PSYCH 4630 - Exam 3

balance theory

a state of balance if the product the signs is positive

a state of imbalance if the product is negative

balance occurs when…people agree with someone they like, people disagree with someone they dislike

balance theory (political application)

we tend to assume our friends share our politics and that our enemies have opposing political views

we tend to change our political views to agree with our partners and close friends (or, we simply break up with them)

vicarious dissonance

others’ hypocrisy makes us feel similar levels of dissonance

vicarious dissonance (experiment)

procedure: tape was a counter-attitudinal argument about raising tuition

manipulations: the speaker was

• ingroup (same dorm)

• outgroup (differnt dorm)

who was believed to have:

• high choice (decided to speak on this topic)

• low choice (forced to speak on t opic)

findings: attitudes toward tuition became most positive for ingroup, high choice

persuading the powerful

who was MOST affected by argument quality?

• low power (employee) or high power (manager)

answer: low power

why? managers have action orientation (not deliberating about high quality arguments)

public conformity

openly agreeing with groups even when we privately disagree

attitudes (or in this case, beliefs) do not change

informational social influence

using others to disambiguate our environment

private acceptance

conforming to others’ beliefs and believing in it

informational influence

• occurs in ambiguous situations

• does not involve arousal or discomfort

• results in belie or attitude change

normative influence

• occurs in unambiguous situations

• involves some arousal or discomfort

• does NOT result in belief of attitude change

polarization

a growing division between social groups, leading to intensification of opposing attitudes

why does polarization happen?

persuasive arguments

social comparison

outgroup derogation

persuasive arguments

group members develop arguments to convince the others within their group

social comparison

adopting the majority opinion and becoming more extreme to maintain a sense of uniqueness/individuality

outgroup derogation

dreaming/looking down on other groups too feel justified in one’s own position

types of polarization

1. political attitudes

2. attitudes within religious organizations

3. lifestyle polarization

4. gender polarization

believing in conspiracy theory

conspiratorial beliefs are driven, in part, by a desire to

belong balanced with a desire to be unique (optimal distinctiveness theory)

optimal distinctiveness theory

we are motivated to balance belonging and uniqueness

majority influence

the numerical majority opinion can influence attitudes

“if everyone says so, it must be true”

minority influence

the numerical minority opinion can influence attitudes

“what is that person saying? Maybe they have a point”

majority v. minority influence

when not elaborating, people mostly ignored argument quality

instead they used consensus as a cue

when elaborating, people used argument quality

but they also used majority or minority opinion

what happens with “moderate” relevance

when the attitude object was of moderate personal relevance, it’s unclear which path people will take

if the message is surprising, engaging, or challenging, then this will put them down the central path

but if the message is expected then this will put them down the peripheral path

main effects

the influence of an independent variable on the DV, when controlling for others IV’s

main effect (argument quality)

when the argument was highly relevant, those in the strong argument condition were more persuaded compared to those in the weak argument condition, regardless of majority v. minority

message repetition

effective until a point…

message repetition can trigger counter arguments, which is motivated by a threat to one’s autonomy

sleeper effect

initially rejecting an argument due to a flaw, but being persuaded after the flaw is forgotten

requires specific conditions:

1. enough time to forget the flaw

2. but still remember the argument

3. other than the flaw, the argument must be otherwise persuasive

truisms

belief so widely accepted that they are rarely challenged. as a result, we are rarely exposed to counterarguments.

despite being highly endorsed, these beliefs are relatively weak and easy to change

low attitude strength

compared to many other attitudes of equal valence and extremity, truisms tend to be easily changed.

because truisms often have ___ ____ ____

although truisms are generally easy to change, it’s possible to build up a defense against counter-messages

inoculations

building a resistance to counterarguments

supportive defenses

strong, pro-attitudinal argument

“helping others is important because…”

• it’s the right thing to do

• they’re more likely to help you in return

• it improves your own wellbeing

refutational defenses

learning to reject the other argument

“some will claim being selfish is important but” actually selfishness harms you in the long run

narrative transportation

immersion in a narrative can change attitudes

mechanism: when transported, people may be unlikely to conterargue with story ideas or claims, as is often the case with direct experience itself

the greater the suspension of disbelief - accepting the premise of a narrative - the more likely to be transported

suspension of disbelief

the greater the ______ ___ _____ - accepting the premise of a narrative - the more likely to be transported

“murder at the mall” (narrative transportation)

participants read a story about a murder in an Ohio mall

IV: this is a work of fiction v. true story

in which condition do you think people were more transported? fiction, suspend disbelief

DV:

• beliefs in a just world

• beliefs about psychiatric patients

increasing narrative transportation

1. high quality story (v. factual report)

2. hedonic (v. critical) mindset = more likely to suspend disbelief

valence weighting bias (vWB)

the tendency to evaluate novel or ambiguous objects as positive or negative

it involves weighting positive or negative features more heavily

• those with a positive vWB make more friends during their first year at OSU!

learning asymmetry

in attitudes

positives are less well-learned than negatives

• approaching an object leads to gaining accurate information in the long run

• avoiding an object leads to maintenance of the negative attitude, regardless of accuracy

life stage hypothesis

U shape with age on openness to cahnge

reason 1: power (in middle age)

reason 2: cognitive differences

attitudes and memory

alzheimer’s dementia causes cognitive decline including memory loss

question: do they tend to retain their attitudes or lose them along with their explicit memory?

study: presented with a variety of objects and asked attitudes, repeated 1 week later, they didn’t remember having seen those objects

results: the attitude was consistent with evaluation one week prior

attitudes influence self-knowledge

attitudes influence memory

attitudes influence intentions and behavior

attitudes are related to group identity

self-defining attitudes

attitudes that help us define who we are

• who one is

• who one strives to be

• what one values

tend to be

1. extreme, unambivalent

2. characterized by likes (v. dislikes)

3. strong

prior work: self-defining attitudes…

1. can be measured

2. relate to, but are distinct from, other attitude properties

3. correlates with advocacy

grocery store research summary (dr. jessie)

self-definition biases memory

influences behavior

other findings: increases the degree to which a person feels they are a “prototypical” organic food person

body-specificity hypothesis

the way we physically interact with environments shapes our attitudes

ie: left handers associate left side with “good”, right handers associate right side

hand grip (left/right political attitudes)

• gripped something with left or right hand

• to what degree do you agree with Democrats/Republicans on political issues

• had surprising small effect

physical lean (left/right political attitudes)

• democrats sat in a chair leaning left or right

• to what degree do you agree with Democrats on political issues

• the effect is tiny, replicability may be limited

motor movements & attitudes

our physical movements can affect our emotions

these emotions can, in turn, influence attitudes

nodding head while listening to counter attitudinal info, more likely to agree

flexation

the action of bending a limb or joint

visceral fit

match between physical state and argument increases perceived plausibility of related events

reported greater belief in global warming on warm v. cold days

ambivalence study

university students read article about abolishing minimum wages for young adults while on balance board

those who read the ambivalent text moved from side-to-side

subjective ambivalence and side-to-side movement correlated at r=.38

also research showing in the reverse

metacognition

thinking about one’s thoughts, and in this case, it means “thinking about one’s own attitudes”

can alter attitude properties such as…

• valence

• extremity

• strength

• self-definition

metacognition (name swap)

students at a Spanish University learned about Juan and Jose

oops! there was a transcription error! reverse the names

DVS: explicit measure of attitude favorability and extremity: “to what extent do you like or dislike Jose/Juan?”

implicit measure of ambivalence

IAT associating Juan and Jose with ambivalence v. certainty

results: more ambivalence when told to reverse the names

reshape an attitude

metacognition can involve attempt to ___ ___ ____

attitudes that might benefit from metacognition:

• when based on incorrect information

• when prejudiced toward marginalized social groups

but the original (incorrect or biased) information may influence our evaluations despite metacognition

mitigating misinformation

all of these interventions work, but mostly only immediately during/after the intervention

1. “this is false” before misinformation with no details

2. “misleading” during misinformation with details

3. “this is false” during headline with details

4. media literacy tips

5. source credibility

6. learn misinformation techniques

7. accuracy nudge rated accuracy of nine neutral headlines

8. descriptive norms

9. “thinking mood” asked to explain how they knew each was true or false

illusory truth effect

the more familiar we are with a concept, the truer we believe it to be

how to avoid illusory truth effect

• deliberate thought and counterarguments

• fact checking

replication

testing the reliability of a scientific finding with different data (ie running the study again)

direct replications

as close as possible to the original procedure and sample

conceptual replications

using different operationalizations of variables

robustness

reliability of the prior finding using the same data, but a different statistical analysis strategy

p-hacking

running a variety of statistical procedures until you find one that “works”

reproducibility

reliability of a finding using the same data, and the same statistical analysis strategies

open science replication effect

100 replications by 270 scientists

selected at random articles from our top journals

then conducted direct replications where possible, conceptual when not

only ~36-40% of replications succeeded

the replication crisis

a period in the 2010’s in which psychologists discovered that many prominent findings were less replicable than the literature implied

causes of failures to replicate

1. low statistical power

2. researcher degrees of freedom

3. questionable research practices

4. publication bias

5. poorly conducted replications

statistical power

the ability of a study to detect an effect if one actually exists

high power means that if your hypothesis is correct, you’ll find out!

statistical power & replication

power is important because:

when power is low, false positives made up a larger share of the literature

that’s because the true positives are “hidden”: they aren’t being reported

but the false positives are “visible”: they are being reported

summary: have a high enough sample size and try to find a powerful effect

research degree of freedom

the many, often small ways, researchers can “massage” their data. usually no deceitful intent

• freedom in cleaning such as outlier removal

• freedom in analysis plans

• flexible stopping rules

this can result in p-hacking: tweaking data until things “work”

publication bias

prestigious journals want positive (not null) findings

exception: when the null findings discredit another finding

file drawer problem

null results disappear from view

• low power causes a higher rate of false positives

• the file drawer problem also causes a higher rate of false positives

poorly conducted replications

conducting high quality science is TOUGH

researchers who attempt to replicate sometimes produce low quality work, compared to the original researchers

example: a direct replication when a conceptual replication would be more appropriate

solutions to replication crisis

open science: share data, analytic procedure

preregistration: share analytic procedure and hypothesis before launching the study

high powered studies

publication reform: more publishing of null results (assuming the study was of a high quality)

conspiracy theories

explanations of important events that center on secret plots by powerful actors

conspiratorial ideation

a general tendency to believe in conspiracy theories

those who tend to believe in one conspiracy theory are also more likely to believe others

illusory pattern perceiption

the cognitive tendency to perceive meaningful connections within random, unrelated, or ambiguous data

epistemic needs

a desire for explanation, certainty, and “meaning”

people dislike randomness and ambiguity. we want to make sense of the world

• (illusory) pattern perception

when understanding of our world is threatened, we may turn to systems of belief

existential needs

a need for safety and control

people like having control over their environment

“control threats” include

• terrorist strike, natural disaster, war, job loss

such threat lead to endorsement of conspiracy theory and similar belief systems because they help make people feel they can take back control

social motives

include a need to belong, social identity, and status

conspiracy theories can mark and protect identity

there are communities of people who share beliefs

gateway hypothesis

believing in one conspiracy theory may “open the door” toward belief in later ones

our attitudes shape our lives

1. attitudes mater

2. attitudes are construction

3. attitudes can be examined and changed