Social Psych Final Exam

Evolution

Change over time in organic (living) structure

Due to both change and natural selection

Natural Selection

Differential gene replication

Nature sets up a feedback loop:

“Selects" one design over another

Selection depends on how well it solves an adaptive problem (a problem that effects survival and reproduction)

Adaptations

Inherited and reliably developing characteristic (mechanism) that was designed to solve a particular recurrent problem faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors

Byproducts

Characteristics that do not solve adaptive problems and do not have functional design but are carried along with adaptations (Whiteness of bone or belly button)

Noise

Random effects produced by forces such as chance mutation, sudden changes in environment, or chance effects during development (Shape of belly button)

Adaptive Problems

Our circuits are specialized to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our species’ evolutionary history - specifically, adaptive problems

Problems that: \n Recurred over the of the species’ history \n Solution to the problem affects reproduction either directly or indirectly

Common misunderstandings of evolutionary theory: Human behavior is genetically determined

Genetic Determinism argues:
a. Behavior is controlled exclusively by genes
b. Little or no role of environmental influences

To the contrary, evolutionary theory represents an interactive framework

Human behavior cannot occur without
a. Evolved adaptations
b. Environmental inputs that trigger the development and activation of theses adaptations

Ex: calluses

Common misunderstandings of evolutionary theory: If it’s evolutionary we can’t change it

\

1. This belief implies that human behavior is inflexible and unchangeable
2. Callus example – humans can/do create relatively friction-free environments
a. This means we have designed change
b. Prevents activation of underlying callus-causing mechanisms

Ex: evidence that men have a lower threshold than women for inferring sexual intent
a. Knowledge or our evolved psychological mechanisms and the social inputs they were designed to respond allows for potential to change behavior in desired areas
b. Does not meant that change is simple or easy

Common misunderstandings of evolutionary theory: The Naturalistic Fallacy

What is natural is good


1. Critics of the evolutionary perspective often believe that proponents of the evolutionary perspective think that because something occurs naturally that it is good
a. Malaria, AIDS are natural
b. Fear that this will be used to justify certain behaviors
i. E.g., males and casual sex, Social Darwinism
2. Could look at it the other way too – people believe that what is natural is bad a. Freud – created culture to control our evil urges
3. What is natural and What is good are two separate, completely independent questions
a. In this class, and Science generally, we are focused on figuring out what is natural; it is up to the individual to decide what he/she thinks is good or bad

Common misunderstandings of evolutionary theory: Improbable Computation

iv. Evolutionary theory requires improbable computational abilities of organisms


1. Consider the spider’s web


1. It is pretty complex, to describe the angles of the thread, the progressively larger concentric circles, etc. and humans would need a complex mathematical description
2. But we would not argue that spiders are mathematicians or that they use mathematics to create their webs
3. But would agree that it is an adaptation


1. Humans and their adaptations to kin
a. Hypothetically, let’s say humans have evolved the following rule:
i. “The more someone looks like me, the more help I’ll give them”
b. Because person and siblings look more alike on average than person and his/her cousins
i. Rule will have affect of helping close genetic relatives more than distant genetic relatives
c. Rule could be carried out without complicated mathematics

Common misunderstandings of evolutionary theory: Current mechanisms are optimally designed

Natural selection is a “better than” process


1. It works on existing design in a hill climbing fashion with no guarantee that adaptations will come to an optimal point
a. Evolutionary time lags
i. Evolution is change over time – each change in environment brings new selection pressures
ii. Evolutionary change is slow – requires thousands of generations or recurrent selection pressure
2. We carry around a stone-aged brain in a modern environment


1. Ex: desire for fat and sugar
2. Costs of adaptations


1. Consider the risk of being killed driving a car
2. Could reduce this risk to near zero (Impose 10 mph speed limit, force everyone to drive in armored cars with 10 feet of padding on each side)
3. Cost of this solution is incredibly high
3. Prevent people from solving other adaptive problems
iv. All adaptations carry costs – selection favors mechanisms when benefits outweigh costs

Common misunderstandings of evolutionary theory: Maximizing Gene Reproduction

Evolutionary theory implies a motivation to maximize gene reproduction


1. Organisms do not consciously go around trying to maximize our genes (fitness maximization)
2. Causal Process


1. Differential gene replication caused by differences in design is responsible for creating fundamental human motivations
3. Products of evolutionary process


1. Motives and goals that we have


1. Do not embody the process itself
2. Ex: get ahead on a social status hierarchy
4. Nowhere is the goal of fitness maximization present in humans or any species – consciously or subconsciously
5. Think about reproductive opportunities in modern industrial industry
a. Women – could bear a baby very year or two and give it up for adoption
b. Men – could make deposits in a sperm bank every day

Functional specialization

the same machine is rarely capable of solving two different problems equally well; our minds have neural circuits specially designed for every problem we come across

Domain specificity

Garcia Effect (rats can associate Food/Nausea and Light/Shock, but not other way); neural systems specialized for certain functions, leads to some associations being easier than others

Levels of explanation

Adaptive Problem, Cognitive Programs, Neurophsyiology

Ultimate vs. proximate explanations

Ultimate explanation: Why did a particular feature come about? How did it positively affect reproduction and survival?

Proximate explanation: How does that mechanism work in real time? What causes it to function the way it does? What is the nature of the design feature (adaptation) that was selected for?

Theory of mind

Ability to attribute mental states \n To understand behavior in terms of goals and desires

Combination of Intentionality Detector, Eye Direction Detector, Shared Attention Mechanism, and Theory of Mind Mechanism

Parental investment

Any investment by the parent in an individual offspring that increases the offspring’s chance of surviving at the cost of the parent’s ability to invest in other offspring

The sex that has more PI can afford to be more choosy about mates as poor choice in mates can have greater consequences for them

* The sex (usually female) whose minimum obligatory PI is greater will become a limiting resource for the sex (usually male) with the lower minimum PI
* The sex (usually male) with lower minimum PI will compete with each other for access to members of the sex (usually female) investing more
* Sex with lower PI can increase reproductive success (RS) by investing in offspring with multiple members of the limiting sex

Female sexual selection

Aiming to find a mate that is willing and able to invest in offspring

Tend to go for older men, healthy, athletic, symmetrical Male fertility not dependent on age

Male sexual selection

Aiming to mate with females at the peak of fertility \n Tend to go for younger women, healthy, toned, symmetrical \n Female fertility highly linked with age

Instinct blindness

Seeing, reaching out, and grasping an object, having a conversation
\-> All things we do effortlessly
Don’t see there is anything to explain
Only when a system breaks down can we see separate function

Social categorization

Concerns the processes we use to categorize individuals into social groups

Categorize based on shared: Traits, Physical appearance, Behavior, Etc.

What do we remember about individuals? What information do we use to guide our inferences and behavior?

What are some ways we categorize each other?

* Sex
* Age
* Kin versus non-kin
* Socials status
* Friendship status
* Health
* In-group vs out-group
* Race

In-group vs. out-group psychology

1. Intergroup conflict depends on categorization of the social world
a. Us versus THEM
b. Whenever two parties have different interest, there is potential or conflict
2. When divided along racial lines, this categorization appears stable
3. But doesn’t require racial divides

Minimal intergroup paradigm: Tajfel

\- Creation of short-term, arbitrary groups

\- Enough to elicit in-group bias

\- Dots on a screen, tasked with estimated the number of dots

→ Divided into under- and over-estimators

→ Subjects were told that neither was better and had no importance

\- Subjects were given the opportunity to allocate monetary benefits to those in their same session, and gave more money to in-group members

Low threshold needed to activate the us versus them mentality


1. Randomly determined
2. Artificial
3. Short-term
4. Involved no contact between group members

Minimal Intergroup Paradigm: Locksley, Ortiz, and Hepburn

Assigned people to two different groups based on a random lottery procedure

\- Subjects told group assignment was randoms (Phi or Gamma group)

\- Still elicited an ingroup bias:


1. Differential allocation of chips to in and out group members
2. Differential social evaluation of in and out group members
a. More positive evaluations of in group members, even though they didn’t know them

Robbers Cave experiment (Sherif)

22 white 5th grade middle-class boys (Boys attended different schools, didn’t know each other prior to study)


1. Attended summer camp and split into two groups
2. Allowed to name their groups (Rattlers and Eagles)
3. First few days each group did typical camp activities


1. Each group unaware that other group existed
2. 4 day tournament of contests, after introducing groups to each other
3. Winning group got prizes
4. Losing group received nothing
4. During 1st baseball game, animosity began and continued throughout competition
5. The Eagles won competition


1. Rattlers broke into cabin and stole their camping knives
2. Resulted in confrontation and fighting – researchers had to physically separate them; Two-day cooling-off period (groups kept apart)
6. Boys rated characteristics of each group


1. Saw members of their own group as brave, tough, friendly
2. Saw members of the other group as sneaker, smart-alecky stinkers


1. Hostility/animosity toward “other” group continued after tournament
7. Introduction of imaginary third group, told that third group outside of camp vandalized water supply


1. Both groups had to check pipeline
2. Only thing that relieved hostility (resolved group conflict by presenting common enemy and shared fate)

Out-group homogeneity

tendency to see members of another group as homogenous – “they are all the same, there are no discernable differences”

In-group heterogeneity

We may have some similar beliefs, but each of us is unique

Evolutionary perspective: social categorization and race

1. Sex and age are primary dimensions


1. Can make inferences about behavior
2. Predictive value
2. “Race” was not present in ancestral environments


1. Therefore, no selection pressures to create neural machinery to automatically encode race

Coalitional psychology: tracking alliances

1. Race as a coalitional marker


1. Arbitrary cues – significance only when acquire predictive validity for coalitional membership
2. Rather, tracking race is a by-product of systems designed to track coalition alliances

Mapped onto our structures of understanding:


1. Adaptive problem: tracking of shifting alliances to better predict behavior of others
2. Cognitive Programs: Detect allegiances based on cues of cooperation and observable features
3. Neurophysiology: expect to see neural machinery for categorizing others based on coalition membership and the ability to make inferences based on the information

Memory confusion paradigm

1. Watch individuals engage in a conversation, then given a distracter task, and are then asked who said what
2. Confusion concerning “who said what” is used as means to see how individuals are encoding information
3. Can you erase the effects of race?


1. Uses errors in recall to see if individuals categorize targets along dimensions such as sex or race
2. Much research using this paradigm has shown that people encode a target (Age, sex, race) and is thought to be automatic
4. Phases


1. Phase 1: See individuals engage in conversation and told to inform impressions of each individual (photos paired with a sentence)
2. Phase 2: Surprise recall test – asked to remember who said what
5. Results


1. When only given verbal cues, individuals will categorize based on RACE more than COALITION
2. What happens when you add shared appearance


1. Members of the same team have the same marker, i.e., jersey color
2. Doesn’t obey categories based on race
3. When a visual cue is offered that tracks coalition (team membership), people do not categorize by race to the same degree (categorize by coalition instead)
4. Evidence that both males and females detect cues of alliances but more easily activated in men (may have been more of a selection pressure for men)

Stereotypes

Generalized beliefs about members of a particular group; things we believe to be true about an individual based on their group classification

Positive vs. negative (i.e., Asians are smart vs. African Americans are lazy)

Jigsaw classroom

\- Each student has to play a part, just like each puzzle piece is needed to complete the puzzle

\- Each student assigned a mixed race, mixed gender team to work with, and each group has a different piece of the assignment to complete


1. Students complete the assignments independently, then bring it to the rest of the group
2. Dependent on each other to learn the whole lesson

Stigmatization

Occurs when an individual is negatively evaluated based on characteristics that distinguishes them from other members of society

Groups that tend to be stigmatized

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1. Mentally ill
2. Mentally retarded
3. Obese individuals
4. Homosexuals
5. Psoriasis patients
6. Epileptics
7. HIV/AIDS patients
8. Cancer patients
9. Members of a variety of racial, ethnic, and religious groups

Discrimination

behaviors directed toward people on basis of group membership

Social exclusion

A type of discrimination

Triggered by non-arbitrary characteristics

Derived from psychological mechanisms designed to cause people to avoid interactions that are likely to impose fitness costs

→ Function of stigma

Social exclusion: humans

Social exclusion: nonhumans

Territoriality as social exclusion

→ Exclude other members of species (certain sex) from area

→ Fish, birds, reptiles, and mammals

Status hierarchies

→ Individual at top excludes others form resources: Food, territory, mates; Denied access to social and economic benefits

→ Bird species, lions, baboons, chimps

Social Ostracism

→ Three-spined sticklebacks avoid others with parasites

→ Lemurs, baboons, and other species have been observed preventing others from joining social groups or forcing expulsion

→ Chimps: the stories of Jiba, Pepe and McGregor (Jiba didn’t submit to others and was attacked & expelled from group; Pepe and McGrego had polio and made their movements awkward, which led to social isolation)

Putting the “brakes” on sociality

a.     For sociality to be functional, there must be “brakes”

b.     An organism that chose to socialize in any way with every other creature it encountered would be a strange one (At a selective disadvantage)

c.      Natural selection should shape constraints and brakes on sociality

d.     the necessity to be discriminating in selection of partners plays a role in the generation of stigma

Pathogens and parasite avoidance

\- Pathogens have been around longer than humans

\- Depend on harnessing their hosts resources, which runs counter to the desires of the host

\- One selection pressure that has been around is parasites!

\- Parasites can have 3 main effects on host:

→ Can cause damage that disrupts symmetry

→ May activate anti-parasite systems: preening/grooming

→ Parasites can manipulate their hosts to increase their own spread

Avoidance of parasites and pathogens as an important issue for our ancestors - life or death, health of offspring

Three Features of Parasite Avoidance Psychology

1. Should see cognitive adaptations that are good at detecting correlates of parasitic infection
a. Led systems that regard deviations from the local species-typical phenotype to be ugly or unattractive
b. Aesthetic preferences may be there to prevent us from harm
2. Should see cognitive adaptations to motivate withdrawal and avoidance of others who are potentially parasitized
3. Should see more false positives
a. React to scant evidence that someone is infected
b. Require much stronger evidence that they are not

Immune system response to Pathogens

Immune system -> detection -> initial defense response -> threat specific response

Behavioral immune system response to pathogens

Behavioral immune system -> detect cues -> functionally appropriate affect & cognition -> functionally appropriate behavior

False sick vs. false healthy

\- Why they are not symmetrical errors

\- False Healthy error costs are much greater than false sick costs

→ Overgeneralization bias: we should be biased towards making the least costly error, so we would be biased towards making false sick errors; assume an overly general set of cues imply pathogen presence

\- Imperfect information about the world; anytime there is uncertainty, possibility of making two types of errors

\- Systems should be calibrated to avoid possibility of making more costly errors

→ Bias towards making FALSE SICK

→ Necessarily means that we will be less likely to make FALSE HEALTHY errors

\- Implication: tendency to think healthy people who display potentially disease relevant cues are sick; activation of evolved disease avoidance mechanisms may contribute to contemporary stigmas and prejudices

Pathogen Avoidance: heuristic vs. rational cues

1. Heuristic cues: activate disease cognitions in working memory
2. If we give rational cues, is that enough to override the heuristic, visual cues?


1. No, heuristic cues override rational cues
2. Seemingly irrational decisions as a result of hyper-vigilant systems

Studies using Implicit Association Task (IAT)

One way to bypass peoples’ attempts at hiding their true feelings

Uses peoples’ reaction times as a measure of their feelings about a topic

Ekman’s basic emotions

Fear

Anger

Sadness

Disgust

Happiness

Surprise

\[Now 7: Contempt\]

Evidence of cross-cultural universality of emotions

Both for expressions and emotions

Evidence of cultural influences on emotional expression

In private, Japanese individuals showed the same expressions as Americans

→ But covered negative emotions with a smile when an authority figure was present

→ Due to display rules, public vs. private displays

→ Culture of Honor, white southern vs. northern men

Facial Action Coding System (FACS)

\- Ekman & Friesen, 1978; Ekman, Friesen & Hager, 2002

\- Anatomically based system, for measuring all visually discoverable facial movement

\- Anatomically based but not 1:1 mapping between muscles and AUs

\- Given muscle may contract in different regions, thus producing visibly different actions

Action Unit (au)

1. 44 action units (AUs)
2. Several categories of head and eye movement
3. Each AU as a numeric code

FACS: What can be coded

1. Intensity of action on a 5-point scale
a. A = not very intense
b. E = muscle is maxed out in intensity and cannot be stretched any further
2. Timing of facial actions
a. Onset, apex, offset
3. Events
a. AU-based description of facial expression
i. Can be 1 AU or many AUs contracted as a single expression

Duchenne vs. Non-Duchenne smiles

1. Smiles are not a singular category of facial behavior
2. Enjoyment smile
a. Aka – Duchenne smile
b. Orbicularis oculi muscle (surrounds eye)
i. Recruited in smiles that occur in spontaneous expressions of enjoyment
3. Non-enjoyment smiles
a. Orbicularis oculi muscle not involved

Macroexpressions

normal facial expression

Microexpressions

1\.     very fast facial movements

a.     Last 1/5 to 1/25 of a second

b.     Produce nonverbal leakage about person’s true feelings

Deception & facial expression of emotion

1. There is no single behavioral cue that tells you someone is lying
2. Hot spots


1. Behavioral signs that contradict what someone is saying


1. Does not necessarily mean they are lying – could be many other reasons for inconsistency
2. Must rule out alternative possibilities
3. Evaluate behavior relative to baseline behavior

Display rules

Describe what people learn about the need to manage appearance of particular emotions in particular situations

→ Ex. Middle-class, urban, white, adult males in USA not showing fear in public

Langur Monkeys & infanticide

Under what circumstances would it have been selected for? Evidence that supports these hypotheses

Trivial altercations

Disputes started over petty issues

Culture of Honor

Societal norms – people (particularly men) ready to defend honor with violence if necessary

Regionally based differences in aggression

\- Filing cabinet study


1. Confederate pushes subject with shoulder, swears at subject
2. Northerners – reacted with more amusement than anger
3. Southerners – more outrage than humor

\- Hypotheses


1. Livelihood of early settlers


1. North – more agricultural; Southern England; Planted crops that were easily defendable and harder to steal
2. South – herders; Scotland, Ireland, Northern England; Livelihood dependent on cattle and livestock that moved, so more vulnerable to theft


1. With herds being more prone to theft, this leads to a culture of honor more so in the South as Southerners were ready to defend and protect their honor to protect their livelihoods
2. Poverty


1. Regional differences also map onto different rates of poverty, which is an alternative explanation

Bystander effect

the greater the number of bystanders who witness an emergency, the less likely any one of them is going to step in to help

Affordance

The opportunities and threats that people and situations provide

Attention

the process of consciously focusing on aspects of one’s environment or oneself

Attitudes

favorable or unfavorable evaluations of particular people, objects, events, or ideas; simple and along a positive-negative continuum

Automaticity

the ability of a behavior or thought process to operate without conscious guidance once it’s put into motion

Chronically accessible

thoughts that are ready to “leap into action” with only the slightest encouragement

Collectivistic culture

predominantly socialize their members to view themselves in terms of their relationships and as members of the larger social group and to prioritize the concerns of their relationship partners and groups before their own

Counterfactual thinking

“what might have been” thinking; whether we feel sad, happy, regretful, or guilty may depend on whether we imagine happier, sadder, or prouder alternatives to what really happened

Emotions

feelings such as fear, joy, anger, and guilt—are richer, more complex, and more intense than attitudes; in addition to their positivity/negativity component, they also have a physiological arousal component

Exemplar

knowledge of a specific episode, event, or individual

Individualistic culture

predominantly socialize their members to view themselves as unique individuals and to prioritize their personal goals

Injunctive norm

define what is typically approved and disapproved

→ Inform people of what is likely to be acceptable to others

Moods

feelings that are less focused and longer lasting than emotions; a mood colors all our experiences, not just the particular event that brought it about initially

Motivation

the driving force, the energy that moves people toward their desired outcomes

Motive

goals with a broad scope, such as the desires to gain status, protect family members from harm, and so on

Person-situation fit

refers to the extent to which a person and a situation are compatible

→ Just as keys don’t work unless inserted into the correct locks, people can’t reach their goals unless their situations provide appropriate opportunities

Pluralistic ignorance

bystanders may assume that nothing is wrong because no one else looks concerned

Priming

the process of activating knowledge or goals—of making them ready to use

Reflected appraisal process

observing or imagining what others think of us

Schema

Knowledge that represents generalized information

→ I.e., general characteristics of leaders (instead of exemplars, which are specific people, events, or episodes)

Scripted situation

in some situations there is a script—a list of events that happen in a predictable order; a result of injunctive norms

Self-concept

the knowledge we possess of ourselves

Self-esteem

your attitude toward yourself

Self-perception process

the process through which people observe their own behavior to infer their own internal characteristics

Self-presentation

the process through which we try to control the impressions people form of us

Self-regulation

the process through which people select, monitor, and adjust their strategies in an attempt to reach their goals

Social comparison

comparing our abilities, attitudes, and beliefs with those of others

Socialization

the process through which a culture teaches its members about its beliefs, customs, habits, and languages

Bait-and-switch technique

Works by first getting people to commit to a desirable arrangement; once the commitment is in place, they are willing to accept a less attractive arrangement—one they would have likely bypassed before being tricked into making the commitment

Compliance

changing one’s behavior in response to a direct request

→ The requester doesn’t have to be physically present to exert pressure to comply

Conformity

changing one’s behavior to match the responses or actions of others, to fit in

→ Can occur without overt social pressure

Descriptive norm

define what is typically done

→ Inform people of what is likely to be effective action for them

Disrupt-then-reframe technique

saying something unexpected temporarily disrupted customers’ typical, resistance-laden thinking about door-to-door sales, which allowed the salespeople to strike swiftly and reframe the exchange as a bargain

Door-in-the-face technique

Rather than starting with a small request designed to get a yes and then advancing to the desired favor, begins with a large request intended, of all things, to get the target person to say no! After the target rejects the first request, however, the requester retreats to the desired favor

Expert power

the power that comes from acknowledged competence in the matter at hand

Foot-in-the-door technique

starting with a small request and advancing to larger requests

Labelling technique

give a person a label that is consistent with the action

→ because of a desire in most people to live up to their commitments; ties the target person’s identity to the desired action

Low-ball technique

first gets a commitment from another by offering a good deal, then—after the commitment is obtained—raises the cost of completing the deal

Norm of reciprocity

obligates us to repay others for the favors they do for us

→ If you scratch my back, it is expected that I’ll scratch yours