Social Psych Textbook Exam 2

self-perception theory

the theory that we make inferences about our personal characteristics on the basis of our overt behaviors when internal cues are weak or ambiguous

social comparison theory

the theory that people learn about and evaluate their personal qualities by comparing themselves to others

Lepper et al (1973)

studied self-perception in children; children were asked to draw with markers and then some were rewarded; those that were rewarded tended to keep drawing later in life and those who weren’t chose not to

self-complexity

the extent to which a person possesses many and diverse self-aspects

Linville 1985

studied the idea of self-complexity; someone who has low self-complexity will be more uplifted when only a couple self-aspects are affected by a given event

self-evaluation maintenance

a theory outlining the conditions under which people’s self-esteem will be maintained or will suffer based on social comparisons to close or distant others

self-regulation

efforts to control one’s behavior in line with internal standards or external standards

self-monitoring

a personality characteristic defined as the degree to which people are sensitive to the demands of social situations and shape their behaviors accordingly

regulatory focus theory

a theory that people typically have either a promotion or prevention focus, shaping the ways they self-regulate to attain positive outcomes versus avoiding negative outcomes

Baumeister et al 2000

proposed that self regulation is like exercising a muscle; exerting self-control in one area weakens our ability to put effort into a completely different area

emotion-focused coping

dealing with the negative emotions aroused by threats or stressors often by suppressing emotions or distractions

terror management theory

a theory stating that reminders of one’s own mortality lead individuals to reaffirm basic cultural worldviews which can have both positive and negative effects

Hull 1981

people really can “drown their sorrows” with alcohol: alcohol consumption temporarily reduces self-awareness

social categorization

the process of identifying individual people as members of a social group because they share certain features that are typical of the group

authoritarian personality

based on Freudian ideas, people who are prejudiced because they cannot accept their own hostility, believe uncritically in the legitimacy of authority and see their own inadequacies in others

Hamilton and Gifford 1976

studied illusory correlations; participants disliked Group B more even though the ratio of good to bad readings was the same as group A. Less overall readings for Group B so it appeared like Group B was worse

Pettigrew 1968

there is a middleman niche in societies; the roles produce the assumed personality characteristics rather than the other way around

social roles trigger ________ ______

correspondence biases

social norms

generally accepted ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that people in a group agree on and endorse as right and proper

Crandall and Eshleman 2003

learned that people’s actual opinions of groups are strongly driven by their own personal opinions of social norms

Lerner and Simmons 1966

studied the idea that the world is just and they watched a women get shocked and the participants simply assumed that the women deserved it; leads to blaming victims for their misfortunes

Wittenbrink et al 2001

learned that exposure to labels for different social groups can automatically activate stereotypic traits of those groups

implicit measures

alternatives to self-report measures such as priming measures or the IAT which are based on difficult to control aspects of people’s performance such as their response speed or accuracy; example could be a way of seeing if someone actually has prejudice even though they might explicitly state it; implicit measures are not uncovering some true reality but it can uncover something that wasn’t reported

Dovidio et al 2002

• implicit and explicit measures of stereotypes and prejudice may simply measures different aspects of an individuals overall views of a social group

• found that implicit measures of prejudice are related to white students subtle nonverbal friendliness towards a black confederate

• a type of response that is relatively spontaneous

• in contrast that same study showed that students levels of overtly reported racial prejudice were related to the positivity of their verbal statements towards the black confederate, an aspect of their behavior that was more likely deliberately considered

• their are different consequences to explicit and implicit stereotypes and prejudices

Bodenhausen 1990

• wondered whether time of day could have an impact on stereotyping

• when people were scheduled for their worst times then they were more likely to rely on their stereotypic expectations that Latinos were aggressive and to assert that a Latino had committed the crime

Harber 1998

• when well intentioned people try to correct judgments that they suspect to be affected by stereotypes they make overly positive judgments of stereotyped group members

• studied college students and how some wrote nicer things to black students because they did not want to come across as prejudice

Blair et al 2001

• this imaging task reduced the tendency to stereotype women as weak according to an implicit measure compared to participants who formed a relevant mental image

• a way to fight against stereotypes by activating counter stereotypes

Neuberg and Fiske 1987

• we tend to notice and remember what we expect to see

• when people are given both stereotypic and non stereotypic information about a person they are likely going to spend more time thinking about the stereotypic information because we notice and remember what we expect to see

Sagar and Schofield 1980

• demonstrated that when information is ambiguous activation of a stereotype influences our interpretation of the behavior or the individual preforming the behavior making it seem consistent with the stereotype

• kids viewed drawings of black people as being more threatening than when the person was white

Biernat and Manis 1994

• studied how people use different standards to judge different groups

• looked at essays written on feminism by both females and males; the females essays were typically scored higher than the males even if the males was “good”

steele 1992

• groups they don’t want afford to perform poorly because they do not want to affirm existing stereotypes

• leads to a fear or failure or contributing to existing negative stereotypes.

• stereotypes require counterstereotypic behaviors in order to eliminate existing stereotypes

weber and crocker (1983)

• when behaviors are performed by just a few individual group members, perceivers may create a subtype to insult their general stereotype from change

• categorizing individuals acting outside of the general stereotype into a subgroup in order to keep original stereotype

Wilder, 1984

• if the confederate acted and dressed as typical of the rival college and there was a friendly interactions, students would make more positive stereotypes as the college

• however if the student did not display such aspects of the rival college, the friendly interaction would not have mattered

Wright et al 1997

• basically if we are friends with someone in a different group and they have friends in that different group, we are going to think more positively about people in that group even if we have an initially negative stereotype

• reduce prejudice by growing friendships with people

Pettigrew 1997

• effects of cross group friendships were not even limited to specific groups. friendships help create less prejudice against minority groups bc ppl who are less prejudiced in general are more likely to form these kinds of friendships anyways

Marques et al 1988

the presence of even a single out group member is enough to increase our sense of in group membership

McGuire et al 1979

boys and girls from households where their gender was in the minority were more likely to mention gender than were children from households where their gender made up the majority

Mackie 1986

people’s own opinions will move towards the groups opinions

Allen and Wilder 1979

worked with the perception of in-group members and how people assume that people in the group have similar preferences

Perdue et al 1990

“we” has more positive connotations then the word “they” does

Dovidio and Gaertner 1993

those who were exposed to the in-group pronouns had more positive expectations than those who had read out group pronouns

Tuner et al 1987

when people begin to view the world through group membership they begin to not understand the difference between what is best for the group and what is best for the individual

Park and Rothbart 1982

people tend to remember more about personal details about same sex individuals versus opposite sex individuals

out group homogeneity effect

the tendency to see the out-group as relatively more homogeneous and less diverse than the in-group; seems like the out-group is “all the same”

Platz and Hosch 1988

clerks made more accurate identifications of the customer belonging to their own group than they did of the customers from the other two groups

Billig and Tajfel 1971

when divided up into two groups with no previous history in either, boys would still give more points to the people in their group than to people in the other group; minimal intergroup situation

Tajfel et al 1971

studied social identity theory and how people have more in-group bias

Fein and Spencer 1997

when receiving negative feedback people would tend to rate other people in a negative way if they did not align with their beliefs

moral exclusion

viewing our groups as subhuman and outside the domain in which the rules of morality apply

Steele and Aronson 1995

studied stereotype threats and how self-fulfilling prophecy can actually bring about the stereotype

Spencer 1994

studied performance between men and women and how women could preform just as well if they were told that their was no difference

Luhtanen and Crocker 1992

measured Black and White students personal self-esteem, their feelings about group membership and depression

Crocker et al 1991

people sometimes inflate their evaluations of members of disliked out-groups compared to their ratings of in-group members who turn in the same performance

Heilman et al 1987

members of groups that are typically devalued and discriminated against are the most at risk from attributional ambiguities involving performance feedback

individual mobility

the strategy of individual escape either physical or psychological from a stigmatized group

Mckenna and Bargh 1998

online support groups involving concealable characteristics were more important to the lives of their members and had greater impact on their members emotions and behavior

Social creativity

the strategy of introducing and emphasizing new dimensions of social comparison on which a negatively regarded group can see itself as superior

social competition

the strategy of directly seeking to change the conditions that disadvantage the in-group, for example by building group solidarity and challenging the out-group