social psych midterm

Consensus

How do others behave in the same situation?

Have other children acted disgusted with mom’s same lasagna?

Consistency

Has the actor done this behavior before?

Has the child acted disgusted at mom’s lasagna before?

Distinctiveness

How does the actor act in other situations?

Has the child acted disgusted with other foods?

Perceptual salience

• People have perceptual salience for us, we pay attention to them, think about them, tend to assume that they alone cause their behavior

• Conversation and observer study, whoever you could see better led the conversation more

FAE

• The tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people’s behavior results from internal, disposition factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors

How nonverbal behavior affects first impressions

• When people have baby faces, they tend to be perceived as having childlike traits as well

• Thin slicing

  • Social perception based on extremely brief snippets of behavior

  • Thin sliced impressions were quite similar to the perceptions of students who has spent an entire semester with the instructors

• Belief perseverance

  • Standing by initial concussions even when subsequently learned information suggests we shouldn’t

Gender differences in nonverbal encoding and decoding

• Women are better at encoding and decoding

• Men are better at lie detection

• Social Role Theory —> gender role expectations that expect them to be more empathetic

Universal emotions

• Anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise, fear

Functions of nonverbal behavior

Helps us express our

• Emotions

• Attitudes

• Personality

• Verbal communication

Explain the role of automatic and controlled processing in persuasion

• Heuristic-systematic model of persuasion

  • When people take the peripheral route to persuasion, they often use heuristics → mental shortcuts people use to make judgements quickly and efficiently

  • Ex. experts are always right, people who speak quickly must know what they’re talking about

  • Emotions can act as heuristics, if we feel good, we must have a positive attitude

    • Is the couch really great or did something else make you feel great?

  • We tend to relax when we’re in a good mood. When we’re in a bad mood, we are on high alert

• Attitude inoculation

  • People thinking about pro and con arguments beforehand, making them immune to attempts to change their attitudes

• Alerting people about an upcoming attempt to change their attitudes makes them less susceptible to that attempt. Without it, people pay little attention to persuasive attempts and tend to accept the messages at face value

Elaboration likelihood model

• Central route to persuasion

  • Sometimes people elaborate on the messages they hear, carefully thinking about the processing the content of the communication

  • When people are truly interested in the topic and motivated to pay close attention and if they have the ability to pay attention, they are likely to use the central route

• Peripheral route to persuasion

  • How long is it, is it delivered by an expert or attractive communicator?

Yale Attitude Change Approach

“Who says what to whom through what channel and with what effect?”

• Who is most effective

  • Trustworthy

  • Similar to self

  • Credible

• What: Features of the message

  • Emotional appeals

    • Positive associations

    • Fear appeals

  • Presenting two sides

• To Whom: Audience factors

  • Prior attitudes

  • Age

  • Attention

  • Education

Cognitively based attitudes

• The extent to which an evaluation is based primarily on the beliefs about the properties of an attitude object

• Pros and cons about a vacuum cleaner based on how well they clean up dirt, not about how happy they make you feel

Affectively based attitude

• An attitude rooted more in emotions and values

• Ex. Feeling strongly attracted to another person even though we know they are a bad influence

• 1. Do not result from rational examination of issues 2. Not governed by logic 3. Are often linked to people’s values, so efforts to change them challenge those values

Behaviorally based attitudes

• Stems forms people’s observations of their own behavior toward an object

• Self-perception theory

• Ex. “Well, I guess I like exercising because I always seem to be going for a run or heading over to the gym”

• Their initial attitude has to be weak or ambiguous (ex. I really really like exercise)

• When there are no other plausible explanations available (ex. Doctor ordered them to exercise)

Counterattitudinal advocacy 

• Acting in a way that is inconsistent with your private beliefs

• Ex. Lying about how a dress looks is inconsistent with your belief that you are an honest person who doesn’t lie to your friends. If you genuinely try to look for positive aspects of the dress, you’ll find it

Ways to reduce dissonance

• Changing our behavior to bring it in line with the dissonant cognition

• Attempting to justify our behavior through changing one of the dissonant cognitions

• Attempting to justify our behavior by adding new cognitions

How does schema influence attention?

• When a schema is activated, it directs your attention so you only see what you expect to see, is schema consistent. You can miss info because you overlook schema inconsistent, inattentional blindness

How does schema influence construal of information?

• White people show interaction between a white and black man. Person who shoved changed from black to white. Playful vs aggressive

How does schema influence memory?

• Children shown pictures of boys and girls performing schema-consistent and schema-inconsistent activities → memory changed

How does schema influence behavior?

• Schema of what it means to ask for a favor. Printer, more likely to say yes if it follows their schema of a favor

How does schema influence speed of processing?

• White vs Black people being armed and unarmed

Functions of schemas

• Allow for fast categorization, to make inferences

• Can lead to false categorizations, stereotyping, memory errors

Automatic processing

• Automatic goal pursuit - in our everyday lives we have competing goals and we choose to follow the ones that have been recently primed

• Judgemental heuristics - mental shortcuts people use to make judgements quickly and efficiently (ex. Availability heuristic)

Six dimensions of aspects of culture

• Power distance

• Uncertainty avoidance

  • a society’s tolerance for ambiguity

• Individualism vs collectivism

• Masculinity vs. femininity

• Long-term vs. short-term

• Indulgence vs. restraint

  • Extent to which societies exert control over people’s behavior

What is culture?

 A set of shared meanings a group of people in a time and place develop for

What do people develop culture for?

• Social coordination - aligning actions, communicating efficiently, live together cohesively

• Group boundaries - clarifying group identity, defining membership

• Promoting innovation - accumulation of knowledge, cultural adaptation

Why do we have culture?

• Feed themselves

• Cope with threats

• Fend off outside attacks

Two basic human motives

• The need to feel good about ourselves

  • Self-esteem motive. The reason why this person made a mistake at work wasn’t because they didn’t follow directions, it was another coworker’s fault. Another example: hazing rituals, rationalizing all the rituals needed to join a frat.

• The need to be accurate

  • Social cognition motive. The choice we make to buy the best mattress–if I’m spending so much money, I want it to be the best one possible.

Identify and discuss the variables that moderate the Fundamental Attribution Error

• Salience (cultural difference in the salience of factors)

• Diagnosticity is low

• Motivation is high

• Cognitive capacity is high