Term Test One

Social Psychology

scientific study of how peoples thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people

Name the 6 Principles of Contemporary Social Psychology

1. power of the situation
2. importance of cognition and construal
3. power of the person
4. applicability of social psychological principles
5. scientific method
6. importance of biological processes

What are the major differences between personality psychology and social psychology

personality psychology is about individual differences, private internal functioning and is often studied through correlational methods

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social psychology focuses on the role of the situation/social influence. It studies processes most people share that make them susceptible to social influence. It is often studied experimentally

What are internal forces?

personal attitudes and dispositions (beliefs, values, etc)

What was learnt from the Jonestown Massacre

people often falsely attribute circumstances to internal personality traits/dispositions.

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EX. “the victims were gullible, and had no self-esteem”

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Instead, we need SITUATIONAL assessment

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EX. people who were isolated, lack of info, etc.

What are common sense explanations

invoked after we know the outcome

different competing explnations

little agreement about what is correct

cannot verify what is correct

what is the hindsight bias

“knew-it-all-along phenomenon”

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common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable then they actually were

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What is reliability? What are some ways to measure reliability?

assurance that studies yield consistent information

* test-rest
* interrater
* internal consistency

What is validity? what are some ways to measure validity?

validity ensures that examinations measure that they are supposed to measure

* content validity - face validity
* criterion validity - convergent validity
* experimental validity - internal/external validity

What is archival analysis? what are some advantages and disadvantages?

type of research which involves seeking out and extracting evidence from archival records

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A: Good external validity - easy to conduct

D: poor internal validity, reliability (data inaccuracies, missing data, rater-biases, no causal conclusions)

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you were not the one to gather and compile the info in the first place. therefore you cannot be sure it is accurate AND you cannot guarantee you are measuring what you want to measure, or ensure you are using consistent info.

What is naturalistic observation? Is it an observational or experimental method? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

field research; varies in the extent to which the observer interacts with the environment

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It is an observational method

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A: good external validity, easy to conduct

D: poor internal validity, observer bias

\n What is structured observation? Is it an observational or experimental method? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

researcher cues the behaviours of interest and observes participants responses in a lab - bobo doll

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Observational Method

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A: standardized environment, good internal validity, observe infrequent or undesirable behaviours

D: observer bias, artificial environment

What is the difference between external and internal validity

internal validity: whether the study design, conduct, and analysis answers the research questions without bias

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External validity: whether the study findings can be generalized to other contexts.

What are Survey Methods? What are some advantages and disadvantages?

representative sample of people are asked questions about their thoughts, feelings and behaviours

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A: collect data from many participants at the same time, allows study of topics that are not directly observable, easy to condutc

D: Validity and reliability vary - unrepresentative sample, order of questions, response options, question wording, socially desirable responding

\n What is psychophysiological methods? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

measure the relationships between psychological processes and aspects of peoples physical, cognitive, social or emotional behaviour (heart rate, def, etc)

A: biological underpinnings

D: reliability/validity can vary, expensive, correlational

What are correlational methods? What is its main disadvantages?

Researches systemically measure variables and assess the relationship between them; correlational coefficient - Pearson’s r- varies from -1 to +1

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D: correlation alone does not mean causation

what are cross-sectional correlational methods? what is its main advantage and disadvantage?

compare different naturally occurring groups to each other

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A: look at age differences easily

D: cannot look at age changes, cohort effect

what are longitudinal correlational methods? what is its main advantage and disadvantage?

measures the same groups of participants over time

A: look at age changes, can make limited causal inferences

D: attrition (loss of study participants over time), harder to conduct, time shifts

What is the main thing about experimental methods that correlational methods are unable to do?

allows us to measure and infer causation!

what are the unique elements of experimental methods? How can you increase internal validity during experimentation? how can you increase external validity?

allows us to randomly assign participants to different conditions and ensure the conditions are identical except for the independent variable

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Internal validity - REDUCE demand characteristics (things that can influence behaviour other than the IV

* cover-story, high-quality control condition, minimize expectancy effects, high experimental realism

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External Validity

* random sampling, high mundane realism, high psychological realism

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What is self awareness?

understanding that you exist as an entity with internal states

what is the spotlight effect?

belief that others are paying more attention to our appearance and behaviour than they really are.

Name the four aspects of the self

1. Self concept - who am I
2. social self - social roles
3. self-knowledge - how can I explain and predict myself
4. self-esteem - my sense of self-worth

What comprises our self-concept? are we conscious of this?

collection of traits, attributes and beliefs that individuals use to describe or characterize themselves

ex. personality traits, strengths, weaknesses, moral values

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yes; but not all the time - we have a working self-concept; subset of self-knowledge that is brought to our mind in particular contexts.

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what are self schemas? what is the self-reference effect?

mental frameworks that organize info, feelings, and beliefs about the self and help to guide processing of self-relevant information.

the impact the way we think, remember, behave and notice

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The SRE is the tendency for info pertaining to the self to be processed more efficiently and better remembered than other info.

What comprises our social self? What are some elements of the social self?

our social self refers to how we perceive ourselves in relation to others

* looking glass self
* situationism
* social comparison theory
* cultural values

What are the socialization agents of our social self?

“Looking glass self”

* how others see and treat us influences our sense of self
* we internalize what we think are these opinions
* thus, what becomes our self is what we imagine other think of us - positive thoughts - good feelings, etc.

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Situationism

* how the situation affects our sense of self
* self-concept differentiation - the extent to which a person’s self-representations are different for different social roles and contexts
* if SCD is low, you view yourself as being the same across all situations, if SCD is high, you view yourself as changing depending on social interactions

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What is the social comparison theory of your social self? what is a major issue with the theory?

We learn about our abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to other people.

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upwards social comparisons - comparing yourself to people who are better than you are in a particular ability/trait

downwards social comparisons - comparing yourself to people who are worse than us in a particular ability/trait

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It can be based on incomplete information. Ex. Social Media Profiles

There was a study that suggested that social comparisons affect self-evaluations. What study was this?

Lockwood and Kunda

* first and fourth year undergraduate students were shown a “super-star” student profile
* forth year participants had more negative self-evaluation - upwards self comparsion- “running out of time” mentality
* 1st year students had more positive self-evaluation during the upwards self comparison - something to aspire towards

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How can cultural values impact our self-evaluations

can shape how people construe and experience the self

individualism promotes the independent self - uniqueness and independence

collectivism promotes interdependent self - connectedness and interdependence - ranked higher on S-CD

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What were the four studies that connected cultural values to the experience of the social self?

Masuda and Nisbett + Nisbett

* undergraduates were shown an underwater scene and were asked to recall details
* cultures that influence individualism remember individual fish more/focal fish
* cultures that influence collectivism remember more details about the background scenes/things that revolved around the fish

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Masuda et al

* participants shown an image of students at school
* shown a focal person and the front and people in the background
* varied whether the focal persons facial expressions represented the background characters, or were mismatched.
* individualists made more errors. eye-movement shows collectivist culture spend more time looking at the background

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Kim and Markus

* gave participants a set of colour pencils (four green and one orange)
* asked participants to choose which one they want
* individualists wanted the orange pencil - collectivists wanted the green pencil more
* individualism promotes uniqueness, therefore it makes sense the picked the orange more frequently

What is self knowledge? What are some elements of self-knowledge?

describes the information that an individual draws upon when finding an answer to the question “what am i like”

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Introspection and Prediction!

explain self-knowledge and introspection? What are some possible errors?

Process whereby people look inward to examine their own thoughts, feelings and motives

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our attention is often not focused inward - less then 10% during the day - this leads to errors

even with introspection, the reason for feelings and behaviours can be hidden from conscious awareness (ex.mood)

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is it the new shirt that makes me happy or the persuasive music?

explain self-knowledge and prediction? What are the planning fallacy and affective forecasting errors?

people often make prediction errors when analyzing themselves

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planning fallacy - Peetz and Buehler

* tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task
* how much money will you spend in a week
* everyone underestimated
* the following week, they were asked again how much they would spend
* participants CONTINUED to underestimate the amount they would spend

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Affective forecasting errors

* impact basis - overestimating the enduring impact of an emotion-causing event
* breakups/winning the lottery - overestimate the impact
* immune neglect - underestimating the speed and strength of the “psychological immune system”
* because we underestimate how long the impact will last, the magnitude of the impact, and our ability to adjust to it, we make these forecasting errors

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What is self-esteem? what are the three main types of self-esteem?

degree to which the self is perceived positively or negatively; one’s overall attitude towards the self


1. global/trait self-esteem
2. state self-esteem
3. implicit self esteem

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we have a fundamental human need to maintain or enhance self esteem

what is global/trait self esteem

overall attitude of yourself - relatively stable across time and circumstance

what is state self-esteem

temporary fluctuations in repose to valence events

what is implicit self esteem? how is it measured?

general attitude toward the self that is not consciously accessible - stored in memories

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IAT or Name letter assessment

* Name letter effect - if you have high implicit self esteem you should prefer letters that are in your own name. Majority of participants were undergraduate students - all love a’s - therefore validity issues - are measuring preference for letters based on the use of grades instead of names 
* IAT - measures reaction time - based ont he premise that if you have stored in memory a strong association between concepts, then when the concepts are paired together, you should be faster to respond. High implicit self esteem 

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What is the sociometer hypothesis?

we have a desire to enhance or maintain our self esteem as it helped to protect our ancestors from social rejection

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what is the terror management theory?

our need to enhance our self-esteem protect us from the negative effects of existential anxiety. When our mortality becomes evident to us, we involve our self-esteem to protect us from it

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since I identify myself as a person of value, it makes us believe that there is something about me that will live on and pass down to future generations

how does culture impact self-esteem

inderdependent self - relational; more balanced self evaluations

independent self - personal; more positively biased self-evaluations

what are the possible consequences of self esteem? why is this data problematic?

it is correlational evidence - unable to manipulate global self-esteem - almost always we are talking about state self-esteem

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low SE tends to be correlated with negative outcomes

high SE tends to be correlated with positive outcomes, BUT

* high, but unstable/fragile SE = aggression, narcissism
* high, but contingent SE = negative impact on academics

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what is the self enhancement motive?

we are constantly searching to maintain or enhance our self esteem. We want to be well regarded by others.

this leads us to tend to perceive ourselves favourable - self personal bias

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what is self-serving bias? what are some examples

tendency to perceive oneself favourably. we think we are slightly better than who we are

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slightly positive discretions of own attributes - Better than average effect - positive illusion

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Temporal comparisons

* tend to remember the past being a lot better than it was
* recalling information in way that leads to a favourable self evaluation

what is the false consensus effect?

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tendency to overestimate the extend to which others share our opinions, attitudes and undesirable/unsuccessful behaviours

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“everyone cheats” - self-enhancement motive - makes us feel better about ourselves to protect our self-esteem

what are two examples of the self-serving (misremembering) bias in a lab

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Wilson and ross - Brought undergrads into the lab and asked them at the beginning of the year to rate how they will perform- throughout the semester they checked grades - and they brought the students and parents at the end of the year to reflect on the past semester, and how much they think their grades had changed throughout the semester.  Grades were going down over the semester, but students remembered the memories more positively 

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* Married couples brought into the lab- married couples brought into the lab every year for ten years


* How much do you love your partner
* Asked to reflect over the past ten years
* They reported loving their spouse more over the ten year span
* Love amount was decreasing 
* Statistical phenomenon - regression to the mean
* If we sample something often enough
* Starts high, will average 
* Starts low, will increase to average
* Newlyweds start off high and then will decrease to whatever the average is

what is the false uniqueness effect?

tendency to underestimate the extent to which other people share out positive attitudes and desirable/successful behaviours

Monin and Norton - water conservation practices

* Recruited sample of people living in california during a frought
* Asked how mich they participated in water saving behaviors AND how mich they believed others behaved in water saving behaviours
* All participants said they participated in water saving efforts, but not others - BIAS
* False uniqueness - something unique about yourself

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what is unrealistic optimism?

phenomenon in which people see themselves as more likely than other people to experience good events, and less likely than other people to experience bad events

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smoke ten packs - I can’t get cancer '- thats for other people

self-serving bias - protects our positive self-evaluations

what is perceived control?

the tendency to see uncontrollable events as a least partially under our control

* watching your fave sports team play
* their performance is based on your control
* Superstitious - closing eyes and look away - belief that doing that will increase the players performance
* our favourite player not playing well challenges our positive self-views.

what is overconfident judgements? how does it connect to the planning fallacy?

people tend to be overconfident when predicting our own behaviour

planning fallacy

* underestimate how much time is needed for a paper - we don’t want to challenge our self-esteem - we are smart enough to finish this paper in a day - because we want to maintain and not challenge our esteem 
* Overconfidence in new relationships 

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what are self-serving comparisons

downward social comparisons

basking in reflected glory

* associating with successful others to increase ones feelings of self worth
* 2019 vs 2020 raptors - WE won versus THEY lost

what is self handicapping

* Protecting ones self-image with behaviors that create a handy excuse for later failures
* Enroll in a course, pessimistic, don't buy textbook - fail midterm - blaming the failure on an external excuse. 
* Failure you don’t place on yourself - how you protect self-esteem

what is self-presentation? What is self monitoring?

Act of expressing yourself and behaving in ways designed to create a favourable impression or an impression that corresponds to your ideas 

* Social media posts
* Self monitoring 
* People who are high on self-monitoring are very adept on self presentation 
* They are a social chameleon
* People low in self-monitoring = present themselves similar across situations. 

what are self-serving attributions

tendency to attribute our successes to dispositional factors and our failures to situational factors

* getting an A because I am smart versus an F where the test was too hard

it is often said that we are positively biased towards ourselves. BUT are we ALWAYS positively biased?

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* Collectivism culture 
* Depends on domain of self-evaluation 
* In cultures with interdependent way of knowing the self - they focus on the negative AND positive attributes 
* Depression 
* Opposite of positively biase
* Negative explanatory style
* When bad things happen, caused by something stable, failure will ALWAYS occur - failure is something global - you will fail at EVERYTHING - school, relationsihsp
* Believes it is something dispositional and internal 
* Deffernsive pessiamis 
* Adaptive value of anticipating problems and harnessing one’s anxiety to motiate effective action 
* When you expect something bad to happen ; you prepare yourself for the failure so it has less of an impact on you 
* Expecting the worst over the best will help to maintain your self-esteem 

what are some limits of self-reports

* biased - reliability and validity issues
* positively biased self-ratings, self-evaluations
* explanatory errors - self-serving attributions
* prediction errors

observational data can be biased as well

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What is the importance of direct experience? what are its disadvantages?

we tend to rely on this information - info that we collect firsthand

* confirmation bias and inaccurate information (pluralistic ignorance and self-fulfilling prophecies?

what is pluralistic ignorance

false impression of how other people are thinking, feeling or responding

false assumptions we make about other people can lead to a false social-reality

what are self-fulfilling prophecies

beliefs that lead to their own fulfilment

ex. behavioural confirmation

* meeting someone you’ve been told is ‘mean’
* peoples social expectations lead them to act in ways that confirm their expectations
* ex. intersectionality approach

what is social cognition

examines how we process social information - how we select, interpret, remember and use social information to make judgements and decisions

what are the subdivisions of social cognition (systems)? name their characteristics

automatic (system one)

* quick, effortless, unconscious
* top-down process

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controlled (system two)

* conscious, intentional, effortful
* can be used to check automatic thinking
* bottom-up process

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how are schemas related to social cognition?

it is faster to process info that is congruent with our impressions

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have the ability to influence what we are thinking, feeling, and what we do

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multiple schemas - most accessible ones - will be used to influence our responses

what is chronic accessibility vs temporary accessibility in social cognition schemas? name a study that showed the use of mental schemas in social cognition

* schemas will always be switched on - at the forefront- repeated activation leads to chronic accessibility
* Higgins, Jones et al. - participants impression of Donald being primed by adjectives

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what is subliminal priming? what is an example?

exposure to a stimulus so quickly that you have no conscious recollection of it - Yet info registers in memory

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this temporarily primes some schemas you have that are related to the info, once they are primed, they are able to guide our behaviours and response

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Baldwin et al - catholic students reading erotica

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self evaluation depended on the condition they were in - even though they were not conscious of it

embodied cognition + example

physical sensations can prime social judgements - colder room when rejected by others

Name the possible errors associated with automatic thinking

availability heuristic

representativeness heuristic

counterfactual thinking

illusory thinking

what is the availability heuristic?

people base judgements on the ease with which they can bring them to mind

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can lead to accurate or inaccurate judgements

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ex. planes being scarier than cars

ex. tide being your detergent b/c it comes to mind fastest

what is the representativeness heuristic? what fallacy can this lead too?

mental shortcut whereby people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case

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This can lead to base rate fallacy: ignoral of base rate info - use mental shortcut that fits our available sterotype

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ex. lawyer vs engineer sample

what is counterfactual thinking

mentally challenging some aspect of the past as a way of imaging what might have been?

* can be about action/inaction or upward/downwards
* occurs when we can access the alternative outcomes
* influences emotions and behaviour
* gold vs silver medals

What are aspects of illusory thinking?

illusory correlation

* perception of a relationship where non exists, or perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists
* ex. more likely to notice when I leave without an umbrella when it rains - salient to ourselves - therefore more likely to remember it

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Illusion of control or perceived control

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ex. you enter the lottery and win millions. You assume that this is (partly) a result of how good your lucky numbers are

Does mood strongly influence how we think and perceive the social world? what study showed this?

yes; there are def mood congruence effects

* more likely to remember positive info when in a happy mood
* more likely to remember negative info when in a negative mood

Forgas; Participants engage in an interaction with someone else

 

Videotaped

 

The next day they bring the participants back and randomly assign them to groups


1. Bad mood
2. Happy mood

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Participants were asked to count how many times they behave positively and negatively in the video

 

Those placed in a bad mood where more likely to detect negative behaviours - opposite for the happy groups

 

How we feel impacts what we notice

what is the attribution theory? what are the two types of attributions?

description of the way in which people explain the cause of their own and other peoples behaviour

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dispositional or situational

* we often misattribute

ex. witnessing a boss yell at an employee

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what is spontaneous trait inference?

an effortless, automatic inference of a trait after exposure to an individuals behaviour

what is Kelley’s covariation model

theory stating that, in order to form an attribution about what caused a person’s behaviour, we systematically note the pattern between the precense/absence of possible causal factors and whether or not the behaviour occurs

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assumes people make attributions in a rational, logical way

what are potential issues of Kelley’s covariation model?

people..

* do not use consensus info as much as thought in the theory
* rely more on distinctiveness and consistency info
* often do not have access to all three types of info
* exhibit the FAE

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what are the three parts of Kelley’s covariation model?

Consensus

* info about the extent of which other people behave the same way as the actor does toward the same stimulus

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distinctiveness

* info about the extend to which one particular actor behaves in the same way to different stimuli

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Consistency

* info about the extent of which the behaviour between one actor and one stimulus is the same across time and circumstance

based on Kelley’s covariation model, how is an internal attribution made?

1. low in consensus
2. low in distinctiveness
3. high in consistence

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Internal attribution: something about the boss/actor

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low in consensus: the boss is the only person working in the store who yells at hannah

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low in distinctiveness: the boss yells at all the employees

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high in consistency: the boss yells at Hannah almost every time he sees her

based on Kelley’s covariation model, how is an external attribution made?

high in consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency

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external attribution - it was something about Hannah

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high in consensus: all the employees yell at hannah too

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high in distinctiveness: the boss doesn’t yell at any of the other employees

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high in consistency: the boss yells at hannah almost everytime he sees her

based on Kelley’s covariation model, how is peculiar circumstance designated

1. low or high in consensus
2. low or high in distinctiveness
3. low in consistency

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peculiar circumstance in which hannah is yelled at

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low or high in consensus = ?

low of high in distinctiveness = ?

low in consistence: this is the first time the boss has yelled at hannah

what is the fundamental attribution error

tendency to overestimate the extend to which people’s behaviour is due to internal, dispositional factors, and to underestimate the role of situational factors

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what is perceptual salience

focus attention on the person not the situation - situational causes are treated as invisible or difficult to interpret

what is an issue with perceptual salience?

actors have more information available about themselves than do observers

actor-observer difference

* participants ranted the actor they could see the most clearly as having the largest role in the conversation

what are attitudes? What are your personal attitudes?

favourable or unfavourable evaluative reaction toward something or someone, exhibited in one’s beliefs, feelings, or intended behaviour


1. person: yourself, your dog, etc
2. object: chocolate cake, Chicago mix popcorn
3. capital punishment, abortion

what is the tripartite model of attitudes

the ABC model

Affective - emotional reactions towards the attitude object

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behavioural - actions or observable behaviour towards the attitude object

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cognitive: thoughts and beliefs about the attitude object

describe implicit or explicit attitudes. how can they be measured?

implicit attitudes

* involuntary, uncontrollable, at times unconscious
* measured with IAT - strength of association is compared through reaction times
* supports dual processing theory

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Explicit attitutes

* consciously endore, easily reported
* measured through self-report, asking how negatively or positively an individual feels about the object

where do attitudes come from

* learned experience (conditioning, observational learning, mere exposure, heuristics)

what is the mere exposure effect? give examples.

repeated exposure to a novel stimulus leads to positive evaluations of the stimulus

ex. Ordering the same thing from a menu simply because it is familiar.

* Becoming increasingly attracted to someone because of repeated encounters at a common job, school, or a sports center.

how do attitudes become stronger

* greater accessibility / repeated activation and use
* surrounding oneself with others who share the same attitudes - false consensus
* gather evidence that confirms ones attitude - confirmation bias
* greater connection to core values and beliefs (self-concept)

give an example of when attitudes do not predict behaviour

baton et al ‘moral hypocrisy’

* undergrad participants were asked to allocate two tasks: one to themselves and one to a partner
* one task was mundane and boring, the other was exciting and came with the chance of a reward
* all participants said they would assign the exciting task to their partner
* the majority gave themselves the exciting reward

attempt to change behaviour by changing attitudes does not always work.

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ex. sex education - if the program leads to more positive attitudes, why are people following through on risky behaviours.

when will attitudes predict behaviour?

1. when social influences are minimal

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people may not report their explicit attitudes because they want to present themselves in a positive light - impression management

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2. when other influences are minimal

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attitude and behaviour are at the same level of specificity

* principle of aggregation
* theory of planned behaviour

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3. when the attitude is potent

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the attitude is accesssible (chronic accessibility and temporal priming) and objective self-awarenss and self consicousness

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the attitude is strong

what is the principle of aggregation

* The effects of attitude on behaviour become more apparent when we look at a person’s average behaviours rather than isolated acts 

what is the theory of planned behaviour?

* Best predictor of a person’s behaviour are their behavioural intentions (what you intend to do)
* Best predictors of behavioural intentions are 
* Attitudes towards specific behaivours
* Subjective norms 
* Perceived behavioural control (influencd by self-efficacy)

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give an example of a jogger

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* i am for physical fitness
* my neighbours seem to be jogging and going to the gym
* i could easily do this
* i’m going to start next week
* behaviour

when does behaviour affect attitudes?

1. when we occupy a soical role, over time, we may internalize these roles and their associated norms.

ex. standford prison experimenter - not only did their behaviour change - but also their attitudes and sense of self

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ex. gender roles

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2. when we lack compelling external explanations for our world, saying can become believing
3. CONT - NOTES FROM ONE NOTE

Why does behaviour influence our attitudes?

* self presentation (impression management)
* we want to make a favourable impression on others
* we may (pretend to) express attitudes that are consistent with our behaviour

What is the cognitive dissonance theory? Why do we hate dissonance?

a feeling of discomfort caused by the realization that one’s behaviour is inconsistent with one’s attitudes or that one holds two conflicting attitudes

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we are motivated to maintain consistency among out cognitions - we experience dissonance after making a decision between two equally attractive alternatives and often devalue the one we didn’t choose to maintain our self-enhancement image

what is the insufficient justification effect? what is an example?

reduction of dissonance by internally justifying one's behaviour when external justification is insufficient.

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Festinger and Carlsmith

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What the experiment found was that people paid 20 dollaras for telling a lie - attitude did not change - did not like the task before or after lying to new participants

 

Participants paid one dollar -a attitudes became positive

 

Dissonance reduction - all these participants told a lie - behaviour did not match their initial attitude - telling people it was fun should envoke dissonance -

 

People who were paid 20 dollars had an external explanation for their dissonance behaviour - lied because I was paid - dissonance reduced right there, because they had a compelling external solution

 

Those who were paid one dollar did not have sufficient external justification - so the reason they said they loved the experiment cannot be because of the compensation - so instead, they have to make an internal justification - they do that by changing their attitude, so it matches their behaviour - dissonance production

what is counter attitudinal advocacy?

the process that occurs when an person states an opinion or attitude that runs counter to their private belief or attitude

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* if there is minimum external justification the attitude will change in the direction the public statement - person feels some responsibility

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ex. if you want to make me give a speech to switch to a six-day workweek, I would say no! but if you told me to make a speech h about it and you freely gave me a choice, you will experience dissonance - do reduce the dissonance since you have no compelling external reasons, you will give an internal reason.

What can happen when an individual commits a cruel act in the cognitive dissonance theory?

people may reduce dissonance disliking, derogating or dehumanizing the victim

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I don’t want to change how I view myself - so to reduce my dissonance I will start disliking my victim - believe that you have done something to deserve it

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may lead to the rationalization trap + can be avoided by giving people a chance to self-affirm

what is the rationalization trap?

potential for dissonance reduction to produce a succession of self-justifications that ultimately result in stupid or immoral acts

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can avoid this by focusing attention on the positive traits and qualities - dissonance can fo away - removing the need to change attitudes towards the person in order to remove the dissonance