Psychology Chapter 13

social psychology 

deals with how we view one another and are influence by one another

person perception

the processes by which we perceive and understand one another and ourselves

attitudes

the evaluative beliefs that we have about our social world and the entities within it

folk psychology 

a means by which people “naturally” come to understand the psychological world

people untrained in psychology often make remarkably accurate observations and judgments about other people’s behavior howeer we have biases taht ifnelucne our judgements

importance of biases

1. they provide clues about the mental processes that contribute to accurate as well as inaccurate perceptions and judgments.

2. an understanding of biases can promote social justice. By helping people understand the psychological tendencies that contribute to prejudice and unfair treatment of other people, social-psychological findings can help people overcome such biases.

attribution

any claim about teh cause of someone’s bahvior

Heider theory about attribution

people tend to give too much weight to personality and not enough to the environmental situation when they make attributions about others’ actions.

person bias

a prejudicial inclination or preference for or against an individual or group, often based on stereotypes rather than objective facts.

fundamental attribution erroe

a label designed to signfiy the pervasiveness and strength of the bias and to suggest that it underlies many other social-psycholgical phenomena

People are much more likely to make this error if their minds are occupied by other tasks or if they are tired than if they devote their full attention to the task

cultural infleunce on attribution

person bias in attributions might be a product of a predominantly Western way of thinking.

Western cultures emphasize personal independence whereas Eastern cultures emphasize greater interdependence among people.

attractibeness bias

physically attractive people are commonly judged as more intelligent, competent, sociable, and moral

the attractiveness bias is at least partly a result of an influence of Western culture.

baby-face bias

In a series of experiments conducted in both the United States and Korea, baby-faced adults were perceived as more naïve, honest, helpless, kind, and warm than mature-faced adults of the same age and sex —even though the subjects could tell that the baby-faced persons were not really younger

facial attracivenes

relate dto symmetry, and symmetry is related to prenatal experiences: The more problems a fetus experiences, the less symmetrical his or her body is, and the less fit overall he or she can be expected to be

Alexander Todorov experiement

showed that facial features play a big role in determining the results of U.S. Congressional elections.

they prepared black- and-white facial photographs of the two top candidates for each of 95 Senate races and 600 House of Representatives races taking place between the years 2000 and 2004. They showed each pair of photos for just 1 second to adult subjects who were not familiar with the candidates, asking them to judge. judgments were probably founded primarily on assessments of facial maturity

internt relationships

those who had met online reported more liking of each other than did those who had met face-to-face

the degree of liking between those who first met on the Internet increased even more in the face-to-face meeting, while the lesser degree of liking between those who first met face-to-face was not significantly affected by the second meeting.

• Researchers have found that get- acquainted meetings over the Internet are more intimate, more revealing of what each person considers to be his or her “true self,” than are such meetings conducted face-to-face

• the anominty allow sthem to be themsleves 

• the absence of biases towards facial features are missing

identity online

the aspect of the self that is accessible and salient in a particular context and that interacts with the environment

idnetity experiments online

pretending to be someone they are not. Not only can people show their “true” selves on the Internet, they can also “try out” new identities.

self concept

the way that a person defines him- or herself, a socila product

Self-awareness includes awareness not just of the physical self, but also of one’s own personality and character, reflected psychologically in the reactions of other people.

looking-glass self

by Charles Cooley, to describe a very large aspect of each perons’ self-concept: a metaphor for other people who react to us. He suggested that we all naturally infer what others think of us from their reactions, and we use those inferences to build our own self-concepts.

self-fullfiling prophecies or Pygmaian effects

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.

Pygmalion in the classroom effect

the phenomenon where a teacher's higher expectations lead to improved student performance

self esteem

one’s feeling of approval, acceptance, and liking of oneself.

sociometer theory

it proposes that self-esteem acts like a meter to inform us, at any given time, of the degree to which we are likely to be accepted or rejected by others.

According to the sociometer theory, what you experience as your self-esteem at this very moment largely reflects your best guess about the degree to which other people, whom you care about, respect and accept you.

lines of evidence to the sociometer theory for self esteem 

• Individual differences in self-esteem correlate strongly with individual differences in the degree to which people believe that they are generally accepted or rejected by others

• people’s self-esteem increased after praise, social acceptance, or other satisfying social experiences and decreased after evidence of social rejection

• Feedback about success or failure on a test had greater effects on self- esteem if the person was led to believe that others would hear of this success or failure than if the person was led to believe that the feedback was private and confidential

  • most important as if self- esteem depended just on our own judgments about ourselves, then it shouldn’t matter whether or not others knew how well we did.

evolutionary purpose of our cpaacity of self-esteem

according to the sociometer theory, is to motivate us to act in ways that promote our acceptance by others.

a decline may lead to us changing our ways to become more socially acceptable, or it may lead us to seek a more compatible social group that approves of our ways.

social comparison

The process of comparing ourselves with others in order to identify our unique characteristics and evaluate our abilities

reference group

the group against whom the comparison is made.

big fish in small pond effect

academically able students at nonselective schools typically have higher academic self-concepts than do equally able students at very selective schools

The effect reflects the difference in the students’ reference groups, and a change of reference group, therefore, can effect our self-esteem

positive illusory bias

dults’ overestimation of their abilities (which is even greater in children, associated with greater psychological well-being, at least in the short term

self serving attributional bias

a tendency to attribute our successes to our own inner qualities and our failures to external circumstances.

selective memoery 

a means to maintain inflated views of ourselves

people generally exhibit better long-term memory for positive events and successes in their lives than for negative events and failures

attitude

any belief or opinion that has an evaluative component—a judgment or feeling that something is good or bad, likable or unlikable, moral or immoral, attractive or repulsive.

people use them to make behavioral choices

values

our most central attitudes, hep us judge the appropiateness of whole categories of actions

explicit attitudes

conscious, verbally stated evaluations. They are measured by traditional attitude tests in which people are asked, in various ways, to state their evaluation of some object or form of behavior.

the more we think about what we are doing, the more influence our explicit attitudes have.

portions of the prefrontal cortex that are concerned with conscious control.

implicit attitudes

are attitudes that are manifested in automatic mental associations, meausred trhough implicit association tests

The less we think about what we are doing, the more influence our implicit attitudes have.

brain’s limbic system that are involved in emotions and drives.

implicit association tests

based on the fact that people can classify two concepts together more quickly if they are already strongly associated in their minds than if they are not strongly associated. In such a test—which is administered with a stopwatch or timer—the score is based on the speed of associations.

negative explicit attitude

a conscious, deliberate, and openly expressed negative belief or feeling toward a person, group, or idea

postive implicit attitude

an unconscious, automatic positive evaluation of an object, person, or idea, formed through associations over time

cognitive dissonance theory

According to the theory, we have a mechanism built into the workings of our mind that creates an uncomfortable feeling of dissonance, or lack of harmony, when we sense some inconsistency among the various explicit attitudes, beliefs, and items of knowledge that constitute our mental store.

the discomfort of cognitive dissonance motivates us to seek ways to resolve contradictions or inconsistencies among our conscious cognitions.

Sweeney and Gruber experiment with Richard Nixon relelection 1972

So, consistent with the cognitive dissonance theory, all but the undecideds approached the hearings in a way that seemed designed to protect or strengthen, rather than challenge, their existing views.

insuficient justification effect

a psychological phenomenon where individuals are more likely to change their attitudes to align with their behavior when they have little external reason for it

one requirement is that there be no obvious, high incentive for performing the counter-attitudinal action.

personal identity

Self- descriptions that pertain to the person as a separate individual

social identity

those that pertain to the social categories or groups to which the person belongs

out groups

members of groups to which we do not belong.

in groups

members of groups to which we do belong.

stereotype

The schema, or organized set of knowledge or beliefs, that we carry in our heads about any group of people

the public level stereotype

what we say to others about a group

explicit stereotype

the private level stereotype

what we consciously believe but generally do not say to others.

explicit stereotype

explicit stereotype

the person consciously uses them in judging other people.

implicit stereotypes

ets of mental associations that operate more or less automatically to guide our judgments and actions toward members of the group in question, even if those associations run counter to our conscious beliefs.

social pressure

a set of psychological forces that are exerted on us by others’ judgments, examples, expectations, and demands, whether real or imagined.

arises from the ways we interpret and respond emotionally to the social situations around us

pros: it promotes our social acceptability and helps create order and predictability in social interactions.

cons: lead us to behave in ways that are objectively foolish or even morally repugnant.

social facilitation

being observed improves performance , usually with simple or well-learned tasks

social interference

being observed hinders performance, usually with complex tasks that involve new learning

Zajonc generalization for social pressure

the presence of others facilitates performance of dominant actions and interferes with performance of nondominant actions.

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. However, the heightened drive also interferes with controlled, calm, conscious thought and attention; it thereby worsens performance of nondominant actions

dominant actions

actions that are so simple, species-typical, or well learned that they can be produced automatically, with little conscious thought

non-dominant actions

actions that require considerable conscious thought or attention.

when does “choking under pressure” offten occur

with tasks that make strong demands on working memory. ressure and accompanying anxiety can worsen performance on such tasks by creating distracting thoughts

stereotype threat

cause for choking on academic tests

the threat that test-takers experience when they are reminded of the stereotypical belief that the group to which they belong is not expected to do well on the test.

self fulfilling prophecy

The expectation that you will perform badly in fact causes you to perform badly.

impression management

the entire set of ways by which people consciously and unconsciously modify their behavior to influence others’ impressions of them

intuitive politicians

We perform in front of others not just to tell a good story or portray a character at a given moment, but also to achieve real-life ends over the long term that may be selfish or noble, or to some degree both.

information influence

Social influence that works through providing clues about the objective nature of an event or situation

reasons for comformity

to promote group cohesion and acceptance by the group.

doing so generates a sense of closeness with others, promotes our acceptance by them, and enables the group to function as a unit.

normative influence

the pressure individuals feel to conform to a group's expectations and behaviors to be liked and accepted.

Asch’s experiment for conformity 1956

asked participants to identify the length of lines, but the majority of the group were confederates who gave the same wrong answer. The experiments revealed that about one-third of participants would conform to the majority's incorrect answer, even when the correct answer was obvious.

langaige in public service messages

Many public-service messages include statements about the large number of people who engage in some undesirable behavior, such as smoking, they are urging people not to behave in a certain way, they are sending the implicit message that behaving in that way is normal

conformity for helping

a person is much more likely to help in an emergency if he or she is the only witness than if other witnesses are also present. The more people present, the less any one person feels it is his or her responsibility to help

each person’s inaction can promote inaction in others through both informational and normative influences.

influence of emotions

The spread of emotions can occur completely unconsciously. Facial expressions of emotions flashed on a screen too quickly for conscious recognition can cause subjects to express the same emotion on their own faces and/or to experience brief changes in feeling compatible with that emotion

group polarization

the tendency for a group's decisions and attitudes to become more extreme after a discussion than they were before, even if the initial individual opinions were not that extreme

groupthink

a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ striving for unanimity overrides their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.

the ability of groups to solve problems and make effective decisions is improved if…

1. eaders refrain from advocating a view themselves and instead encourage group members to present their own views and challenge one another

2. groups focus on the problem to be solved rather than on developing group cohesion

   1. a group that values the dissenter rather than ostracizing that person is a group that has the potential to make fully informed, rational decisions.

the norm of reciprocity

a social rule that obligates individuals to return favors, kindness, or harms in kind

low ball technique

the customer first agrees to buy a product at a low price and then, after a delay, the salesperson “discovers” that the low price isn’t possible and the product must be sold for more.

the trick works because customers, after agreeing to the initial deal, are motivated to reduce cognitive dissonance by setting aside any lingering doubts they may have about the product.

foot in the door technique

people are more likely to agree to a large request if they have already agreed to a small one

starts with a modest request, then follows up later with a larger request, in order to increase the chances of succeeding with the larger request.

obedience

those cases of compliance in which the requester is perceived as an authority figure or leader and the request is perceived as an order.