Social Psychology

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Attribution/Making causal attributions from observed behavior

Humans are "intuitive psychologists"—we constantly seek explanations for why people act as they do. Attribution theory helps us understand the cognitive shortcuts and errors we make in interpreting behavior. Attribution theory was posed by Fritz Heider (1958) and states that we can attribute the behavior to the person’s stable, enduring traits (a dispositional attribution), or we can attribute it to the situation (a situational attribution). In other words, it is a theory that we use to explain our own or someone’s behavior by crediting either the situation/external circumstances or the person’s disposition/internal factors.

A logical model of attribution to help us understand our own/others’ includes three questions: 1) does the individual typically behave this way in this situation?, 2) do other people typically behave this way in this situation?, and 3) does this person behave this way in many other situations? Although people typically follow this logic when given the time, most people usually take shortcut, or biased, methods of attribution of behavior. For example, the Fundamental attribution error reflects a cognitive bias because when analyzing people’s behavior, where people may underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition/internal traits (Ross, 1977, 2018).

We are more likely to explain someone else's actions as reflecting who they are (e.g., “rude,” “lazy,” “outgoing”) rather than consider the context that may have influenced their behavior (e.g., they were under pressure, anxious, or in a novel situation). For example, if someone is angry and screams at a baseball game, then we may be more accepting of their behavior because they are at a baseball game and the environment is more accepting. However, if someone is angry and screams at a grocery store than they are an impatient, rude person who does not respect others in public.

A classic demonstration of the FAE is Napolitan and Goethals’ (1979) study, where college students interacted with a woman who behaved either warmly or coldly. Even when informed that her behavior was scripted, participants still attributed it to her personality. This shows how strong the pull toward dispositional explanations can be, even when situational cues are made explicit.

Fundamental attribution error less common when explaining our own behavior, because we are more aware of situational influences affecting us. The FAE also connects to the actor-observer bias, where people have the tendency to attribute one's own actions to external/situational causes while attributing other people's behaviors to internal/dispositional causes.

The FAE is influenced by culture. Western cultures (e.g., the U.S.) emphasize individualism and tend to commit the FAE more strongly, while collectivist cultures (e.g., Japan, China) are more likely to consider situational context

Understanding the FAE has real-world implications: it may lead jurors to unjustly attribute criminal behavior to “bad character,” or cause managers to assume poor performance is due to laziness rather than environmental stressors.

Foot in the Door Affect

The foot-in-the-door phenomenon is a social influence strategy discussed by Feedman & Fraser (1966) in which people who agree to a small request are more likely to comply with a larger request later. This effect illustrates how actions can shape attitudes, which is a key part of attitude-behavior theory. Attitude-behavior theory suggests that our attitudes and behaviors influence each other in a two-way relationship. When people agree to a small request, they often begin to view themselves as helpful, cooperative, or supportive of a cause. This shift in self-perception then makes it more consistent—and psychologically comfortable—for them to agree to a larger, related request.

This process is partly driven by cognitive dissonance, the psychological discomfort/tension individuals feel when holding two or more conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes simultaneously, or when their behavior contradicts their beliefs. If someone says yes to a small request but later refuses a larger one related to the same issue, they may feel conflicted. To reduce this dissonance, they often adjust their attitudes to match their earlier behavior—thinking, for example, “I supported this cause before, so I should continue to support it.” Over time, repeated small actions can lead people to internalize the associated attitudes more strongly.

This phenomenon was notably observed during the Korean War, when U.S. prisoners in Chinese war camps were led to perform small, seemingly harmless tasks, like copying trivial pro-Communist statements. These small acts eventually escalated into larger ones, such as making public confessions. Over time, the prisoners’ attitudes gradually shifted to align with their behavior. Thus, foot-in-the-door reveals how compliance and belief can grow incrementally—showing that doing can lead to believing.

 Ex: Salespeople often use the foot-in-the-door technique to build trust and increase compliance. By first getting a potential customer to agree to a small request (e.g., answering a survey, accepting a free sample, or watching a short product demo) they lay the groundwork for a relationship of trust and cooperation. This sense of initial commitment creates a subtle pressure to remain consistent with one’s past behavior and avoid the discomfort that cognitive dissonance brings. To avoid that discomfort, the customer may feel more inclined to go along with the sale. 

Group Polarization

Group polarization is a social psychological phenomenon in which the attitudes or beliefs of individuals become more extreme after group discussion with like-minded others. The tendency for a group of people who already share a particular opinion to hold that opinion more strongly - or in more extreme form - after discussing the issue among themselves. Thus, rather than moderating, opinions intensify as group members reinforce each other’s viewpoints. In experiments examining this phenomenon, researchers divided people into groups based on their initial views of a controversial issue and found that discussions held separately by each group widened the gap between groups. This effect occurs because group discussions often expose individuals to persuasive arguments they hadn’t considered and provide social reinforcement for their shared beliefs.

Researchers believe that group polarization can occur in two different ways. First, informational explanations propose that during group discussions, arguments favoring the other side rarely occur, like an echo chamber of opinions where group members are consistently validated in their own opinions. Individuals accept others’ opinions as evidence of correctness. Secondly, normative explanations propose that group members have a desire to be seen favorably by other members, and opinions become more extreme through either one-upmanship (i.e., try to become superior vocal advocates) or group differentiation (i.e., exaggerate their opinions to be seen as different from their critics).

Polarization can have socially serious consequences. For example, A study by Myers and Bishop (1970) found that when high-prejudice students discussed racial issues in groups, their prejudice increased, while low-prejudice students became more tolerant of the racial comments after similar discussion. This finding illustrates how discussion amplifies group tendencies, reinforcing either prosocial or antisocial attitudes depending on the group’s starting point.

Another example: individuals arguing against animal product consumption; in an effort to differentiate themselves from cruel meat-eaters, group members might try to one-up each other with their greater knowledge of how eating animal products harms the local ecosystem.

Insufficient Justification Effect

Cognitive Dissonance: Proposed by Leon Festinger, idea that when we sense some kind of inconsistency between our explicit attitudes, beliefs, actions, or knowledge, we become uncomfortable/experience discomfort and tension and are motivated to resolve these inconsistencies. CD is the discrepancy between pre-existing attitudes and new knowledge, or our beliefs and behaviors. Individuals can respond to dissonance in 1 of 3 ways …

1) Madaptivly avoid situations that would elicit dissonance. (E.g., leave conversation before your friend tells you cookies are bad for you)

2) Firm up attitude/belief/knowledge to be consistent with your action.( E.g., I don’t care that cookies are bad for me, I am going to eat them anyway)

3) Adaptively change attitude to justify action. (E.g., after eating cookies, may feel dissonant because you know they are bad for you, so change your attitude to believe that cookies aren’t actual bad for you) The insufficient justification effect is another example of reducing cognitive dissonance by changing your attitude to justify an action.

The insufficient justification effect refers to the phenomenon in which individuals, with free will, change their internal attitudes to align with their behavior/actions when external incentives are too minimal to justify the behavior alone. Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) demonstrated the insufficient justification effect by offering one group $1 and another group $20 to recruit other students and convince them that their spool-loading task was actually fun and not truly boring. Those in the $1 condition changed their attitude because they could not justify their lie to the students on the basis of such little money they were promised, so they convinced themselves that they were not lying. In other words, they had to change their attitude towards the task because there was little external justification for why they freely chose to complete the task and be paid so little to recruit others. Those in the $20 condition could justify their lie: “I said the task was enjoyable when it was actually boring, but who wouldn’t tell such a small lie for $20.” Also, subjects must perceive their action as stemming from their own free will. Otherwise, they could justify the action - and relieve dissonance - by simply claiming they were forced to do it. Thus, must be done with little incentive to do, and with free choice

Irving Janis’ factors leading to bad groupthink outcomes !!!!!!

Groupthink is a term coined by social psychologist Irving Janis (1982) to describe a flawed decision-making process in cohesive groups, in which the desire for unanimity and harmony overrides a realistic evaluation of alternatives. In groupthink, groups silence dissenting opinions and develop strong group solidarity, seeking cohesion over and above ethical decision-making processes. This concept, developed by Irving Janis (1982), was first illustrated through his analysis of the Bay of Pigs invasion, a failed U.S. military operation. Janis argued that this failure stemmed from groupthink. The Kennedy administration was riding high on post-election confidence and group cohesion. Critical objections were not voiced, dissenting opinions were discouraged, and alternative plans were not seriously considered. Because no one openly challenged the idea, the group mistakenly interpreted silence as agreement. The Bay of Pigs fiasco reflects the dangers of conformity pressures in high-stakes political decision-making. It also connects to group polarization, where internal discussions within like-minded groups can shift attitudes toward more extreme or risky positions. Additionally, the lack of critical feedback resembles confirmation bias at a group level—leaders focused on information that supported their plan and ignored disconfirming evidence. Groupthink is more likely to occur among groups whose leaders are over-involved in decisions and whose members are too focused on cohesion rather than exploring dissenting opinions. Thus, groupthink can be avoided by allowing non-leader members to discuss decisions while also incorporating different or dissenting opinions in discussion.

• Factors leading to groupthink:

  • Ostracizing the person who offers a dissenting opinion

  • Shared misinformation

  • Selective withholding of arguments on the less-favored side

  • Participants’ attempts to please or impress one another rather than to arrive at the best-decision lead to worse outcomes

  • Janis outlined that failing to critically examine the choice of the leader of the group and devoting energy to defending the leader’s choice while suppressing criticisms of the choice lead to bad groupthink

Implicit and explicit stereotypes !!!

Prejudice means “prejudgment.” It is an unjustifiable and usually negative attitude toward a group and its members—who often are people of a particular racial or ethnic group, gender, or sexual orientation. Prejudice’s is made up of 3 parts: negative emotions (such as hostility or fear), stereotypes, and a predisposition to discriminate (to act in negative and unjustifiable ways toward members of the group).

Stereotypes are schemas we hold about groups of people and overlooking individual differences and may be culturally-influenced. Stereotypes allow us to make quick initial judgements about people, but they could be either exaggerated misconceptions or accurate portrayals. Stereotypes can quickly be used in negative ways to perpetuate prejudicial behaviors and attitudes towards other groups of people. Explicit stereotypes are public and private conscious beliefs and views about other groups of people. Implicit stereotypes are automatic judgements about other groups of people, usually driven by emotional processes, that can quickly influence our actions towards them, regardless of our conscious beliefs. Implicit stereotypes specifically can allow microaggressions and unconscious discrimination to occur; for instance, individuals with implicit stereotypes of women succeeding in STEM fields (e.g., women are unable to handle the workload) might unintentionally direct conversations towards the women’s ability to work on large projects, even if the individuals believe women belong in STEM fields.

Psychologists study implicit prejudice/stereotypes by testing for unconscious group associations, such as the Implicit Association Test. Tests in which people quickly pair a person’s image with a trait demonstrate that even people who deny any racial prejudice may exhibit negative associations. (e.g., people may be shown an image of a black and white face, and they shown “good” and “bad” bad words. On average, it takes longer to respond to the condition in which black names are paired with “good” words - black faces being more quickly associated with negative words than positive ones).

A second way to study implicit prejudice/stereotypes is considering unconscious patronization. For example, In one experiment, White university women assessed flawed student essays they believed had been written by either a White or a Black student. The women gave low evaluations, often with harsh comments, to the essays supposedly written by a White student. When the same essay was attributed to a Black student, their assessment was more positive (Harber, 1998).

The third way to study implicit stereotypes is bymonitoring reflexive bodily responses. Even people who consciously express little prejudice may give off telltale signals as their body responds selectively to an image of a person from another ethnic group (facial-muscle responses and in the activation of the emotion-processing amygdala). 

Education has a strong role in reducing explicit stereotypes by challenging conscious beliefs with knowledge, whereas exposure to positive representation of the stereotyped group (e.g., classical conditioning) can be effective in reducing implicit stereotypes.

 Accountability, reputation, and reciprocity as forces for cooperation

Why do we help? Social exchange theory is the view that we help others because it is in our own self-interest; in this view, the goal of social behavior is maximizing personal benefits and minimizing costs (e.g., If you are considering donating blood, you may weigh the costs of doing so (time, discomfort, anxiety) against the benefits (reduced guilt, social approval, good feelings). If the rewards exceed the costs, you will help.  Others believe that helping results from socialization, in which we are taught guidelines for expected behaviors in social situations, such as the reciprocity norm and the social-responsibility norm. Recprocity is the expectation that we should return help, not harm, to those who have helped us and the social-responsibility norm is the expectation that we should help those who need our help even if the costs outweigh the benefits. (e.g., Young children).

Individuals make conscious and unconscious decisions to promote their interests by cooperating with others. Some factors increase one’s desire to cooperate, and a program called tit-for-tat is evidence of their importance. When someone is seen as accountable for cooperating, it strengthens their good reputation as someone who both aids and also reciprocates help. Subsequently, people have a desire to cooperate with that person as it seems likely they will not take advantage, and long-term, they might receive assistance back. Although the research supporting these factors is very artificially transactional, people in real life may truly keep tally of helpful and reciprocal actions and thus follow suit with cooperation depending on the other’s reputation.

Other forces for cooperation include fairness, in which people are neurobiologically predisposed to dislike cheaters and instead prefer equal rewards. Additionally, people are motivated to cooperate more when they think of themselves as a group member, likely due to feeling greater solidarity with those who are alike in some way (e.g., being introduced as students from the same college rather than being introduced as students in different majors).

Self-Fulfilling prophesies or Pygmalion effects

Psychologists have noted that those in conflict have a curious tendency to form diabolical images of one another. These distorted images are, ironically, so similar that we call them mirror-image perceptions, which are mutual views often held by conflicting parties, as when each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful and views the other side as evil and aggressive. These perceptions can become self-fulfilling prophecies, which are beliefs that confirm themselves by influencing the other to react in ways that seem to justify those beliefs (a belief that leads to its own fulfillment). Pygmalion effects are self-fulfilling prophecies in which the beliefs and expectations that others have of a person - whether they are initially true or false - can to some degree create reality by influencing that person’s self-concept and behavior.

This has a mythical basis in the story of Eliza Doolittle who became a ‘fine lady’ due to others’ beliefs that she could speak like one. The Pygmalion effects speak to both opportunities provided to these groups as well as the groups believing in themselves.

Research has shown that in the classroom, children who were randomly assigned to a high intellect and lower scoring group were treated differently by their teachers. The teachers both created an environment that promoted learning spurts for the high intellect children as well as promoted these children’s self-concepts to believe they were truly capable of higher scores; these resulted in actual higher scores compared to the other group.

In another classroom example, research has also showed that attributing certain qualities to kids (e.g., that they are tidy and better at math) results in far greater improvements than simply persuading the children to do better, implying an influence in the children’s self-concept.

Research has shown the same effects in businesses where employees believed to have promise are treated better by their bosses and the employees themselves have a greater self-concept that they can achieve more.

Pygmalion effects can backfire in instances where an individual’s strong self-concept gets in the way of an attribution, and they actually perform poorer on what they were expected to accomplish (e.g., a strong football player is told she will be really great at theater, and ends up performing really poorly in play auditions).

Robber’s Cave Experiment

Robber’s Cave Experiments was a study by Muzafer & Sherif (1961) that was the third attempt at investigating realistic conflict theory, which posits that intergroup conflict arises when groups compete for limited resources. He wanted to better understand how hostility between groups happened, how it could be resolved, and differences between in-group and out-group membership. Two groups of 11-12 year old, white, Protestant boys from fairly similar backgrounds were placed in two camping groups and encouraged to form bonds and their own identities (Eagles & Rattlers). Eventually, the two groups faced one another to compete for prizes and resources only one group could win. This led to three outcomes:

a) within-group solidarity: within their own groups, stronger identity bonds and loyalty were formed and the boys set aside their differences to prepare to compete with the other group

b)  negative stereotyping: of the opposite group despite the boys being very similar in demographic (e.g., the Rattlers perceived as dirty)

c)  hostile between-group interactions: involving raids, name calling, and burning of flags on opposite teams.

The researchers made two attempts at peace. Initially the researchers tried to bring the groups together for pleasant activities, but it did not work and conflict remained. Then, the researchers used superordinate goals,which are coordinated goals that were similar between both groups, and could only be solved when both groups cooperated. This was theorized to be successful because it likely blurred the lines between group identities, reducing prejudice and tension. Criticisms of the study included a lack of the boys’ consent, a lack of real-world application to ideological or religious-fought conflicts, and the experimenters technically served as a third group. However, the study did support the theory that conflict happens when there is fighting for resources.

Baby Face Bias

Adult facial features, regardless of age, that resemble babies include elongated heads, protruding foreheads, large eyes, and small jawbones. Individuals with more of these features are perceived to have more qualities we might attribute to babies: honesty, naivety, kindness, warmth, and helplessness. Researchers argue that this might be biologically-based, as youth and innocence have evolutionarily been protected for survival. Additionally, research supports that women of child-bearing age are more likely than others to prefer immature or baby-faced features and even spending more quality time with more attractive babies. These together may have resulted in more baby-face features being protected over time in comparison to our primate relatives. Ultimately, the baby-face bias has shown to result in real-world consequences like court decisions, where those with baby-face features were found guilty fewer times than mature-faced perpetrators for cases where damage was intentional (i.e., it is more difficult to perceive the former baby-faced perpetrator as intentionally causing harm).

Milgram obedience experiments (most recent 2018)

Milgram’s experiments conducted in the 1960’s were meant to ask important social psychological questions about crimes of obedience.. Milgram carried out incredibly difficult experiments with a confederate who secretly faked distress to electric shocks and an unknowing participant who would provide voltage shocks in increasing intensity to the confederate with every wrong answer on a test. Participants were consistently encouraged to continue even if they faced distress at the cries, and most people completed to the end (around 65%). This research has been replicated among multiple groups, demographics-wise and internationally. Milgram came to a few conclusions: 

1. Legitimate authority: People follow a norm of obedience where those perceived as legitimate authority figures influence greater obedience,

2. Experimenter’s self-assurance and accepted responsibility: People being led by authority figures who are deemed responsible thus take less responsibility themselves and obey more,

3. Proximity: The physical distance of the confederate, authority figure, and participant makes a difference, in which the further the authority and the closer the confederate, the fewer completers, 

4. Absence of an alternative model on how to behave: People who are not provided a model to stop obeying tend to obey further than those that were provided a model, and 

5. Incremental nature of request: People tend to feel pressure at having both already given incremental shocks that were painful (cognitive dissonance) so keep going, and the increments in shocks were so small it was difficult to determine when to stop. 

Milgram’s experiments drew both ethical and generalizability critiques. Given the distressing and coercive nature of the experiments, professionals questioned the appropriateness and ethics of having put the subjects through the test despite most reporting later that there was little harm done (e.g., potential harm towards participants who thought they were administering a lethal dose to test taker). Too, the applicability of lab conditions was questioned; participants likely knew no man was actually being hurt and had no time to break and reflect on their actions whereas those who commit atrocities and genocide are well-aware of their actions and may live normal lives, including going home.

Bystander Effect

The bystander effect speaks to two influences, conformity and diffusion of responsibility, that tend to lead to emergency events being largely ignored by bystanders when there are more individuals present. With diffusion of responsibility, some individuals may feel less responsible to help if others are present. For example, Darley and Latane conducted an experiment where individuals sat filling out questionnaires in a room. They were interrupted by the scream of a researcher exclaiming that they were hurt.  When individuals were by themselves they were more likely to go to the aid of the researcher, whereas when there were others in the room they were less likely to help.  70% of those who were alone and 20% of those who were in pairs. This shows that the more people present, the less any one specific person feels it’s their responsibility to help.

Conformity means that each person’s inaction can promote inaction in others through both implied information and normative influence. If other bystanders do nothing, or their voice/facial expressions show the situation is a nonemergency, then  a person might feel stupid, different, or weird for helping or be left questioning what is the right thing to do. Others’ inaction provides information that intervening may not be a smart idea and also establishes a norm that intervening would be a very abnormal action because no one else has helped out yet. The bystander effect can also be influenced by how well someone knows the person in need of assistance, with familiarity driving greater action than less familiarity. Too, if other bystanders indicate that it is indeed an emergency, it leads to less hesitation to help.

An example of this could be an assault occurring during middle school period; the more kids are present, the less chance there is someone will intervene.

Asch’s Conformity Experiments (most recent 2018)

Asch conducted experiments in the 50s that examined people’s conforming behaviors. Asch began by gathering confederate students and one participant in a room to judge the length of lines with the participant answering close to last. The confederates were instructed to answer incorrectly despite the test having obvious answers. While the results might differ based on culture and the standards of present day, at least 75% of participants conformed to the confederate’s answers and a wrong answer was given by the participant at least 1/3 of the time. Participants afterwards stated that the lines were clear to them but doubted what they were perceiving in some way, indicating some informational influence (motivated by desire to be correct). As well, normative influence (motivated by desire to be accepted) played a role in conformity as those who wrote down their answers rather than answered aloud were much less likely to conform, indicating less risk and concern with appearing odd or dissenting with written answers. Finally, when there was a single confederate who answered differently than the other confederates, the conformity in participants’ answers dropped even more significantly, almost as if they resisted influence and deemed it safe to disagree with the majority.

Broken windows theory of crime

According to this theory, crime is encouraged and more likely to occur if the surrounding environment is unkempt, chaotic, dirty and has physical evidence of chaos and lack of care. Broken windows, litter, property damage, tagging, graffiti send signals that disrespect for law, order, and the right of residents is a normative thing within the community. People regularly exposed to this environment can develop the “law of the jungle” mentality, which leads not just to more petty crime, but to thefts and murder as well. This theory was confirmed by researchers in the Netherlands who additionally showed that people were more likely to steal money from the mailbox and jaywalk in areas they manipulated to look disorderly (e.g., litter, graffiti). The cleaning up of communities and restoring law-and-order to New York communities between the 1980’s-90’s was seen as responsible for the large reduction in crime and violence.

Social Pressure/Social interference

Social Pressure: Zajonc proposed that the presence of others facilitates performance of dominant actions (simple actions that are species-specific, or well -learned they can be produced automatically with little conscious thought) and interferes with performance of nondominant actions (actions that require considerable conscious thought or attention). To explain this phenomenon, Zajonc proposed that the presence of an audience increases a person’s level of drive or arousal. The heightened drive increases the person’s effort, which facilitates dominant tasks where the amount of effort determines degree of success. The heightened drive interferes, however, with controlled, calm conscious thought and attention and thereby worsens performance of nondominant actions. A subcategory of a more general phenomenon known as “choking.” Choking is especially likely to occur with tasks that make strong demands on working memory (e.g., nondominant tasks described below). Pressure and accompanying anxiety can worsen performance of such tasks by creating distracting thoughts (i.e., about being evaluated, failing, task difficulty, etc.), which usurp our limited WM capacity and interfere with concentration on performance at hand. Also stereotype threat as a cause of choking.

a)    Social facilitation: The enhancing effect of an audience on task performance. Zajonc studied these phenomenons and found that social facilitation usually occurred with relatively simple or well-learned tasks.

b)    Social interference: The inhibiting effect of an audience or observers on task performance. Zajonc found this usually occurred with complex tasks that involved new learning.

Social Interference: A decline in performance in presence of an audience; frequently during complex, new learning tasks. Zajonc’s Theory of Social Facilitation and Interference which stated that the presence of others facilitates performance of dominant actions and interferes with performance of non-dominant actions. Dominant (simple, instinctive, well-learned) vs. Non-Dominant (require considerable attention, thought). Working memory is vulnerable to “choking” under pressure- distracting thoughts linked to evaluation by others can take over limited capacity of working memory and thus impair needed working memory to perform adequately. Social interference increases when the observers are of high status or when we receive negative feedback right before performing. People who are confident, optimistic, and have low anxiety are more likely to exhibit social facilitation and less likely to exhibit social interference than pessimistic/anxious people.

Stereotype Threat

Stereotype threat is a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype. When Steven Spencer and his colleagues (1997) gave a difficult math test to equally capable men and women, women did not do as well—except when they had been led to expect that women usually do as well as men on the test. Otherwise, something affected their performance. There was a “threat in the air.” And with Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson, Spencer (2002) again observed this self-fulfilling stereotype threat when Black students performed worse after being reminded of their race just before taking verbal aptitude tests. Follow-up experiments have confirmed that negatively stereotyped minorities and women may have unrealized academic and professional potential. If you worry that your group or “type” often doesn’t do well on a certain kind of test or task, your self-doubts and self-monitoring may hijack your working memory and impair attention, performance, and learning.

From such studies, some researchers have concluded that making students believe they probably won’t succeed can function as a stereotype and weaken performance. Remedial “minority support” programs may sometimes have this unintended effect. Other research teams have demonstrated the benefits of self-affirmation exercises that engage students in writing about their most important values. When challenged to believe in their potential, think positively about their diverse life experiences, or increase their sense of belonging, disadvantaged university students have earned higher grades and have had lower dropout rates.

Thus, we can realistically conclude that aptitude tests are indeed biased in their sensitivity to performance differences caused by cultural experience. However, their purpose is to reduce discrimination by decreasing reliance on subjective criteria for school and job placement. and Banning aptitude tests would lead those who decide on jobs and admissions to rely more on other considerations, such as personal opinion.

The Stanford prison experiment Zimbardo

The Stanford prison experiment was a social psychology study conducted by Zimbardo and colleagues that attempted to understand the effects of perceived power. This was an important experiment that demonstrated the notion that situations requiring obedience and associated with authoritarian control can change people’s behaviors. For the study, 24 middle-class college students volunteered to participate in a study examining the psychological effects of prison life, for prisoners and guards. Men were randomly assigned be a guard or prisoner. Guards were told to freely enforce the law and maintain order in the prison. All guards looked the same, with a whistle, billy club, and sunglasses. Guards orchestrated “counts” to exercise their authority. Prisoners that were out of line would do push-ups. The morning of the second day, rebellion broke out. Resulted in guards using force and sentencing some prisoners to solitary confinement. Additionally, guards created a “special privilege” cell, and awarded prisoners for “good” behavior, but later created tension between prisoners. Guards began responding to prisoners with aggression outside of their control. Multiple prisoner was released for showing significant signs of distress and trauma. The experiment ended in 6 days, instead of the 2 weeks that was planned. 

Attractiveness bias

Physically attractive people are commonly judged as more intelligent, competent, sociable, and moral than less attractive people. Studied by giving teachers report cards and photographs of children they did not know and were asked to rate each child’s intelligence and achievement. The more physically attractive children were rated as brighter and more successful than unattractive children with identical report cards. Also, judges gave longer prison sentences to unattractive persons than to attractive persons convicted of comparable crimes. The reverse is also true, that those who are warm and friendly were judged as better looking. One study showed that when people acted warm/friendly they were rated as more attractive than when they acted cold/aloof. Job candidates example. East Asians are less susceptible to the attractiveness bias than are Westerners due to less focus on individuality.

Actor-Observer Discrepancy

• Tendency to attribute one's own actions to external causes while attributing other people's behaviors to internal causes.  

• An attributional bias that plays a role in how we perceive and interact with other people. 

• Essentially, people tend to make different attributions depending upon whether they are the actor or the observer in a situation.  

• For example, when a doctor tells someone that their cholesterol levels are elevated, the patient might blame factors that are outside of their control, such as genetic or environmental influences. But if they hear of a friend who has high cholesterol they may attribute it to things such as poor diet and lack of exercise. 

Difference between actor-observer and fundamental attribution error 

• Fundamental Attribution Error is strictly about attribution of others’ behaviors. One’s own behaviors are irrelevant in this case. 

• For example, if someone trips and falls, we might call them clumsy or careless. 

• On the other hand, Actor-Observer Bias covers both attributions of others’ and one’s own behaviors. This bias differentiates the manner in which we attribute different behaviors. 

• For example, if someone trips and falls, we might call them clumsy or careless. On the other hand, if we fell on the exact same spot, we are more likely to blame the ground for being uneven.

Above average Effect

Cognitive bias whereby individuals overestimate their own qualities and abilities, relative to their peers; is considered to be prevalent for IQ, performance, and personality measures. Also rate themselves lower on negative characteristics compared to peers. We espouse these positive illusions to maintain our self-esteem. Keep ourselves in a positive light by: Accepting praise at face value; remembering successes + forgetting failures; Defining own criteria for success; Anything good is due to internal cause, anything bad is external (self-serving bias). More so a western cultural phenonmeanon, mostly a protective factor and adaptive because it maintains our self-esteem. This is decreased in depression, in which people with depression tend to be attributing good things about themselves to chance or environement rather than internal causes. When people rate themselves, more people say they are above average.

Behavioral Bliss Point

Organism wants to “defend” its preferred distribution of activities, and thus has a behavioral bliss point (preferred response choices before conditioning procedure is implemented). Ex: Watching TV for 3hrs for every 1hr of Homework. Bliss point represents how much time person spends on sets of particular activities. Instrumental contingency is applied where for every [time unit] of one activity, must perform an equal amount (of time) of another activity. Instrumental contingencies challenge the bliss point in the same way a drive state challenges homeostasis; response options are constrained now with contingency. Bliss point can never be reached again for the organism, thus best way for organism to operate must be determined under constraints of conditioning procedure. Important that no substitute can serve as a reinforcer (if you take away “TV” or make it less available, what if just sitting in room with music makes up for this absence- thus they won’t be encouraged to do more homework). Every hour of music is an hour of homework.

Central vs. Peripheral route of persuasion

Central: Persuaded directly by the arguments or the content of the message using effortful processing; after hearing a pitch for buying a new car, you may decide to buy the car because you found the salesman’s views to be persuasive. Peripheral: Persuasion in a manner not based on direct arguments or message content, but peripheral cues signal to an audience that the message should be yielded to; you may buy a new car not because of what the salesman said but because the salesman was attractive, or he was a friend of a friend. The peripheral route relies on superficial cues such as attraction rather than rational thinking.

Hawthorne effect

Phenomenon where human subjects in an experiment change their behavior simply because they’re being observed. A threat to internal validity. Original research occurred  at the Hawthorne Works Company in which experimenters were investigating if various techniques (e.g., different lighting conditions, different work schedules) improved worker productivity. In all cases the employees knew they were being observed. The researchers found that most manipulations improved performance at least initially. The result was however, not due to the manipulations, but was because the subjects knew they were being watched and their benefit that they were receiving special treatment. A technique for minimizing the Hawthorne Effect takes advantage of the phenomenon of habituation, or a decline in response when a stimulus is repeatedly or continuously present.

Opponent Process

A theory originally developed for vision and expanded to motivation/emotion by Solomon. Refers to compensatory mechanisms that ensure that deviations of a system from preferred/homeostatic level are counteracted so as to return to preferred state. Every process that has an affective balance (pleasant-unpleasant) is followed by a secondary “opponent process.” This opponent process sets in after the primary process is quieted. With repeated exposure the primary process becomes weaker while the opponent process is strengthened. According to opponent-process theory, drug addiction is the result of an emotional pairing of pleasure and the emotional symptoms associated with withdrawal. At the beginning of drug or any substance use, there are high levels of pleasure and low levels of withdrawal. Over time, however, as the levels of pleasure from using the drug decrease (primary process), the levels of withdrawal symptoms increase (opponent process), thus providing motivation to keep using the drug despite a lack of pleasure from it. (relates to wanting vs. liking). Another example: Dogs were shocked with electricity for 10 seconds. In the initial stage, the dogs experienced terror and panic. Then, when stimuli stopped, the dogs became stealthy and cautious. The experiment continued, and after many stimuli, the dogs went from unhappy to joyful and happy after the shocks stopped altogether.

Reciprocal altruism

Reciprocal altruism is one way of explaining cooperation betweenorganisms from an evolutionary perspective. One organism will behave in such a way that its own fitness is reduced while increasing the fitness of another organism with the expectation that the other organism will act similarly in return (reciprocate).  This theory however suggests that these are forms of long-term cooperation rather than true altruism.  This is evidenced by the fact that tendency to help a non-kin evolves due to an ability to remember which individuals have reciprocated such help in the past, and a tendency to refrain helping again those who failed to reciprocated previous help. This actually ensures selfish survival of organism, so they can get help when needed. Greatest reciprocal helpers are human beings; people in every culture feel a strong desire to return help that is given to them. Certain emotions, like gratitude and guilt and anger, promote this reciprocal altruism. We also help others who might not be able to reciprocate in order to establish a good reputation.

Self-handicapping

A cognitive strategy by which people avoid effort in the hopes of keeping potential failure from hurting self-esteem. It was first theorized by Edward E. Jones and Steven Berglas, according to whom self-handicaps are obstacles created, or claimed, by the individual in anticipation of failing performance. This is done as a form of impression management and to preserve self-esteem. Two forms of self handicapping are behavioral and claimed self-handicapping. Behavioral handicapping is the tendency to make a task harder for themselves in anticipation of not completing the task, thus if failure occurs the individual can blame the difficulty of the task (ex: not practicing enough for a performance). Claimed self handicapping is when an individual states that an obstacle/performance exists, in a way to justify their potential failures (excuses).

Social loafing

Also known as “Free Riding,” where non-cooperation is the ultimate result. People exert less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group. Explains why groups are often unproductive despite the expected “combined” performance of their individual members. People work harder when they work alone because the larger the group, the greater is the diffusion of responsibility, and the less likely a given individual will contribute.