Social Psychology Exam 1

the presence of real or imagined other people

Social psychology is the study of how ___ affect(s) the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of humans

A) the presence of real or imagined other people

B) live social interactions with other humans

C) perceptions of the social world

D) other living things

lacks random assignment

A researcher wants to examine the relationship between viewing television violence and later behaving aggressively. Participants decide for themselves whether they would prefer to view a violent or a nonviolent film, and the number of subsequent aggressive behaviors they show in a competitive game is recorded. The researcher cannot legitimately make a causal statement based on this research design because the study __________.

A) lacks random assignment

B) lacks psychological realism

C) has no cover story

D) didn’t randomly select participants from the population

relate; cause

Complete the analogy: correlation is to __________ as experiment is to __________.

A) predict; relate

B) hypothesis; theory

C) relate; cause

D) relate; observe

Gestalt

Social psychologists’ emphasis on construals of social situations has its roots in __________ psychology.

A) behavioral

B) personality

C) Gestalt

D) Cognitive

high values of one variable are associated with low values of the other

A negative correlation means that __________.

A) high values of one variable are associated with high values of the other

B) there is no relationship between the two variables

C) low values of one variable are associated with low values of the other

D) high values of one variable are associated with low values of the other

Social Psychology

the scientific study of the way a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of others

different from related disciplines because of its levels of analysis

• emphasis on how people interpret the social world

• level of analysis = is the individual in the contest of the situation (individual’s constral of the situation)

• develop explainations of social influence through empirical methods (experiments)

• goal = discover universal laws of human behavior

• explain social behavior in terms of the power of the social situation to shape how one acts

Key Points of Social Psychology

1. scientific

   • own experiences, intuitions, & folk wisdom inconsistent and unreliable

   • we’re not very good information-processing machines

2. social psychology tests assumptions on which common sense rests

3. focus on individuals

   • individualistic approach

4. concerned with influence

   • not just directly (e.g. post secret)

5. not just behavior

   • put a premium on/embrace, thoughts, feelings too (subjective experience)

Impacts of WW2

1. researchers flee to US, bring training in Gestalt Psychology (big thing in Europe)

   • leads to 1st major theme: Subjectivity of the Situation

2. revelations about atrocities created interest in new research areas like, prejudice, obedience

   • leads to 2nd major theme: Power of the Situation

Gestalt Psychology

the whole (the gestalt) is greater than the sum of its parts

school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s mind rather than the objective, physical attributes of the objects

Subjectivity of the Situation

emphasize how people construe social situations

as important as objective reality

Power of the Situation

people underappreciate impact of context on behavior

aspects of the social situation that may seem minor can overwhelm the differences in people’s personalities

social and environmental situations are so powerful that they have dramatical effects on almost everyone

• underestimating = fundamental attribution error

Observational Method

researchers observe people and measure behavior; observing some cultural phenomenon

carefully observe, systematically observe, and carefully measure behavior

goal is to accurately describe what they see

focus is on description

(what is the nature of the phenomenon?)

• e.g. ethnography

• archival research

not favored by social psychologists, don’t stick with, not so often followed, more often the other 2 approaches

Limitations of the Observational Method

Observability:

• lot of social phenomena that researcher might be interested in, but those phenomena are difficult to observe, don’t have access to that behavior, something’s off limits due to their observability

Rarity:

• could potentially even easily observe, but they don’t happen very often, they are infrequent events

Paucity:

• most damming critique, most researchers would like to know a lot more than “something happened”, its info can be helpful, but want to know more than just “describe what took place”

Correlational Method

2 variables systematically measured; relationship assessed (see if they’re related, if they go together: in what way and how much)

• Calculate correlational coefficient (r):

  • an index of the extent two things go together, two variables, from -1 to + 1:

  • highlights the two important dimensions of a correlations (direct and strength)

• 2 important dimensions (direction and strength)

(from knowing X, can we predict Y?)

focus on prediction

• e.g. survey research

does not prove causation

Two Important Dimensions of Correlations

1. Direction: pos or neg, as one thing increases does the other as well(pos) or as one thing increases the other decreases (neg)

2. Strength: absolute value of correlation, closer to 1 = the stronger the relationship, important bc goal is prediction, stronger relationship = better job youll have predicting one variable from the other

Benefits and Limitations of Correlational Method

Benefits:

• Study when intervention difficult: don’t need to be there, can pass out survey, ask questions after the fact, ask questions concerning things you otherwise wouldn’t have access to

• Efficient: ask a number of questions

Limitations

• Accuracy: when asking to self report, respond to questions: people can not remember accurately, social desirability (answer depends on who talking to), may fudge things, grain of salt

• Causal ambiguity: researchers wanna go further than just knowing that two things are related, understanding cause and effect is typically ambiguous, 3^rd variable problem (ice cream and murder), think A causes B but maybe B causes A (reverse causality problem), wanna know whether one variable caused another

Experimental Method

people randomly assigned to different groups, one or more variables thought to have causal effect manipulated

address cause and effect

(is variable X a cause of variable Y?)

focus: determining causality

• experiments, do it well, in position to say within that experiment, variable A caused variable B

Independent Variable

Controlled by researcher, what varied to see if it has effect on another variable

Systematically varied

Independent of other factors of the research study

Dependent Variable

What measured to see if influenced by IV; outcome or effect being studied

Operational Definition

Specific way variable manipulated or measured

Operationalization, decide how to operationalize variables in the experiment

How Do We Know Cause and Effect?

Two things that make an experiment an experiment

1. Random assignment to condition (equal chance of being in any of the experimental conditions)

   • Equal chance of being in any condition; ensures groups ~equal at start

   • All those things that make ppl different, overtime, with a large enough sample, it evens out (levels out individual differences)

2. Manipulation of IV

   • Vary IV so people exposed to different treatments

   • Because equal at start, groups should differ only in terms of manipulation

   • If find that groups are diff only have one reasonable reason why bc of random assignment and manipulation, the IV is the one good reason (one variable, that differs across the conditions

Internal Validity

Extent to which cause and effect can be inferred from experiment (extent to which a researcher can feel confident that the IV caused the DV)

• keeping everything but the independent varaible the same

• Making sure that nothing besides the independent variable can affect the dependent variable

• this is accomplished by controlling all extraneous variables and by randomly assigning people to different experimental conditions

High when researcher confident effect on DV cause by IV

Important, the reason why an experiment would conduct an experiment, a true experiment

• (what researchers are trying to establish in their experiment)

Random assignment guards against confounds:

• variables that co-vary w/IV

Confounds

variables that co-vary w/IV

External Validity

Researchers trying to generalize their results to other populations or other situations

If an experiment is done well/right, should have high internal validity, most experiments tend to be low in in this

• extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other situations and to other people

Disadvantage in most experiments

• When designing, has to orchestrate situations

• By gaining control to randomly assign, rule out extraneous variables, situation can become artificial

• Cost of control = atypical situation that doesn’t match the real world that well

As such, experiments often low in external validity

• Extent to which results generalize to other situations/people (capacity to generalize is low)

Generalizing to Other Situations

“its not real life!”

2 types of realism:

1. Mundane realism

2. Psychological realism

Mundane Realism

extent to which experiment similar to real-life (resembles the real world, in mundane ways)

concerns things that are mundane

Psychological Realism

extent to which psychological process triggered in experiment similar to psychological processes occurring in real life

• Researcher is trying to generalize, not the setting, but the psychological processes triggered in that setting

• On surface not like real world,  but more important than mundane realism is psychological realism, if this realism is high, you’ve got a fair test

Generalizing to Other People

“they’re all college students and they’re ‘WEIRD’!”

• Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic backgrounds

the culture in which we live has profound influences on how we think about ourselves and the social world

This external validity requires random samples from population of interest. Is this a problem? (tactics to deal with this issue)

• Maybe psychological processes universal?

  • (not really, self esteem different across places, western care more than eastern)

• If varies, important in an of itself!

  • (go about getting self esteem in another way in different cultures, like from fitting in, and not standing out)

• And depends on what trying to do!

Internal vs External Validity

Often want to test theory, not see to whom theory applies

• some researchers not interested in generalizing their results

If cant draw conclusion from study, nothing to generalize!

• rule number one is to make sure you have internal validity for cause of effect

• rule number two is to see who that effect can be generalized to

Random Assignment

establishes causality, increases internal validity (about establishing cause and effect)

ensuring that all participants have an equal chance of taking part in any condition of an experiment

researchers can be relatively certain that differences in the participants’ personalities or backgrounds are distributed evenly across conditions

Random Sampling

helps generalize results, increases external validity (important for generalizing)

way of ensuring that a sample of people is representative of a

population by giving everyone inthe population an equal chance of being selected for the sample

Managing External Validity

1. Replication

   • need if really wanna generalize results

   • repeat study with different people, setting, and operationalizations of variables; statistically combine data w/meta-analysis

2. Field research

   • Bystander test replicated with robbing a liquor store in real life

   • But no matter how (dis) similar study is to “real life” still only one context

3. Cross-cultural Research

   • Research conducted with members of different cultures to see whether the psychological processes of interest are present in both cultures or whether they are specific to the culture in which people were raised

Limitations of Common Sense

problem with relying entirely on sources like this is that they often disagree with one another

• “birds of a feather flock together” & “opposites attract”

• “out of sight is out of mind” & “absence makes the heart grow fonder”

Fundamental Attribution Error

the tendency to explain our own and other people’s behavior entirely in terms of personality traits and to underestimate the power of social influence and the immediate situation

• tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors

Construal

how people perceive, comprehend and interpret the social world

is a favorite among social psychologists

• it conveys how important it is to get inside people’s heads and understand how they see the world and how those things are shaped by the social contest

these perceptions are more influential than objective aspects of the situation itslef

the world as it is interpreted by the individual

comes from: basic human motives

Naïve Realism

special kind of constral

the conviction that we perceive things “as they really are” under-estimating how much we are interpreting or “spinning” what we see

Two Central Motives that Drive Our Constral’s of the World

1. the need to feel good about ourselves (self-esteem motive)

   • most people have a strong need to see themselves as good, competent, and decent

   • People often distort their perception of the world to preserve their self-esteem

2. the need to be accurate (social cognition motive)

   • Individuals are viewed as trying to gain accurate understandings so that they can make effective judgments and decisions

   • In actuality, individuals typically act on the basis of incomplete and inaccu-rately interpreted information

How Social Psychologists Develop Theories to Test

research begins with a hunch, or hypothesis, that the researcher wants to test

inspiration from previous theories and research

hypotheses based on personal observations

Hindsight Bias

tendency for people to exaggerate, after knowing that something occurred, how much they could have predicted it before it occured

True Experiment

manipulation

random assigment

control and experimental groups

Field Experiment

experiments conducted in natural settings rather than in the lab

one of best ways to increase external validity

Replication

Repeating a study, often with different subject populations or in different settings

ultimate test of an experiment’s external validity

Meta Analysis

statistical technique that averages the results of two or more studies to see if the effect of an independent variable is reliable

Behaviorism

school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment

• early, didn't’t concern themselves with cognition (over looked the importance of how people interpret their environments)

Ethnography

method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside, without imposing any pre conceived notions they might have

more common in anthropology

when a researcher gets involved in a group or a context that they want to study

join become a member of thing trying to understand

Archival Research

already existing data that you can go back and take a close look at (TV guides for measure of violent content)

researcher examines the accumulated documents, or archives, of a culture (e.g., diaries, novels, magazines,

and newspapers)

Survey

research in which a representative sample of people are asked (often anonymously) questions about their attitudes or behavior

Social Cognition

how people select, interpret, remeber, and use social information to think and form inferences

2 forms of thinking

1. controlled thought (sometimes use)

2. automatic thought (often)

• think of as a continuum, distinction has important implications

Automatic Thought

relatively less effort, intent, awareness, or mental control

in terms of thinking, most of the stuff going on in our heads is this

Thinking that is nonconscious, unintentional, involuntary, and effortless

Controlled Thought

aware of what’s going on, have to intend to get mental process started, can stop the process at anytime

thinking that is conscious, intentional, voluntary, and effortful

Schema

Mental structures that organize info

• about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember

• Hypothetical (can’t see it), help organize and process info

• Helps separate what’s important and what’s not

• What you pay more conscious attention to and what you let fall by wayside

“loose theories” based on experience, info privy to, stuff heard

Include knowledge about concept, relations among cognitions about it, specific examples

Can be about self, others, roles, events…

• Expectations, info stored in head, organize incoming input, help process things around you more smoothly

Influence what we notice, think about, and remember

Stuff about Schemas

Often functional

• Help make sense of “blooming buzzing confusion” of world

• Serve a purpose

• Cant possibly attend to all of the things going on in the world (orient you to what you should pay attention to)

• Form of automatic thinking

Which schema depends on accessibility

• Chronic and temporary (how is it that some schemas may come to mind vs others)

  • Chronically accessible (salient, psychologically potent, front of mind)

  • Temporarily accessible, trip a wire in head become more salient and available for use

Shooter Bias

schemas lead to the misconception of reality

schemas may lead us to see things that aren’t there

differential bias based on color of participants skin

• Test whether its possible that police officers get trigger happy when looking for someone with dark skin, more likely to shoot an innocent person or think are reaching for gun when getting wallet

• Created a somewhat realistic video game (shoot or not shoot in a very quick period of time) get points for correct decision, lose points for wrong decision (automatic thinking)

• Guns vs. other objects

• Correct decisions rewarded; incorrect decisions punished (lose/gain points)

Confirmation Bias

engage in positive testing strategy; seek information that supports expectations

Perseverance Effect

bring to mind evidence consistent w/feedback; later draw on evidence that’s most avalible

peoples expectations perservere even when faced with evidence to the contrary

Self Fulfilling Prophecy

create whats infront of us

• Have expectation

• Behave toward target in way consistent with expectation (based on scheme, treat person a certain way)

• Target adjusts behavior to match expectation (cuts off ways they can respond with you, ways theyre forced to respond are consistent with your thoughts from the beginning)

If have schema regarding a group of people, chance you will treat people based on schema, and will illicit behavior that aligns with schema that might not have happened if didnt have that schema

people have an expectation about what another person is like, which influences how they act toward that person, which causes that person to behave consistently with people’s original expectations, making the expectations come true

Judgmental Heuristics

Cognitive “rules of thumb” or mental shortcuts

another form of automatic thinking

• help reduce time and effort in forming judgements (simplify decision making, get a good enough answer enough of the time with much less effort)

also useful, also can lead to bias

• predictable bias that we can anticipate based on how the mind works

Availability Heuristic

how easy does it come to mind?

• Base frequency judgements on how easy info comes to mind

• About how easy it is to bring info to mind

• Usually makes sense

  • Easier to come to mind, probably more common and more important

  • Reasonable inferences could make

• But sometimes it doesn’t

  • Can get people to fall back on mental shortcut that leads people astray

Representative Heurtistic

“like goes with like” (similarity, how alike are 2 things)

People often judge probabilities by the degree to which A resembles B

• Members of category should resemble category prototype, effects should resemble causes that produced them

  • People make assumptions that like should go with like

  • When making judgements, we consider the degree to which things go together to help make sense and make judgements quickly

• in astrology: info reads a lot like representativeness (like goes with like)

• freudian psychology: falling prey to this, things that are similar go together

Anchoring Heuristic

“taking things at face value”

People use what’s available as starting point, and insufficiently adjust from this anchor

• If you have to make a judgement for a heuristic, you recognize you should think about it first

• initial answer pops into head recognize that initial answer probably isn’t right

• adjust from that stand point

Adjustment is insuffient

People are biased to that inital answer

Anchoring and Adjustment

Effects remain when monetary incentives or extreme anchors are given

• Very stubborn pattern, still find same bias to same degree no matter what they do to try to prevent

• Initial anchor influences judgement even if its unrelated, and they were forewarned and the anchor is ridiculous

• When negotiating, the start value is the point around negotiations turn, start value will influence judgements, whoever puts start value first has a leg up

not just numbers

• jury simulations

may explain perserverance effect

& false consensus effect

False Consensus Effect

Want to think attitudes and opinions are shared by other people; makes you feel better

Tendency for people to think their attitudes, preferences, and choices are relatively common

Thought Supression

can you control your thoughts? (yes)

When mental capacity is restricted, thought people try to suppress may become hyper-accessible!

Shown in variety of domains, including sexist beliefs, stereotypes, and even emotions!

Successful Thought Control

Requires 2 processes:

• Suppress unwanted thought by searching for distracters (effortful controlled thinking)

  • This is the controlled, operating process (requires, intent to get process started, require some mental effort to do all that and sustain attention overtime)

• Also must remember what we’re trying to suppress (at some level mind needs to be thinking about that thing you don’t wanna think about)

  • This is an automatic, monitoring process (constantly on the lookout for evidence that youre screwing up and thinking about what youre not supposed to) (requires less mental effort, intention, awareness, or control)

With sufficient cognitive resources, two processes work together to produce successful mental control (under certain circumstances)

• If capacity reduced, cant search for distracters, but automatic search for content want to suppress continues unabatedly (does not require mental resources in a way that controlled thinking does)

  • Tired, fatigued, drunk, distracted

Result is ironic reversal – become hyper- sensitive to thought wish to suppress!

Conterfactual Thinking

Mentally changing some aspect of past as way of imagining what might have been

• Most likely after negative events and close calls

• Easier to imagine alternative, more intense emotional reaction

Priming

process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, concept, or goal

Base Rate Information

information about the frequency of members of different categories in the population

• categorizing acccording to representativeness

Barnum Effect

common mental bias where people think vauge, general statements apply to them

• magazine quizzes & horoscopes (give generic feedback that could apply yo just about anymone)

How Culture Impacts Schema Development and Use

the content of our schemas is influenced by the culture in which we live

an important source of our schemas is the culture in which we grow up

culture can influence the kinds of thinking people automatically use to understand their worlds

• not all thinking; some schemas appear to be used by all humans

some basic ways in which people typically perceive and think about the world are shaped by culture

Analytic Thinking

type of thinking in which people focus on the properties of objects without considering their surrounding context

• type of thinking is common in Western cultures

Holistic Thinking

type of thinking in which people focus on the overall context, particularly the ways in which objects relate to each other

• type of thinking is common in East Asian cultures (e.g., China, Japan, and Korea)

Illusion of Free Will

can be a disconnect between our conscious sense of how much we are causing our own actions and how much we really are causing them

• Sometimes we overestimate the amount of control we have

• sometimes we underestimate the amount of control we have

But the more people believe in free will, the more willing they are to help others in need and the less likely they are to engage in immoral actions such as cheating.

Planning Fallacy

tendency for people to be overly optimistic about how soon they will complete a project, even when they have failed to get similar projects done on time in the past

confirmation bias

Researchers Mark Snyder and Bill Swann (1978) had participants choose questions to ask another person (really a confederate) to find out if this person was an extrovert or an introvert. Due to a process known as ________, participants asked biased questions that led them to discover evidence consistent with what they were searching for

A) perseverance effect

B) confirmation bias

C) the planning fallacy

D) anchoring and adjustment

participants were unable to suppress their thoughts about the word “house” when under time pressure

In research by Wegner and Erber (1992) discussed in class, participants were asked to read words presented one at a time on a computer screen and to then say a related word into a microphone. The researchers manipulated whether participants did this task under time pressure or not, and while concentrating on or suppressing thoughts about the word “house”. An important finding from this research was that…

A) participants were able to suppress their thoughts about the word “house,” but only when under time pressure

B) participants were unable to suppress their thoughts about the word “house” when under time pressure

C) participants were never able to suppress their thoughts about the word “house”

D) participants were always able to suppress their thoughts about the word “house.”

holistically

Several studies conducted by Nisbett and his colleagues suggest that people who grow up in East Asian cultures think more __________ than people who grow up in Western cultures.

A) analytically

B) creatively

C) holistically

D) intelligently

a schema

When most Americans walk into a fast-food restaurant chain, they know they should approach the counter to order, pay, and pick up their food, rather than sit down and wait to be served. This knowledge of how to act in such a situation is called __________.

A) a counterfactual thought

B) a schema

C) controlled thinking

D) a theory

availability heuristic

Desmond thinks that Republicans and Democrats almost never work together in Congress. He believes this because he finds it much easier to think of examples of politicians from the two parties not working together than to think of examples of them working together. It is likely that the ______________ has caused Desmond to underestimate how frequently Democrats and Republicans work together. 

A) confirmation bias

B) availability heuristic

C) anchoring and adjustment heuristic

D) representativeness heuristic

Conjunction Fallacy

the co-occurrence of two things can not logically be more common/more likely than either one of those things by themselves

Automatic vs Controlled Thought

Certainly there are times when our thoughts are controlled (big chunk of mental life involves thinking that is automatic)

• Conscious, intentional, voluntary, and/or effortful

But even when we try to control thoughts, automatic tendencies may prevail!

Social Facilitation Study

a competative cyclist

noticed, almost always, his race times were almost always quicker when competing against others than just by himself

• gives school kids a tests, gives them fishing wire & line

• asked them to spin reel as fast as they could

• when kids were in room with others, tended to spin reel more quickly

• when alone, their speeds were generally lessened

1st Study of Social Influence Systematically

Ethnography Study

testing cognitive dissonance, interested in what happens when people are confronted with information that conflicts with things they express

• researchers learned about person in California “Mary

  • she was sure the world was gonna end water gonna cover the earth, end around Christmas time, space aliens, she and her followers would be safe, would be taken to higher group if believe

• they studied Mary and her followers, paid attention, took careful notes

  • found that believers, rather than back off or admit that they were wrong, they doubled down; extra confident they were right, world is safe bc they believed and intervened

Study Focused on Determing Causality

Gets young boys as participants, told that 1^st thing going to do is watch a film, then will get to help with teaching

• Creates a situation that ending of film clip differs depending on which boy is randomly assigned, in one there is fighting and blood, ends violently

• Other version, ends well, cooperatively

Experimenter takes boy to different room, explains asking help in learning experiment, get another boy to try to memorize word pairs

• Give electric shock every time he makes mistake, decide how intense electric shock to give

• Other kid doesn’t actually get electric shocks, way to determine if the intensity of electric shocks is a function of video watched

  • Was a function, they are more aggressive, when randomly assigned to watch a violent film clip, compared to one that end cooperatively

Felt his experiment had internal validity, randomly assigned the boys

• Was bold in his experiment, in writeup, published report, said aggressive media caused aggressive behavior, felt he could be so bold bc he conducted an experiment

• Without random assignment, no longer have internal validity

Study with Internal Validity

Background:

• A woman, waitress, got home late, as got home, before gate closed, a person snuck in behind her, began to sexually assault and stab woman, shes calling for help, lights come on, person opens a window and yells, attacker runs away, comes back bc no one came down, she is murdered after multiple neighbors witnessed what happened

• A lot of people knew about a terrible event where someone needed help, and almost no one did something

Social psychologists decided that there was a good chance that what makes this situation so surprising, could be the reason no one did anything (fusion of responsibility)

• Conducted an experiment to test idea, more bystanders present, people would be less likely to help someone in need

  • Staged seizure over call with bunch of people

  • Dependent variable: how many people decide to help (within 6 minutes)

  • Number of bystanders makes a difference, more people present = less help

Bc Ps had equal chance to be in each condition (random assignment) causal inference can be made, internal validity high

Field Research Study

Bystander test replicated with robbing a liquor store in real life

• store clerk walks to back and leaves 1 or 2 real customers alone at front counter

  • while clerk was away, 2 young men (actors) entered and robbed the store

• same findings

  • customers who were alone were more likely to report the theft to the clerk than customers in pairs

• established that individuals are less likely to help a victim in an emergency when other people are present

Priming Study

Half ppl are exposed to the word moon, half are not

• asked to write down laundry detergent

• ones who saw the word moon said Tide more often

Confirmation Bias Study

Interact with person, rate person based on qualities,

• on paper there are 20 questions, pick 10 to ask the person, get answers then rate person

When handing the set of question, experimenter says whether you think person in other room in extraverted and others are asked to find out whether person is introverted

• Partipants were biased in types of questions they asked person in room, ½ of questions were designed to elicit evidence of extraversion and vice versa

Perserverance Effect Study

deciding if a suicide note is real or fake, read a series of pairs of notes

• for each pair had to decide which not was real and which was fake

when completed the task, were given randomized, false performace feedback

after task, researchers confessed that the feedback was fake and had no relation to actual performance

• participants were asked to rate how well they performed and how well they could actually tell if a note was real or fake

those who were given a lot of positive feedback continued to estimate that they would be above average at the task

those who were given negative feedback rated their abilites significantly lower

Self Fullfilling Prophecy Study

Rosenthal & Jacobson Study

Prof calls a teacher at random, developing a questionnaire that helps identify students that might bloom late

• Calling bc contacting teachers and going to schools and administering test, mind if I fly out to give students a test?

Teacher agrees, team goes to them, give students the test

• Based on survey, give names of students who will be late bloomers, want to come back in 6 months to give a 2^nd test

• Looks like survey is good at its job, seems to have identified students who bloomed late

Survey was totally made up, randomly give names of students, to give teacher expectations that students will bloom late

• Once had expectation, seemed to put it in motion (treat someone differently based on expectation)

findings have since been replicated in a number of both experimental and correlational studies

Availability Heuristic Study

Students answer “how assertive of a person are you?” scale of 1 to 7

• Before answer question, asked to list times where they behaved assertively

• IV: how many examples the researchers request, ½ = 6 times, ½ = 12 times

Data show, people who list 6 see themselves as more assertive than people who listed 12

• use how easy it is to bring info to mind as relevant info when making decisions

Result is biased

• participants randomly assigned, on avg groups should be about same in assertiveness, who better to know how assertive you are than you?

• Can get people to fall back on mental shortcut that leads people astray

Anchoring and Adjustment Study

Jury simulations, manipulate instructions to jury, have to decide sentence, ask to consider most lenient first and work way up or consider most severe punishment then work way down

• Reach diff sentencing recommendations, most severe first = harsher

False Consensus Effect Study

Make students wear large sandwich board that will have the word “Repent” in big red letters and see how people respond to you

If rather go do a long boring cognitive psych tests you can instead

• Asks what percentage of students would agree with you and make the same decision

• Based on decision, think higher or lower would wear the sandwich board, think other people think like them

Study on Thought Suppression

Task: say a related word out loud, while concentrating on or not thinking about the word “house”

• Hill, home, bus, child, roof, little, brick

Do so under low or high time pressure

• those under low time pressure performed better

• participants were unable to suppress their thoughts about the word “house” when under time pressure

Social Perception

How we form impressions of and make inferences about other people

• How we make judgements about the causes of other peoples’ behavior

Non-Verbal Communication

Communication between people that doesn’t involve content of spoken language

Form impressions of others using everything but the content of spoken language

• Important bc when we interact with others, want to know what thinking or feeling,

• ppl we’re observing don’t wanna tell us/let into their heads

• would be great if just through observing other people we could figure out whats going on in head and form accurate impressions

way in which people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without words

• via facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body position,movement, touch, and gaze

Basic Channels of Non-Verbal Communication

1. facial expressions

2. eye contact

3. body language

4. paralanguage

innate

not contigent on culture generally

Facial Expressions

6 basic emotions represented clearly (fairly clear displays in the face, displays that ppl with a fair amount of accuracy can decode)

• Anger

• fear

  • facial & eye muscle movements increase sensory input, such as widening the visual field, increasing the volume of air in the nose, &speeding up eye movements

• happiness

• sadness

• surprise

• disgust

  • muscle movements decrease input from these senses: Eyes narrow and less air is breathed in

Seem universal

Eye Contact

“windows to the soul” (look into someone’s eyes, tells you something about that person)

If avoided, may infer dislike, shyness, or unfriendliness

Is continuous eye contact “gazing” or “staring”? (make a lot of eye contact)

• Get info that helps fill in gaps, get step or two along the way

Body Language

Position, posture, and movement of our bodies…

How people present, move bodies through space and time

• (give info: tired, energized, interested)

Gestures (emblems – body movements w/specific meanings in a culture, in which nearly everyone within the culture knows the meaning)

• (ex: thumbs up, middle finger)

• Direct verbal translation, known by most in group, have effect on recipient

Paralanguage

Variations in speech other than verbal content (how quickly we communicate, where we pause)

Could say same sentence may diff ways

• depending on how those words are communicated, could communicate interest, anger, joy, etc, depending on how spoken

  • Voice pitch, loudness, rhythm, inflection, hesitation..