that was not relevant to them.

- Rated friends lower in the self-relevant domain because their egos were threatened and they fear outperformance. They rated their friends higher in the non-relevant domain

- Conclusion: friends can excel and do better in domains that are not relevant to us, and our egos are threatened when friends are doing better in some domain that is relevant to us

Self-Evaluation Maintenance Game vs, Diagnostic (Tesser & Cornell, 1991)

Participants gave the same amount of helpfulness in clues to a stranger in both the game and diagnostic condition. However, participants gave much more helpful clues during the game condition to their friends.

Social feedback

Besides social comparison, we also use social feedback to evaluate ourselves

- REFLECTED APPRAISALS (Mead; "what I think you think of me")

Self Enhancement vs. Self-Verification Theories (supports HYP. 5)

Self-enhancement theory: "tell me that I'm great no matter what the truth is"

- Pushes for positivity

- Want to be LIKED by others (Hypothesis 5)

- Self-serving biases and positive feedback

- Look at negative views of the self and what people prefer

Self-verification theory: "Tell me the truth" (i.e. what I ALREADY BELIEVE to be the truth)

- Pushes for consistency

- Want to be ACCURATELY KNOWN by others (Hypothesis 5)

- Verifying pre-existing beliefs about the self

4 Tests:

- Motivation to get certain kinds of feedback if you get to choose

- Motivation to get certain kids of feedback if you don't get to choose

- How much to you believe different kids of feedback

- How do you feel after getting certain kinds of feedback

Self-Enhancement vs. Self-Verification Studies (Swann, Pelham, & Krull, 1989)

- List five qualities and rate how positive your self-views are on each

- How much would YOU enjoy getting feedback on your highest and lowest rated quality?

- Participants in study preferred to receive feedback on their best qualities (self-enhancement theory)

- Now, if you HAD to hear about both your highest and lowest rated quality, how much would you want to hear favorable/unfavorable feedback regarding each?

- Participants preferred to hear favorable feedback about their BEST attribute and preferred to hear unfavorable feedback about their WORST attribute (self-verification theory)

- How accurate was the feedback you were given? LSE vs. HSE.

Results: People with high self-esteem thought believed that their favorable feedback was accurate, but people with low self-esteem believed that their unfavorable feedback was more accurate (supports self-verification theory!)

- People with high-self esteem felt better after editing favorable feedback as well as people with low-self esteem (both groups support self-enhancement theory!)

Summary of Self-Enhancement vs. Self-Verification Study Results

- If we get to choose, we want to hear about our good qualities and feel better when we do (self-enhancement, driven by emotional goals and the desire to be liked)

- IF we have to hear about trait X, we want o hear what we believe is true, but will feel bad if the truth is negative (self-verification, driven by informational goals and the desire to be know) BUT still has emotional consequences

Why do we ever choose negative feedback?

- It will make you feel bad

- But we don't want to feel phony/inauthentic

- Want to feel known by others

- We want to improve

- Because we mostly have positive self-views, it doesn't actually come up too often

aka enhancement, consistency, and accuracy

Social Comparison: A Barrier to Happiness

- Social comparison can be a "pernicious destroyer of our happiness" - Sonia Lyubomirsky

- Studies indicate that unhappy individuals are more affected by social comparison, leading to increased negative emotions

aka unhappy people compare themselves more to others, which leads to more negative feelings about themselves

Consequences of Social Comparison (Lyubomirsky & Ross, 1997)

Happy participants feel better when both themselves and their peers receive positive feedback, and feel much worse when they receive negative feedback alone. Unhappy participants feel better when they receive positive feedback aline, feel worse when a peer receives better feedback than them, and feel much better when a peer receives worse negative feedback than them - unhappy people are more affected by social comparison

Enhancing Well-Being by Reducing Social Comparison

- Set Internal Standards

- Practice Gratitude

- Be Kind to Others

- Limit Triggers

- Stay Mindful

When Prophecy Fails (Festinger, 1956)

Marian Keech received messages from aliens saying that the world would be destroyed at 7am on December 21st, 1954

- The "seekers" came and held vigils, professional gave up their careers, and stayed at Keech's for the week leading up to the event

- Of course nothing happened

- The seekers didn't believe their prophecy was wrong, but believed that God was so impressed by their response to the prophecy that he saved the world (rationalization and cognitive dissonance reduction))

Rationalization

We don't want to seem inauthentic or be inconsistent with our pre-existing beliefs

- We rationalize because we have a need to be consistent and authentic with ourselves and others (HYPOTHESIS 5)

- Works through Heider's Balance Theory

Balance Theory (Fritz Heider, 1946)

People want to be consistent and we like people who like what we like

- Between two people

- We change our attitudes and beliefs to balance the triad

Ex: Jim and stealing, we either change our attitude about stealing and justify why it is okay in our minds, or we choose not to like Jim and don't associate with him anymore

Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Leon Festinger, 1957)

Intrapersonal conflict

- conflict within ourselves, unlike balance theory which is interpersonal (between two people)

- Two of one's on cognitions conflict, causing dissonance (discomfort)

- Often, one of the cognitions is aware of the behavior

- Dissonance is an aversive feeling

TWO main options for dissonance reduction

- Change attitude

- Justify/Minimize conflict

Insufficient Justification (Festinger & Carlsmith)

- Do a silly uninteresting task for one hour

- Asked to tell the next new subject that they will ready enjoy the task

- Either paid $1 or $20 to lie to the next subject (Power of the situation and authority, HYPOTHESIS 1)

- Later, subject is asked how much they really liked the task

Results: the participants who were paid $1 to lie said that they liked the uninteresting task much more than those who were paid $20

- Experienced cognitive dissonance and changed their belief for lying because they had insufficient justification

- People who were paid $20 saw lying as being sufficiently justified and therefore didn't change their beliefs because they rationalized

Free Choice (Brehm, 1956)

- Participants ranked eight appliances in terms of liking and were given Free Choice between the items they ranked #4 or #5 OR were simply given item #4 (No Choice), then ranked the eight appliances again

-Dissonant Cognitions:

Selected items (freely) with some weaknesses or rejected item (freely) with some strengths

Results: No Choice group gave same rankings for liking between selected and rejected choices. The Free Choice group, however, liked their selected appliance much more after and disliked their rejected appliance much less

Spreading of Alternatives

After a decision, we rate our chosen alternative more positively and our rejected one more negatively than before

- The more reason we have to like the rejected alternative before the choice, the more we devalue it after the choice

- This effect has also been shown when we make important life choices such as choosing a major or a romantic life partner

Effort = Liking, Initiation Rites

- Women subjects show up because they have invited to join a women's discussion group

- In order to join the group, the women must pass a test: control task, mild initiation (read a slightly taboo paragraph), or severe initiation (read a very taboo paragraph)

- How much did you like the later conversation

- Dissonant cognitions:

I'm a tradition person who speaks appropriately or I just freely engaged in inappropriate public speech

Results: women int he serve initiation condition enjoyed the conversation the most since they rationalized their inappropriate public group speech. More effort = more dissonance

Fraternities: hazing + rationalization, the slippery slope effect (comparing one's next decision to the last)

Ben Franklin Effect: if you want someone to like you, ask them to do you a favor

- Dissonance is reduced by doing a favor

Counterattitudinal Essays (Bem & McConnell, 1970)

- Write a counterattitudinal essay on X

- Some participants were forced to do so and some feel like they have chosen freely (were really subtly coerced, but they believe that they have chosen freely and that's what matters)

- Attitude towards X is measured again

-Dissonant cognitions: I'm against X or I just freely wrote an essay on X

- After writing the essay, those in the free choice condition had a significantly different attitude change that was different from their original attitude, rationalization based on essay

- Participants in the free choice conditions also misremembered what they wrote, down. In reality, they never changed their attitude

Summary:

- Change attitude to be more consistent with essay writing behavior (the brain uses tags to store memories, but attitudes don't have tags, so the change isn't linked to the original attitude)

- They misremember their original attitude to be consistent with their current attitude

Why misremember attitudes?

- Attitudes aren't stored with tags for when they were formed

- We misremember lot of things (perhaps unwittingly) that serve our current goals

- Michael Ross' autobiographical errors in memory (SATs, Weight), we misremember things that are consistent with our goals or investments

Misattribution of Dissonance Arousal (Zanna & Cooper, 1974)

- Given a placebo pill that does nothing, but are told different things in different conditions

- Arousal pill: make you feel physiologically aroused

- Relaxatin: will make you feel relaxed

- No pill

- Used same counterattitudinal essay paradigm, but with pills

Results: no pill condition yielded same results from previous studies on counterattitudinal essays (dissonant attitude change in freely chosen condition). In the arousal pill condition, there was less dissonance reduction because participants attributed their arousal to the pill and not the aversive experience. In the Relaxatin pill condition, participants experienced significantly more dissonance reduction because of their expectations to feel more relaxed due to the pill. They still felt the arousal due to the aversive experience, but expected the pill to make them relaxed.

Summary: if given a pill that you believe will relax you, then dissonance induced arousal is surprising and experienced as more intense, leading to greater dissonance reduction.

If given a pill that you believe will arouse you, then subjects mistakenly believe that their dissonance-induced arousal is really a result of the pill. Thus, there is no attempt to alleviate this arousal and the attitude is unchanged

Is Cognitive Dissonance Always Conscious?

If we don't know that we're rationalizing, this might contribute to us not knowing ourselves and why we do things (HYPOTHESES 2 & 3)

- Might contribute to our misunderstanding of others (we think they know they are rationalizing when they don't)

Amnesia & Cognitive Dissonance

- Amnesics and healthy controls

- Used paradigm similar to Brehm's eight appliances free choice study

Results: the control group displayed the same effect as the one displayed in Brehm's study (standard effect)

- Amnesics also displayed the SAME RESULTS as the control group even though they didn't remember their choices because they use the same process of rationalization

Study 2 - changes in preference rankings results: the amnesics group when under cognitive load focused more on the negatives of the rejected item because rejection is an easier, automatic process compared to focusing on the positives of the selected item

Monkeys & Kids Reflective Thinking Study (Egan, Santos, & Bloom, 2007)

Red vs. green M&M: monkey chose red M7M 50% of the time

Green vs. yellow M&M (new color): choose new yellow color M&M 60% of the time, since green was devalued in the previous set of choices

Results: both monkeys and children display the same choice patterns = simple process that DOESN'T require conscious reflective thought (AUTOMATIC process)

CONNECTIONS:

- Objective Self-Awareness: traditional OSA explanations - change behavior or leave situation

- With cognitive dissonance theory (CDT), we can change our beliefs/guides us so the behavior fits in retrospect

- Understanding self & others: if it's automatic, the individual doesn't realize it's even happening (not inauthentic then)

- Insider's vs. observer's perspective on rationalization (other see irrational vs. you rationalizing, automatic + authentic process)

Inferring (invisible) mental states

- Automatically infer mental states of triangles & lamps (don't have feelings)

- Just think what we do for other humans

- Natural to describe movements in terms of intentions, desires, and affective states

Can you see intentions, desires, and states? Not really

Invisible States & Traits

What is reasonable to infer? (making an attribution)

- Traits --> States --> Intention --> Behavior = broad to narrow (traits predict states and intentions predict behavior; we usually do the opposite and work backwards)

Example: Generally angry person (trait) moire likely to be in an angry state (state), and thus more likely to want to respond in hostile fashion (intention) and more likely to actually be hostile (behavior)

What do we actually infer? (incorrectly)

- Behavior --> Intention --> State --> Trait

- Aka "affirming the consequent," if A then B DOES NOT imply if B then A

Why do we infer?

- It's useful to know the states and traits of others (it can benefit us greatly)

- Empathy and prediction future behavior

What causes a golf ball to roll?

Dispositional factors (also called traits)

- The ball is round

Situational factors

- Someone hits the ball with a golf club

- The two usually go together, but people come up with one and usually ignore the other

Ex: why did Joe kick Fido?

Dispositional factors (also called traits)

- Joe has a bad temper in general

Situational factors

- Fido bit him first (Fido provoked Joe due to his behavior)

Hal Kelley's Covariation Model

First attributional model. covariates across situations

- Distinctiveness (across SITUATIONS): is Joe mean to lots of folks? If yes, suggests he may have a bad temper

- Consensus (across PEOPLE): is everyone mean to Fido? If no, maybe Fido tends to provoke people

- Consistency (across TIME): does Joe always kick Fido? If no, maybe something temporary provoked Joe (like a bad day at work)

Example: Debbie Downer

- Distinctiveness (across SITUATIONS): does Debbie always look depressed in every situation? if yes, LOW distinctive (something about Debbie?)

- Consensus (across PEOPLE): does everyone look depressed in this kind of situation? If no, LOW consensus (something about Debbie?)

- Consistency (across TIME): does Debbie look depressed every time she is in this situation? If yes, HIGH consistency (something about Debbie?)

Limitations of Covariation Analysis

- It's a model of what we SHOULD do, NOT what we ACTUALLY do (perscriptive model, in reality we don"t have all of the information, so based on these few behaviors we jump to conclusions)

- Assumes we get to see lots of behavior over time, but in real life we don't (not applicable to daily life)

Correspondent Inference Theory (Ned Jones, 1965)

- Attributions based on a single behavior (jump to conclusions)

- Behavior = Dispositions + Situational Factors (conceptually, if behavior is 75 on hostility scale then dispositional hostility and situational factors provoking hostility have to add to 75 hostility points) - less situational, more dispositional

- Can reverse the formula to solve for disposition

B = D + S, therefore D = B - S

- Dispositional hostility = behavior hostility - situational pressure for hostility

- Situational constraints: we all share knowledge of social norms (big insight)

- We don't know how situations typically affect people

- So we don't have to stalk people to learn the covariations)

- D = B - S (we SEE B and we ALREADY KNOW S)

- Normative behavior (B = S): no dispositional interference should occur when social norms create the behavior

- That is - if a level 75 hostility behavior occurs in the presence of a level 75 situational provocation of hostility, we need not and should not assume the person is dispositionally hostile

- Counternormative behavior (B > S, situational factors greater than behavior): suggest correspondence between the behavior and one's internal dispositions

- If the behavior is stronger than situational provocation, must be dispositional (ex: making lots of noise in the library)

The Castro Study (Jones & Harris, 1967)

- Subjects read pro-Castro or anti-Castro essays written by other students

- Subjects believe that the valence was either freely chosen or required by an authority

- Task is to rate how pro-Castro the essay writer really is, in general (measure DISPOSITIONAL attitude)

- If student was "required" to write pro-Castro, this should prevent dispositional attribution (true attitude OR requirement could case behavior)

Results: participants' essays represent their actual attitudes, but the results of the free choice condition were similar to the no choice condition. Significantly different, but they shouldn't be. With no situational pressure, there is higher dispositional pressure --> Correspondence Bias

Correspondence Bias (FAE)

The tendency to make dispositional attributions from observed behavior even when situational influences account for the behavior (fail to see the situational influence of other people)

- One major reason why: we don't know why people do that they do (HYPOTHESIS 2)

Why do we comment the FAE?

- Overlooking situational constraints

- Inaccurate theories of situational influence

- Salience

- Incomplete corrections off automatic dispositional inferences

Overlooking Situational Constraints

- Situations are often invisible (HYPOTHESIS 1a) aka the roles that we take or the fact that we ourselves can be the situation for others (we don't realize that someone only acts a certain way with us)

- Situations are often in the mind of the actor aka there are subjective construals (interpretations) that you can't see

- We are bad at predicting situational influence

Inaccurate Theories of Situational Influence (HYP 2a)

HYPOTHESIS 2a: we are unaware of the power of situations

- Higher actual compliance for counterattitudinal essay and for singing on the phone when compared to low predicted compliance

Salience

Why do we only commit the FAE for others?

Partly for motivational reasons, but we are aware of how situations are influencing us more than we are aware of our own behavior

- I.e. I know hwy I was late, but for you I just see the behavior and judge you as irresponsible

- Salience: how attention getting something is, salient things are attention-getting (ACTOR-OBSERVER EFFECT: not aware of the influence our behavior has on others, situation vs. behavior)

Actor-Observer Difference (Storms, 1973)

Role of salience producing FAE for others and not ourselves

- In the normal perspective condition, participant's behaviors were more determined by other people's behaviors. In the reversed perspective condition, participant's behaviors were more Jinfleudned by their own behaviors when reversed

Consequences of Differential Attributions for self & others (Vorauer & Ratner, 1996)

In a new meeting, you either don't put yourself out there because of fear of rejection, but assume that your partner doesn't put themselves out there because they don't like you (DISPOSITIONAL over situational)

Incomplete Corrections (Dan Gilbert, 1989)

Sequential Operations Model:

We make an automatic behavioral characterization, which leads to an automatic INITIAL dispositional attribution. We then try to correct ourselves for influence of the situation if we have the resources or motivation to do so.

- we initially make an attribution based on a behavior that we see. If motivated and not under load, we try to correct ourselves by taking into account the situation.

Supports HYPOTHESIS 3b: we often don't know the bias in our judgements because they are made automatically

Incomplete Corrections (Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988)

- Start with questions about dispositional attitude ("how anxious is this woman in everyday life?")

- See list of discussion topics (anxiety-provoking or calming topics)

- Subjects were either put under cognitive load or not and watched a video of a woman behaving anxiously and then assessed the person's true level of dispositional anxiety

Results: under cognitive load, anxious behavior is taken to indicate an anxious disposition

- Without load, this initial attribution is corrected/adjusted based on situation information

- Even when people correct, they are still making a strong dispositional attribution because they anchor on the behavior as a starting point (supports sequential operations model)

Cultural Bias

- East Asians explicitly value sensitivity to contextual factors more than European Americans

- But when ACTUALLY tested, the results from both groups look the same under cognitive load!

Circumscribed Accuracy (Swann, 1984)

- We tend to see people in the same situation (ex: waiters, professors). Sometimes you are the situation, so whenever you see them, the situation is present (situational influence)

- People choose their situations

- Despite the FAE, we can still predict behavior, even though we might have the wrong explanation or it

- Greater ability to predict someone else's behavior based on these factors, mainly the situation)

Death Penalty Cases for African Americans

Results found that individuals who presented as looking more stereotypically Black were 15% more likely to be sentenced to the death penalty for the same crime compared to African-American men who looked less stereotypically Black

Police Officer's Dilemma (Correll et al., 2002)

- Participants played a video game where they moved through a virtual building

- Unpredictable people would pop out behind an obstacle that were White or Black and holding a gun or a neutral object like a phone

- Shoot as quickly as possible if armed and do nothing if unarmed

Results: shot more unarmed Black men and failed to shoot more armed White men

Stereotypes

Beliefs that associate a group of people with certain traits. Can be positive or negative (thoughts and associations)

Can stereotypes be true?

- They can be wrong at the individual level when statistically right at the group level (ex: tall people play basketball)

- They can be wrong at the group level (based on motivations)

- Group difference reflect internal social facets, so we think

Three ways stereotypes can be wrong

- The overall generalization can be wrong (e.g. if men were not better at spatial rotation on average but we thought they were)

- The generalization is misapplied to the individual (ex: is this man better at spatial rotation than this woman? Misapplied to the individual rather than the gender). Accurate stereotypes don't always apply to individual instances

- We can misunderstand the cause of the true stereotype

- we often assume the effect is dispositional, when it is actually situational

- The Ultimate Attribution Error: when we incorrectly assume a group's negative behaviors/outcomes are due to their dispositions (like the FAE, but applied to groups, assume disposition over situation in groups like group characteristics)

Prejudice

Negative feelings/attitudes toward others because of their group membership (NOT beliefs! Negative FEELINGS)

Discrimination

Negative behaviors towards other because of their group membership (Negative BEHAVIORS)

Explicit Stereotyping, Prejudice, & Discrimination

- Self-report measures where people can openly admit how they feel

- in the U.S., explicit prejudice and stereotyping has decreased over time

Implicit Stereotyping, Prejudice, & Discrimination

- Focusing on implicit measures in the literature

- IAT Test to reveal implicit biases (congruent or incongruent, left vs, right. bias, color connotation (actual color not race)

What does the IAT predict?

- 75% of people who take the IAT show automatic White preference (going down over time)

- It reliably and repeatedly predicts discriminatory behavior, even among those with strong egalitarian beliefs

- Predicts subtle discriminatory behaviors very small effect , on average, at the group level and not the individual level

Why do we stereotype?

Cognitive account

- Saves cognitive effort

- Reduces ambiguity (easier to predict or decide)

Motivational account (negative = better by comparison)

- If they are __, then I am better by comparison

- Stereotyping enhanced when threatened (stereotype threat)

Cognitive Miser (Greedy Account)

Thinking is hard so we expend as little effort as possible (greedy about cognitive effort)

- Stereotypes are categorizations that make life more efficient, often at the expense of some accuracy

Stereotypes & Cognitive Effort (Macrae, Milne, & Bodenhausen, 1994)

- See adjectives about "Julian" one at a time

- Some subject see stereotypical label (artist) that organizes half of the adjectives. Others don't see the label

- 50% of traits fit the label "creative", and the other 50% are random

- Cognitively busy with a Geography lesson; if you're busy doing geography how much can you remember about Julian?

Results: having stereotypes to organized trait information freed up mental energy too focus better on the geography lesson

- Those given a stereotype did better on memory AND geography task. Usual performance trade-off with cognitive load was absent.

- Study replicated when "artist" label is only presented subliminally

Stereotypes reduce ambiguity (Kunda & Sherman-Williams, 1993)

Similar to the "Donald" studies with priming

- Participants presented with three scenarios: hit someone who annoyed him/her (ambiguous), decked a neighbor who teased him/her (high aggression), or spanked a child (low aggression)

- In each case, it was a construction worker or a housewife

How aggressive was the punch? Both the housewife and construction worker were viewed as having the same amount of aggression in the low and high aggression scenarios. However, in the ambitious scenario (hit someone who annoyed them), the construction worker was seen as being more aggressive than the housewife, who was seen as being less aggressive

- Social psychological factors (context, schemas, stereotyped, expectations) are more imprint for interpreting AMBIGUOUS than non-ambiguous stimuli and situations

- The object of judgement (the hitting act) changed as a function of the stereotype of who was doing it (cognitive accounts of what we imagine and subjective interpretations)

Motivational Accounts of Stereotyping (Spencer, Fein, & Fong 1998)

- Succeed or fail at a task (threat manipulation)

- Primed with "Asian" stereotype or not depending on whether lab assistant is Asian or not

- Complete words with missing letters, S_ORT --> SHORT or SPORT, how many stereotypic completions? (words related to stereotypes)

Results: after succeeding at the task, more stereotypic word completions occurred with the Asian assistant than the White assistant.

- When failing the task, participants make a much higher amount of stereotypic word completions with the Asian assistant and not the White assistant because we are more likely to stereotype when we are threatened, restores positive sense of self

Stereotype Threat

- Consequence of other holding stereotypes about one's group membership

- The fear that one's performance in a domain may confirm a stereotype about one's group (negative stereotype = perform poorly and confirm stereotype, self-fulfilling prophecy)

Examples: White and Black participants given the same test, but with different descriptions (test of intelligence or task unrelated to intelligence). In the "test of intelligence" condition, Black participants scored much lower than White participants given the same description (did poorly and confirmed stereotype)

Women and men completed a task to test working memory. When under stereotype threat, women's working memory decreased when threatened

Implicit Prejudice (Word, Zanna, & Cooper, 1974)

- Interview and interviewee

- Half White and half Black participants, interviewers all White

- Subtle differences in nonverbal behavior between interviewer and interviewee (judges deciding behavior)

Results: Caucasian interviewees were three inches closer to the interviewer and had less speech error (more warm and engaged). African-American interviewees were angled much further away from the interviewer and had more errors in speech (more cold and distant). Interviewer beliefs altered interviewee ability

SAME RESULTS when done with interviewer, whether they were trained to respond or not nonverbal behavior or not

Who is responsible for prejudice? Is this a perpetratorless crime?

- No one is aware of the transmission of their own expectancy (I don't realize I'm affecting you)

- Like FAE because I don't realize that my situations affects you

- No one is aware of being affected by the expectancies of others (you don't realize I'm affecting you)

- Process is mediated by automatic nonverbal communication

- Not suggesting all forks of prejudice are perpetratorless, but perhaps some are

Clever Hans (1907)

- Allegedly a horse that could do math

- Ended up not being able to do math, but was very good at picking up social signals and nonverbal behavior affected the outcome

- When people knew the answers to the math problems, the horse got 89% right, but when they didn't know the answers, he only got 6% right

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Black Wednesday (1932) Last National Bank

Everyone went and got money out of the banks because of rumors, which led to the stock market actually crashing

- Another example of self-fulfilling prophecy

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

When an originally false social belief leads to its own fulfillment

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies (Rosenthal & Jacobsen, 1966)

- Teachers were told that a test revealed who would be a late "bloomer"

- Bloomers were actually chosen randomly

- Measures IQ at the beginning and the end of the year

- The late bloomers IQ scores improved by 16 points, much more than the "normal" kids (only a 4 point increase)

- Teachers think hat the test was predicting, not causing (self-fulfilling prophecy)

Maze-Dull & Maze-Bright Rats (Rosenthal & Fode, 1963)

Maze-Dull rats failed at the maze task much more than the Maze-Bright rats due to the behavior of the graduate students. The Maze-Bright rats failed much less at the maze task because they were treated differently