Mind Control Midterm

Social Exclusion

social pain

Humans evolved in small groups where belonging = survival

Being excluded meant loss of protection and food access

Because of this, the brain developed a “social alarm system” as social rejections activates the same neural regions as physical pains and we are highly sensitive to disapproval and we often conform when we disagree

Conform

Physiological protection

Elaboration Likelihood Model

distinguishes between central and peripheral routes of processing persuasive message

Central route

careful, thoughtful attention to the strength of the arguments themselves

Peripheral route

relies on surface cues — attractiveness, credibility, or emotional appeal

External control

Behavior is influenced by formal consequences

Ex. not wearing seatbelts is punishable by law

Internal Control

Behavior is guided by social approval

Ex. lowering your voice at the library

Automatic Scripts

Repeated social expectations become habits that feel natural

Ex. saying thank you

Predicatability + cooperation

Shared rules makes other people’s behavior easier to anticipate

Ex. everyone stops at a red light to make traffic go smoothly

Feeling rules

emotional labor

managing feelings to meet expectation in social and professional contexts

Ex. flight attendant who must smile and remain gracious throughout a turblent flight, regardless of their actual mood

We do it because we need to mantain rapport with others and to keep social approval but it creates fatigue and burn-out

Social construction of reality

Together, norms, roles, and media frames build a shared sense of what is “real,” “reasonable,” and “moral,” rather than simply reflecting raw facts

Interpretation > Information

Facts never arrive “raw,” they are filtered through social context, emotional labor, and digital system like algorithms and bots, which construct what seems real and important

Ex. constant crime content on social media can make people believe crimes is increasing even when it is stable

Media Framing

Selecting which stories to highlight and how to label them, shaping public emotions, judgement, and policy responses

Ex. “riot” vs. “protest”

media focuses on negative things to heighten attention from viewers (according to evolutionary psychologists, focusing on negative aspects also helps our survival)

Media Framing Policy

Immigrants: “illegal aliens” vs “undocumented immigrants” (language) can be interpretated as threat of criminality and response to it is hateful (emotions)

Automated consensus

bots and scripted accounts flooded platforms with likes, shares, and repeated messages, fabricating the impression that a belief is widely held

Schema

mental frameworks that organize how we interpret social situations; they guide how we notice, what we expect and how we respond automatically

Ex. when student walk into a lecture hall, they don’t consciously think: “Now I must adapt a student role.” Instead schemas activate the act of sitting facing forward, opening notebook, etc.

Social structure

invisible organization of society that shapes how we behave in predicatable ways

Structure is not direct but works through norms and symbols that feel “natural”

Institutions (school and family), roles (student), and expectations (feeling respectful)

Chain metaphor

social structure connects people through invisible chains of expectation

connection through people trusting that others are enacting on their roles but expectations is constraining us

Ex. teachers rely on student compliance

Institutions

shape behaviors by stabilizing expections on how to belong and achieve goals

Schools

define what achievement (high grades, honors, college admission and grades) look like and what does a disciplined (attendence rules, deadlines, dress codes) student looks like

To belong to a group, you must understand your role and act accordingly to the norm to be able to achieve your goals

Ascribed status

race, gender, and class background

Achieved status

earned; college degree, career title, leadership role

Role conflict

conflict emerges when roles collide

Ex. working parent — job vs. childcare

Role strain

strain happens inside a single role

too many expectations, one role comes with multiple demands

Ex. student roles — study for exams, join extracurricular

Role exit

requires re-defining who we are; leaving a role, identity shift, adjustment

Ex. military life — civillian life

Learned helplessness

repeated exposure to uncontrollable stressors results in people failing to use any methods to control their responses to those stressors that are at their disposal in the future

repeated constraint can erode percieved control through reduced agency and constraint-based thinking

Social movements as counter-structure

groups can reshape norms and institution

Ex. #me too movement, slapping someone in the butt was considered workplace norm but can become socially unacceptable due to collective activism

Stratification

Hierarchial organization of society; demonstrate how social, legal, and cultural mechanisms work together to persuade individuals to accept their place in society, internalizing norms and expectations that sustain the hierarchy across generations

Operates through material resources and symbolic meaning; functions like a system of persuasion

Wealth, Power, & Prestige

Celebrity Influencer — high prestige (respect and admiration) but compartively little formal political power

Billionare CEO — commands both substantial wealth and institutional power (people listen to your goals and execute it)

Teacher — high social prestige and community respect but limited wealth (assets)

Social Capital

Life chances

The networks, norms, and trust that enable individuals or groups to cooperate, achieve goals, or gain advantages

Ex. political power — people who live in high cost property can choose to leave the neighborhood if it feels unsafe and not vote for change because of the taxes they bring in

Stereotype Threat

fear of confirming stereotypes can lead to cognitive load, anxiety, and reduced performance

Situational pressure, not a trait

Ex. women do worse on math test than men required to indicate gender

Hidden Curriculum

Schools teach more than academics — how to communicate with authority figures, professional norms, self-advocacy, time management, and networking

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Teachers expects success — provides more encouragement — student gains confidence — performance improves — expectation appears confirmed

Feudalism

Birth-Based Hierarchy — nobility, clergy, peasants

Modern Hierarchy — upper, upper-middle, middle, working, and lower

Caste System

institutionalized hereditary divisons governing occupation, marriage, ritual status and social interaction, upheld by religious ideology and social norms

Hereditary status, occupational roles, spatial segregation, edogamy

Ex. Dalits confined to stigmatized and hazardous occupations while higher castes monopolized land ownership, trade, and priestly functions

Modern example: slavery shaped identity, self-worth and perceived social roles through law, punishment, and cultural messaging

Intersectionality

multiple identities, compounded disadvantage and identity contingencies

overlapping identities of race, gender, class, and so on, compound the effects of stratification

Ex. African American women may encounter both racial and gendered limitations, internalizing societal cues that restrict their perceived potential and social mobility

Race

social constructed category based on perceived physical traits

often linked to power, status, and hierarchy

used to justify social hierarchies, oppression, and systemic inequality

Ex. Segregation - determines which schools, resources, and networks a child grow up in

Ethnicity

shared culture, language, traditions and history

reflects culture continuity and group identity

Stereotypes

cognitive beliefs about groups

Ex. certain racial groups were assumed to be violent and criminal

Prejudice

emotional attitudes toward groups

Ex. fear of criminal activity

Discrimination

behavioral action towards groups

Ex. more surveillance in a particular neighborhood which only specifically increase statstics of crime in that area with racial groups

Frustration-aggression mechanism

scapegoating; prejudice and intergroup hostility can arise when individuals encounter blocked goals or unmet needs, producing frustration that is often displaced onto socially sanctioned out-groups rather than directed at the structural sources of stress

Ex. economic stress often gets redirected toward marginalized groups

Authoritarian Personality

emphasizes that rigid cognitive styles, strict adherence to authority, and punitive attitudes toward outsiders predispose individuals to prejuidce

Socialization in highly controlled, punitive, or hierarchial family environments can cultivate conformity, obedience, and fear of deviation, which subsequently manifests as bias against groups perceived as threatnening or “different”

preference for social order (people should be in categories, of gender, or even preferences for marrying outside of race, religion, etc.)

Social identity theory

In-group favoritism, out-group bias, minimal groups, us vs. them

Us vs. Them

group membership creates an us versus them distinction

In-group favoritism

individuals often favor their own group over others

Minimal groups

even arbitrary group assignments can produce bias (i.e. experimental groups being divided by color)

Self-esteem from groups

people derive self-esteem from group membership

Shooter bias

automatic threat perception and split second decisions

Ex. police will judge that a black person is holding a gun but it was actually different objects

implicit bias: unconscious attitude, belief, or stereotype about a social group that affects how a person perceives, acts, and makes decisions without realizing it

Automatic bias

unconscious associations that influence judgements

Ex. associating a black person as a criminal

Modern Racism

denies that discrimination is still a real barrier today

Attributes group inequality to individual effort — “if they worked harder, they’d succeed too”

does not believe in equality and discrimination

Symbolic Racism

opposes specific race-conscious policies rather denying discrimination outright

frames that opposition as defending values like hard work and self-reliance even when race is the real driver

Ex. affrimative action

Aversive Racism

people sincerely believe in equality — the bias is unconscious, not denied (kind of like in-group favoritism)

Ex. two equal candidates; the white candiate gets the benefit of the doubt on a weak point

Ambivalent Racism

failure reads as internal—their effort, their fault

Success read as external — luck, exception, “beating the odds”

Ex. automatically generalizes a minority groups such as African American as coming from a low class background and struggled

Pseudoscience and Racial Hierarchy

Pioneer Fund supported racial-related differences (i.e. sexuality) to promote racial hierarchy

Ex. a unethical study was done to study racial difference in sexuality and results shown that Black men were more sexual

Bell Curve

frames social disparities as biological inveitabilities, such claims provided ideological support for policies and practices that maintained systemic inequality, such as underinvestment in disadvantaged schools or racially restrictive immigration debates, and lent scientifc authority to racist positions under the guise of neutrality