Psychology Chapter 12 C.R

Social Roles/Norms

Socially defined behaviors considered appropriate for individuals occupying certain positions within a group

Deindividuation

individuals lose their sense of personal identity

Social Identity

tendency to construct a group identity with others that insulates individual members against a stressor

Impression Management

• Intentional steps taken to influence others’ opinions of us

• Important in meeting people who are in a position to provide something that we need or desire

• Achieving agreement between others’ opinions of us and our own self-concepts plays a key role in the development of social relationships

• Impression management influences how we view ourselves

Attribution

• An assignment of a cause to explain one’s own or another’s behavior

-Situational attribution

-Dispositional attribution

Situational (External) Attribution

Attributing behavior to an external cause or factor related to a situation

• EX. “I failed the test because it was tricky.”

Dispositional (internal) attributions

Attributing behavior to an internal cause, such as personality trait

• EX. Jessie believes that Rob is acting rude because he's a mean guy, so she's making a dispositional attribution.

Attribution Biases

1. Fundamental Attribution bias

2. False Consensus

3. Self-Serving Bias

4. Just World Hypothesis

Fundamental Attribution Bias

• People tend to overestimate internal dispositions; underestimate external/ situational factors

• When making attributions to your own behaviors, it’s the opposite: overestimate external, underestimate internal.

False Consensus

People tend to assume that people will behave as they do

• Ex. thinking everyone will refuse to hold a sign just because you refused.

Self-serving Bias (aka, Attributional Egotism)

The tendency to attribute one’s success to dispositional causes and one’s failures to situational causes

Just world Hypothesis

False belief that we live in a just world (the world is fair and gives what they deserve)

• Ex. Rape victim was “asking” for it

Factors influencing attraction

• proximity, mere-exposure effect, reciprocity

• People of all ages have a strong tendency to prefer physically attractive people.

• Physically attractive people are perceived as having other favorable qualities.

• The impact of physical attractiveness is strongest in the perception of strangers.

Matching Hypothesis

• We choose partners who are similar to ourselves in physical attractiveness and other attributes.

• Mismatched couples are more likely to end a relationship.

• Ignoring the attractiveness of other potential partners is equally important to relationship stability and longevity

Evolutionary Psychologists

• Men and women’s prefer mates one the bias of what they can contribute to reproductive success.

• Men prefer young, attractive women

• Women prefer men with resources and high status

Conformity

Changing behavior or an attitude in an effort to be consistent with the social norms of a group, or expectations of other people

Compliance

• Foot-in-the-Door-Technique

• Door-in-the-face Technique

• Low-Ball Technique

Foot-in-The-Door Technique

• Gain agreement to small request first

• The person becomes more likely to agree to a larger request later

Door-in the-Face Technique

• Make large request with the expectation that the person will refuse

• The person becomes more likely to comply with a smaller request later.

Low-Ball Technique

• Making an attractive initial offer to get a person to commit to an action

• Then make the terms less favorable

Social Facilitation

Any positive or negative effect on performance can be attributed to the presence of others

-Audience effects

-Coaction effects

Audience Effects

impact of passive spectators on performance

Coaction effects

Impact on performance caused by the presence of other people engaged in the same task

Social Facilitation and Social Loafing

• Tendency to put forth less effort when working with others than when working alone

• Social loafing is common under specific circumstances.

-When individual contributions to a group project cannot be identified

- Among people who score low in achievement motivation

- in individualistic societies

Group Polarization

• Occurs after discussion

• Group members shift to more extreme positions in the directions they were already learning.

Groupthink

• Occurs when a group's desire to maintain solidarity outweighs other considerations

• process that often leads to poor decisions

Attitude

• Relatively stable evaluation of a person, object, situation, or issue

• assessed on a continuum ranging from positive to negative

—Cognitive - thoughts and beliefs about the attitudinal object\

—Emotional - Feeling toward the attitudinal object

—Behavioral - Predispositions concerning actions toward the object

Cognitive Dissonance

• Results from a desire to maintain self-esteem

• Awareness of in consciousness between attitudes or between attitudes and behaviors

—Reduce dissonance

—Changing behavior

—Changing attitudes

—explaining away the inconsistency

—Minimizing its importance

Persuasion

• Deliberate attempt to influence the attitudes and/or behavior of another person

• Four elements of persuasion:

—Source of the communication: Who is doing the persuasion?

—Audience: Who is being persuaded

—Message: What is being said?

—Medium: What is the means by which the message is transmitted?

Factors that make source more persuasive

• Credibility

• Attractiveness

• Likeability

• Audiences with low IQs tend to be more easily persuaded than those with high IQs.

Friendly Persuasion

• “Drip, drip, drip method..” (showing message over and over again)

• Validity Effect (the more you hear a message from multiple souces, the better it is)

• Mere Exposure Effect

Coercive Persuasion

• Coercive when you slowly loose the ability to make your own decisions (“brainwashing”)

• EX. Cults

Prosocial Behavior

Behavior that benefits others, such as helping, cooperation, and sympathy

Reasons for Helping

• Some behavior is motivated by altruism

• Requires self-sacrifice

• Not performed for personal gain

• Altruism increases appreciation of life.

Bystander effect

• As the number of bystanders at an emergency increases, the probability that a victim will receive help decreases.

Diffusion of Responsibility

Feeling that responsibility for helping is shared by the group

Biological factors of aggression

• Aggression- intentional infliction of physical or psychological harm on others

• Genetic link- an adoptee with a criminal biological parent is 4 times more likely to become a criminal

• Low arousal level of the autonomic nervous system- Related to antisocial and violent behavior

• High levels of testosterone- Correlated with aggressive behavior in males

• Low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin- Associated with violent behavior

• Brain Damage, Alcohol abuse, and high levels of childhood lead exposure

Aggressive behavior is learned (Bandura, 1973)

• Observing aggressive models

• Having aggressive responses reinforced

Prejudice

Attitudes toward others based on gender, religion, race or members of a particular group

Discrimination

Behavior directed toward others based on gender, religion, race or membership in a particular group

Realistic Conflict Theory

• As competition increases among groups for resources, so do prejudice, discrimination, and hatred.

• Attitudes and actions are too complex to be explained solely by economic conflict and competition

“Us-versus-Them” Mentality (Turner 1987)

• In-group

-Social group with a strong sense of togetherness

-Others are excluded.

• Out-group

-Individuals identified by the in-group as not belonging

• Us-versus-them thinking can lead to excessive competition, hostility, prejudice, discrimination, and war.

Social-Cognitive Theory

• People learn attitudes of prejudice and hatred the same way they learn other attitudes.

• The processes we use to simplify, categorize, and order the social world are the same processes that distort our views of it.

• EX. Stereotypes-Widely shared beliefs about characteristic traits, attitudes, and behaviors of members of racial, ethnic, or religious groups. Assume all members of a group are alike.

Diversity Assumptions

• Tend to perceive more diversity or more variability within the groups to which one belongs (in-groups)

• See more similarity among members of other groups (out-groups)

Ethnocentrism

• Tendency to look at situation from one’s own racial or cultural perspectiv