AP Psych Socialpsych

Foot-in-the-Door Technique

A person agreeing to a small request is more likely to agree to a larger follow-up request.

Door-in-the-Face Technique

A person refusing a large request is more likely to agree to a, in comparison, smaller and reasonable request.

Low Ball Technique

A small price is offered and committed to by buyer but then an add-on appears.

Social Reciprocity Norms

People tend to feel that when someone does something nice for them, they ought to do something nice in return.

Kunz and Walcott (1976)

Sent 578 strangers holiday cards and received 117 in return.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

Dual process theory explaining the change of attitudes.

Central Route Persuasion

Logic driven and uses facts to persuade.

Long lasting and resistant to change in attitude.

Requires audience to think about the message.

Peripheral Route Persuasion

Uses Cues around trustworthiness, emotions, and group identity.

Temporary and not durable to change in attitude.

Does not require audience to think deeply about the message.

Schachter’s Two Factor Theory of Emotion

The interaction between physical arousal and how people cognitively label that arousal.

Feeling arousal is not enough, one must identify the arousal in order to feel the emotion.

Attitudes Affect Actions

Especially likely to affect behavior when external influences are minimal, and when the attitude is stable, specific to the behavior, and easily recalled.

Stand up for what you believe.

Actions Affect Attitude

Doing becomes believing.

Zimbardo Prison Experiment

Assigned guard and prisoner roles to college students and the simulation turned “real.”

Cognitive Dissonance

People feel mental discomfort when they realize their behavior does not align with their values or beliefs.

Easiest method to lessen dissonance is to change the belief.

High dissonance = change of opinion / Low dissonance = easy to rationalize.

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)

People were offered $1 or $20 to do a boring task, later asked to rate the task, and $1 group rated the task as fun while $20 group rated the task as boring.

Social Contagion

Human behavior and emotion is influenced by those around them.

Enables empathy and fosters fondness.

Research Confederate

Someone who is in on the research but acts as something else.

e.g. Man pretends to have a heart attack to see how people react.

Conformity

Peer pressure.

The tendency of people to go along with the views or actions of others.

Normative Social Influence

People conforming to belong to the group.

e.g. Wearing jeans and hoodies to school to fit in.

Informational Social Influece

People conforming to others because they believe the other people have accurate information.

e.g. Choosing a jacket based on the advice from one’s friends on what looks good on them.

Asch Study

Brought a participant in a room full of confederates to answer obvious questions. The confederates answer incorrectly and 1/3 of participants conformed with the group’s incorrect answer.

Obedience

People tend to obey authority figures no matter what.

Stanley Milgram Study (1974)

Participants assigned teacher roles were told to shock a learner every time the learner gives an incorrect answer. 60% of the participants kept shocking the learner (confederate) when told to by the experimenter, even when the confederate screamed and eventually fell silent.

Deindividualization

People tend to lose their sense of self when participating in a group, being anonymous, or being in an assumed role.

When the presence of others both diminishes their feelings of responsibility (social loafing) and arouses people (social facilitation).

Assume Role (e.g. Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment), Anonymity/Shielded Identity (e.g. online bullies), part of a group (causes deviant behavior).

Groupthink

The tendency for some groups to make bad decisions.

Group Polarization

The tendency of a group to make more extreme decisions than the group members would make individually.

Social Facilitation

The phenomenon where the presence of others arouses a person and amplifies dominant behavior.

Enhances easy behavior, impairing difficult behavior.

Social Loafing

The phenomenon when individuals do not put in as much effort when acting as part of a group as they do when acting alone.

Attribution

The cause for something to happen

Can be dispositional or situational.

Dispositional Attribution

The crediting to a person’s stable, enduring traits.

Internal: Traits, ability, genetics.

Within one’s control.

Situational Attribution

The crediting to the situation instead of a person’s traits.

External;: Luck, uncontrollable events, outside forces.

Not within one’s control.

Person-Stable Attribution

The attribution of a person’s behavior is due to unchanging factors.

e.g. Charley got a perfect score on his math test, he had always been a math whizz.

Person-Unstable Attribution

The attribution of a person’s behavior is due to temporary factors.

e.g. Charley got a perfect score on his math test, he finally studied for this test.

Situation-Stable Attribution

The attribution of an event is due to unchanging factors.

e.g. Charley got a perfect score on his math test, his math teacher is an easy teacher.

Situation-Unstable Attribution

The attribution of an event is due to temporary factors.

e,g, Charley got a perfect score, his math teacher is tough but she must’ve given out an easy test.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate the influence of dispositional factors and underestimate the influence of situational factors.

e.g. Assuming the person with a broken leg is careless. He could’ve gotten hit by a drunk driver.

James and Harris (1976)

A study that demonstrated the fundamental attribution error by asking participants to evaluate a speaker's position on a topic, regardless of whether they had a choice in expressing that position.

Just-World Hypothesis

A bias assuming that people get what they deserve.

Self-Serving Bias

The tendency to attribute successes to internal factors and failures to external factors.

False-Consensus Effect

The tendency for individuals to overestimate the extent to which others share their beliefs and behaviors.

Halo Effect

The tendency for an impression created in one area to influence opinion in another area.

e,g. Michael Jordan recommending a certain cereal brand.

Pitchfork Effect

The tendency for individuals to judge a person negatively due to their association with a perceived negative trait or group.

e.g. a politician being viewed unfavorably because of their affiliation with a controversial organization.

Actor-Observer Bias

The tendency to attribute one's own actions to situational factors while attributing others' actions to their character or personality.

Ingroup

People with whom shares a common identity.

Those alike tend to affiliate with those who share the same characteristics.

e.g. Vietnamese people affiliating with groups of other Vietnamese people.

Outgroup

Those perceived as different or apart from one’s ingroup.

Can have ingroups and outgroups with the same person.

Group Bias

The tendency to show favoritism towards members of the ingroup (ingroup bias) and less favoritism towards members of the outgroup (outgroup bias).

Outgroup Homogeneity Bias

The perception that outgroup members are similar in most ways or exactly the same to one another.

e.g. All men are cheaters.

Fuels stereotyping.

Sherif et al. (1954) / Robber’s Cave Study

A study demonstrating group conflict and cooperation through competition between two groups of boys at a summer camp, leading to hostility and later reconciliation.

Prejudice

An unjustifiable and usually negative attitude towards a group and its members.

Negative emotions (hostility or fear), stereotypes, and a predisposition to discriminate make up this.

Cognitive.

Stereotype

Generalized beliefs about a group of people.

Can be true, false, positive or negative.

Overgeneralize/exaggerates.

Discrimination

Unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members.

When prejudice influences behavior.

Ethnocentrism

Assuming the superiority of one’s ethnic group.

A form of prejudice

Explicit Attitude/Bias

Aware/conscious of an attitude.

Implicit Attitude/Bias

Unaware/subconscious of an attitude.

Can cause discrimination even when people do not consciously intend to.

Scapegoat Theory

The tendency to blame someone else for one’s own problems.

Results in prejudice towards the person or group that one is blaming.

e.g. Nazi Germany: Jews were receiving the blame for society’s problems.

Other-Race-Effect

The tendency to recall faces of one’s own race more accurately than faces of other races.

Social Trap

Short-term individual gain that leads to long-term mutual destruction.

e.g. Capturing all the fish in the pond leads to no fish for other people or no fish to breed and create more fish.

Contact Hypothesis

Positive interactions between opposing ingroups can lead to a lessening of intergroup conflict.

Superordinate Goal

Shared goal(s) that override differences among people and require their cooperation.

Shared goal between opposing ingroups can lead to a lessening of intergroup conflict.

1864 Maryland Referendum

Black and White soldiers fought together against a common enemy, leading for white soldiers voting to outlaw slavery.

Altruism

Unselfish concern for the welfare of others.

Bystander Effect

The larger the number of people who witness an emergency situation, the less likely anyone is to intervene.

Caused by diffusion of responsibility or pluralistic ignorance.

Diffusion of Responsibility

The assumption that someone else will take action, leading one to believe they don’t have to.

Pluralistic Ignorance

People deciding what constitutes appropriate behavior in a situation by looking to others.

Social Exchange Theory

Every interaction has a benefit and a cost.

Social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize risks.

Social Responsibility Norm

The expectation that people will help those needing help, even if the costs outweigh the benefits.

Heroism.

Mirror Image Perception

The tendency to view one's ingroup as more moral and reasonable, while seeing the opposing group as evil or unreasonable.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

An expectation or belief that can influence one’s behaviors, thus causing the belief to come true.

e.g. Saying you will fail a test and then failing it.

Rosenthal and Jacobson (1966)

Study illustrating that when teachers have higher expectations of certain students, those students perform better, thus confirming the teachers' initial beliefs.

Relative Deprivation

A person will feel deprived based on the comparison to someone else.

e.g. Making $80,000, one may feel poor compared to someone making $800,000.

Chameleon Effect

The tendency to change one’s behavior to match the other’s.

e.g. Mirroring speech pattern, accent, etc.

Chartrand and Bargh (1999)

Study showing the Chameleon Effect, where individuals unconsciously mimic the behaviors or mannerisms of others.

Passionate Love

An arousal state of intense positive absorption in another.

Usually present in the beginning of a romantic relationship.

Companionate Love

The deep affectionate attachment people feel for thosewith whom their lives are intertwined.

Equity

A condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give to it.

Higher chances for a sustained and satisfying companionate love when this exists.

Self-Disclosure

The act of revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others.

This breeds liking and liking breeds this.

Parental Investment Hypothesis

The sex that is required to invest more in offspring evolves to be more choosy regarding mates because a mating error is more costly to that sex.

e.g. Female humans having to be more selective because they could only have a child every ~9 months.

Man: "Who can best bear my children?”: low waist-to-hip ratio.

Woman: “Who can best project and provide for my children?”":broad shoulders, strong jawlines.

Mere Exposure Efffect

Repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of the stimuli.

Proximity Hypothesis

People closer together in a physical environment are more likely to form a relationship than those farther away.

Zajore (1968)

When participants were exposed to a mandarin character more frequently, their rating of the likeability of the character was greater than the characters they had only seen once.

Matching Hypothesis

People are more likely to form a committed relationship with someone equally attractive and/or similar.

Sternberg’s Love Triangle

Three components of love:

Passion - physical attraction

Intimacy - being close and connected

Commitment - decision to maintain relationship

Consummate Love

Successful/long-term relationship (companionate love)

Consummate Love

Very rare.

A relationship with all three components of love.

Companionate Love

Less passion, more commitment and intimacy.

Hatfield’s Theory of Love

Companionate love increases overtime and passionate love decreases.