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Intragroup behavior
any behavior when we’re embedded in a group
When embedded within a group we don’t work as hard as we do when doing a task alone
Group Task Types: Additive
Premium is maximizing outputs
Automatic processing
Prone to social loafing (free riding)
Example: paper clips
I may not add as many paper clips to a chain but as long as the rest of the people in the group make long chains, our group will be ok and we’ll hit the goal
Increase if deindividuation (you don’t know how many widgets each person makes)
Increase if diffusion of responsibility
Compensatory
Premium is on maximizing accuracy
Example: class
Groups of students going through tasks to demonstrate additive vs. compensatory
Each person individually guesses Drigotas’ weight and then the group score is the average of their guesses
The closest the average is to his weight does better than the further away averages
Added element of being rewarded for being accurate
People might work harder to try to guess weight if they’re individual rather than embedded within a group
Not as strong social loafing than in additive
Controlled processing
Disjunctive
Group is as good as its best member
Example: class
Groups of 5 in class playing trivia math game
Talk about it as a group but only submit one answer
If you have one group member who is really good at math, your group will do well
It doesn’t matter if the rest of the group is terrible at math
Oftentimes pressures that might not allow that best person to emerge
Maybe person really good at math doesn’t have a high social standing
If the person who is good doesn’t have a say, the group isn’t going to do well
Person in group who thinks they’re good at trivia and really assertive but they actually suck
Conjunctive
Group is as good as its worst member
Doesn’t matter if ⅘ people in group are super good, if 1 is bad then the entire group is bad
Example: crew
8-person crew in the water
Incentive that for good crew teams, you have to be in rhythm
If in the crew, 7 people are really good but 1 person is super off rhythm, the group won’t do well
The one person is really holding them back
Example: mountain climbing
Group mountain climbing
You’re only going to go as fast as the slowest mountain climber
Group Polarization
Originally called risky shift
Idea that individual attitudes tend to become more extreme when you’re embedded within a group of like-minded individuals
Example: risk taking
Students asked whether they would rather go work at family business (steady, safe) or do a startup (possibly wealthy, exciting life)
Subjects write down what the odds of success that a graduate student should take part in the startup company
Researchers knew the students were conservative, not risky so it would have to be like a 65% chance of success for them to go to startup
Researchers asked each student what the odds are that the startup is a success
Researchers put them into groups of 5 and would say talk about why you chose the odds that you did
The groups all agree with each other because the students are like-minded
After the group discussion, the researchers ask the students the same question again and the students tended to become more risk-aversive
Individual attitude tended to become more extreme when they talked to people with similar situations
If you’re put into a group of people with the same attitude as you, your attitude will become more extreme
Normative social influence
desire to be liked
Informative social influence
desire to be right
Bennington College study
Super liberal college
No SAT, all classes pass/fail
Group polarizatioin
Measured accepted students political attitudes before and after they went to Bennington
Measured it a year out of Bennington
Students leaned liberal when applying to Bennington
Became even more liberal when at Bennington
Normative and informative social influence
A year later, the students reverted back to their level of liberalism pre-Bennington
Not surrounded by social influence
Groupthink
Deterioration(worsening) of decision making that results from structural flaws and in-group pressures, often leading to a disastrous decision
studied archivally, within group making decisions having more people in a group is a good thing
Bay of Pigs invasion
Under JFK in 60’s
Fidel Castro started revolution in Cuba in 50’s
Question about whether US does something to help Cuba
Bay of Pigs was decision by JFK administration
Plan went really badly
Got group of cuban ex-patriots (people who had fled Cuba) and trained them with military personnel in Florida
Weren’t really fighters but trained them
Idea was that these ex-patriots would land in the countryside in Cuba and sneak in and show the Cubans how bad Castro was for the country and sneak in and defeat him
The ex-patriots landed in a swampy area and were quickly captured by Castro and his followers
The ex-patriots were marched through the streets and it was humiliating for the US
Groupthink decision → group came together to make a plan that was a disaster
Challenger
Decision to launch space shuttle
Televised all around country
Decision to actually have the launch go forward was a disaster
Space shuttle blew up within a few minutes after takeoff on live national television with millions of school-aged kids watching
The process for making that decision was skewed and it ended up being a disaster
invasion of Iraq post-9/11
All of the reasons to invade Iraq were false
Example: that they had plutonium
Variables
central leader
gatekeeper
pressure to uniformity
pluralistic ignorance
self-censorship
central leader
Somebody at the top who gives the no-go or go for the decision to actually be made
Example: JFK/head of space challenger mission
gatekeeper
Someone can control what information gets to the central leader or doesn’t
Example: gatekeeper only let people who were pro Bay of Pigs plan talk to JFK
President had this view that all of his advisors were for the Bay of Pigs plan when they may not have been
Example: Iraq invasion
VP Dick Cheney was the gatekeeper for President Bush
Bush only got information that Iraq did have nuclear weapons
People who had doubts about the weapons weren’t talking to Bush
pressure to uniformity
when your feel pressure to go against the group
Pressure of “you’re rocking the boat”
Gatekeeper controlled some of the power
Example: challenger
Some people working with the technical stuff on the challenger had issues with the equipment always working
The gatekeeper told them they needed to come along and get behind it so the workers would self-censor or feel like they were just wrong
pluralistic ignorance
Feeling that other people must have more information than you do so they’re more likely to be correct
self-censorship
If everyone else agrees, you shouldn’t bring up your doubts
Example: people were asking why non military people were going to Cuba on a mission rather than trained soldiers but they didn’t bring it up so the boat wasn’t rocked
Combating: brainstorming
Idea generation first , Followed by evaluation
Example: creativity
process is important in terms of creativity
Individual creativity
Researcher would give subject two objects and ask them to think of as many ways as possible that they could put the objects to use to solve a problem
People would come up with as many solutions as they could separately
Group creativity
Groups would talk and naturally come up with as many ideas as they could
Brainstorming
Within the creativity process, there is a first phase
First phase = idea generation
People say any idea that pops into their head and no one says good or bad idea
No evaluation
If you are free to not worry what people will think about your idea, you just say anything that pops into your head
You aren’t stuck going down just one route of thought because you have a ton of routes to go down
Wildly more creative than the other two groups
Groupthink
You won’t have censorship, ignorance, or uniformity when you have brainstorming first
minority influence
pressure to conform when you are in a small group.
resist temptation to conform:
consistency- if person in minority is consistent with attitude
confidence- if minority person stated position with confidence that they are correct. makes it harder to make the person change sides
independence/objectivity- they will not benefit from result/ rational stance no hypocrisy/ objective
leadership
social emotional vs task leaders
heuristic leaders sit at head of table
social emotional leader
good at reading moral, making people feel understood/ seen and heard, empathetic,
task leaders
good at getting people to do task, getting people to focus and get the job done
contingency model
to measure the best leadership depending on the situation, it measure performance
Large group behavior: social dilemma
= large intragroup issues
Conflict where you want to maximize own self interest and interest for group as a whole
No selfishness → things work out better for group as a whole
commons dilemma
depletion of natural resources
Taking from resource that everyone has access to but if people take too much, it can’t be used by anyone
Resource will be rapidly depleted which will be no good for anyone
Built off story of farming in Great Britain in 1800’s in rural communities where grazing wasn’t amazing for the animals so it was hard to feed animals
Town would put aside an area called a Commons, a park, where there was great grass for grazing
Dilemma → each farmer had to make a decision: do I try to go to this Commons area as often as possible so my animals can eat and get big/healthy or do I not go as often so the grass isn’t overrun and stripped of value so no animals can graze for another couple months
Whaling industry
Each whaling company would want to maximize number of boats in ocean getting whales so they can get more money
Too many companies with too many boats → almost extinction of many whale species
Each individual whaling company had self-interest of catching whales
If too many companies getting boats, whales won’t be able to reproduce as fast level and whaling industry will be ruined for all whaling companies
Public goods dilemma
give to a resource so that it is available to people
You have to give to a resource in order for that resource to be alive and give to everyone
Giving to a resource
Giving isn’t selfish, not giving is acting in self-interest
Public radio/television
Anybody can listen to free radio all day long
Issue: most public radio/television get money from the public
Not the government
You can listen to radio all day long and not give any money
If too many people do this ^, the resource may go away forever
You have to give to the resource for the resource to survive
general social dilemmas
Situtations in which large intragroup issues have conflict between individual’s self-interest and the good of the group as a whole
Recycling
Important purpose within groups
Cut down fewer trees
Recycle plastic → don’t need to create as much plastic
Materials won’t be dumped in landfills
Not pleasant to sort recycling materials from regular materials
Not fun to bring recycling to certain container
Individual thought that my individual recycling materials don’t matter that much so just putting it in the landfill won’t make a difference
If a ton of people have this view ^, it’s problematic
Recycling isn’t effective
Beltway
In big cities, there’s often a beltway, high highway that goes around the edges of the city, which is a common commuter place
Often carpool lanes
People with 2+ people in car can go in carpool lanes
carpool → more carpools → less pollution
Self-interest: traffic is backed up in regular lanes but carpool lanes are moving quickly
You’re alone in car but want to get there fast so you go in carpool lane
If a lot of people ignore carpool lane rules, there is no purpose to the carpool lane
It would also get backed up if everyone ignored rules
Hopkins
Ames Hall → Hodson Hall
Path to left to get to Hodson, path to right to get to Hodson, and path straight through grass to get to Hodson
Grass is pretty and green
Do i want to go around grass area or maximize own self-interst and walk through grass area?
Too many people walk through grass every semester and there’s a brown, muddy, ugly path through grass by end of semester
think too hot to handle
ways to reduce selfish behavior
normative and informative social influence
descriptive (information on how people behave) and inductive norms (how people should behave, how do people I care about should behave)
smaller groups less likely to at selfishly
de-individuation: identifiability (if you can tie your behavior to identity you are less likely to act selfishly)
operant conditioning (reward/cost)
legal measures (often last resort)
Descriptive norm:
how other people are acting in a situation
Everyone’s acting selflessly → makes it easier for someone new to also act selflessly
Example: recycling
Raised in culture where everyone recycles now
You very rarely see people not recycle or throw trash on ground
Inductive norm:
we care what people think about us and choose what we do based on what we think others will think
If my group is a group of people who will always recycle and will never litter, I will probably act that way as well
Norms are hard to establish
Normative/informative social influence
Larger group can put pressures on people to act in a certain way
Normative social influence if you act in a different way than the group
You may alter behavior to fit in
Example:
Summer in texas droughts
Rules about how long you could take shower, you couldn’t water lawn
Way to deal with drought
One point, person wrote to paper and called out a basketball player whose lawn was green and framed it as this basketball player thinks he’s too good to follow the rules and waters his lawn
Shame hime
Normative social influence
Basketball player reached out to paper and wanted it known that a pipe had burst beneath his lawn so it was leaking thousands of gallons of water below the lawn
He wasn’t violating the norm on purpose
So he wouldn’t face normative crises of people being upset
Informative social influence may cause people to act in a certain way to fit in
Example:
Oil embargo at Hopkins in 70’s
Oil from middle eastern states
Oil ban
Energy crisis
Push to get people to conserve energy
In hopkins, push to get people to do this can be seen at light switches where there’s an orange sticker on light switch that says “save energy, turn off the lights”
smaller groups
Large intragroup behavior issues: just one person in a thousands, you feel like you’re just a drop in the bucket
If so many people believe this, they feel like they don’t have a big impact and thus don’t follow the rules
If you break large groups down into smaller groups, its easier to get people to act less selfishly because they feel like they actually have an impact
identifiability
If people know how you specifically behave, they will know if you act selfishly or not
if people can tell it was you
If people are going to know, its more of a restraint on selfishness
One of reasons that basketball player was so affected by newspaper article about him
operant conditioning
Reward selfless behavior and have people incur costs if they are violating selfless behavior
People are more likely to work in support of group if they can see the correct decision to make
So easy so not a lot of cost to make the selfless decision
Rewards tend to work better than costs
legal measures
If you can establish a norm about how everyone behaves, that tends to be really effective in terms of way people behave
Repercussions in terms of fine if you act selfishly
Example:
In maine in 70’s and 80’s, there were too many lobster harvesting companies, too many traps being collected too often → in danger of lobsters being extinct
They had to resort to legal cost
If you got caught with lobsters of certain size and weight (lobsters that hadn’t reached puberty (ability to reproduce)), you would have to pay a hefty fine
Had some effect but after a while lobsterman started to figure out that odds of getting caught weren’t high
30,000 boats and 4 patrolmen
Lobstermen weighed odds of them getting caught and thought getting lobsters from traps was worth the risk
Maine had to up the patrols → patrols did spot checks on boats as well so the odds of getting caught were much higher
Lobster species went back to thriving
Example:
Running a red light
In your self-interest to go through red light because you want to get to location faster
Red light cameras → if you run a red light where there’s a camera, you will get a find
Rates of people running red lights dramatically reduced at intersections with cameras → less accidents, less speeding
Side effect: rates of running red lights at cameras nearby increased → people who run red lights learned to avoid intersections with cameras and just ran red lights nearby → increase in accidents at other intersections
Intergroup behavior
behavior between groups
Discontinuity effect
Intergroup behavior is much more competitive than inter-individual behavior
Example:
Two groups doing some sort of task and making decisions that affect each group, interactions are more competitive
Two individuals are less competitive and cooperate more
Often represented by Prisoner’s Dilemma game
Notion that you have to choose between a behavior that will only benefit your group or will benefit all groups
People are randomly assigned to groups
Groups take turns in room
One person from each group looks at matrix and decides what they want to do
They go back to group and group makes a decision
Series of trials to figure out if group wants to choose X or Y
Within each square, number at top represents what group A would get and lower number represents what group B would get in terms of acquiring points
you are more competitive in a group than individually
Prisoner’s Dilemma game PDG
People are randomly assigned to groups
Groups take turns in room
One person from each group looks at matrix and decides what they want to do
They go back to group and group makes a decision
Series of trials to figure out if group wants to choose X or Y
Within each square, number at top represents what group A would get and lower number represents what group B would get in terms of acquiring points
If both groups choose A, both groups get 3 points
If both groups choose Y, both groups get 1 point
If group A chooses Y and group X chooses X, group A gets 5 points and group B gets 0 points
If group A chooses X and group B chooses Y, group A gets 0 points and group A gets 5 points
You’ll have number of iterations where they’ll choose X or Y
You often don’t tell groups how many iterations there will be
The groups figure out that XX will get them the most points in the long run
Individuals usually choose X
Groups tend to choose Y about 50% of the time
Once one group screws over the other group, they don’t have trust and won’t both choose X to help each other
Best case: both choose X
Group may choose Y for a few reasons:
Might try to choose Y and fool the other group into choosing X out of greed or wanting to win
Might choose Y out of fear of the other group choosing Y so they don’t want to choose X and get no points
Would rather get 1 than 0 points
Another version: PDG Alt
If group A or group B chooses Z, both groups automatically get 2 points
X is still cooperative choice
Individuals choose this most often still
Fearful that other group is going to try to mess with you, best strategy is choosing Z because you are guaranteed 2 points
Groups most often pick this
Y is out of greed vs. Z is out of fear
reasons for intergroup behavior
Schemas of fear & greed
Social support for greed
Diffusion of responsibility
Deindividuation
Reciprocity effects
Ingroup-outgroup bias
Social identity theory
Schemas of fear & greed
Form by time we’re in elementary school
Intergroup behavior is going to be comeptitive
It’s ok to be greedy in group competition
We start to expect other groups to be greedy so we also expect fear
Individual behaviors don’t have schemas of competitiveness
No greed or fear
Social support for greed
something van happen within the group
someone the group will float greed, can’t happen when ur alone
what confederate suggested altered groups behavior\
in a group greed is more encouraged, you are mrelikey to have greed if those around you have it too
Not in individuals
Example: three person groups
Two people are real and one person is a confederate
Confederate has three conditions:
Control - confederate doesn’t say anything of value in group
Social support for greed - confederate suggests we can convince other group to choose X and we’ll choose Y so that we get 5 points and they get 0
Suggests it’s ok to be greedy
Positive effect → group becomes more competitive
Makes other two people latch onto the idea once someone says it out loud
Up to 70% competitive behavior
Can’t happen in individuals
Fear - confederate suggests the other group may try to get their group to pick X so they can pick Y and get 5 points while our group gets 0
Diffusion of responsibility
when responsibility of the groups actions is spread out and not only on one idv.
Responsibility is diffused among members of groups
In individuals, responsibility is 100% on you
If group A screws over group B
Oftentimes group A spokesperson will tell group B spokesperson that he didn’t want to screw them over and it was the other two people in group A that made the decision
Deindividuation
behavior can’t be tied to identity→ non-normative behavior can be good or bad
example- yelling or jumping
Reciprocity effects
getting payback after being screwed over
Once one group chooses Y and convinces the other group to choose X, there is a strong chance the screwed over group will try to choose Y and convince the other group to choose X right after
If someone screws me over, I’ll screw them over again right after
Doesn’t happen as much with individuals
If screwing someone over happens with individuals, the individual who did the screwing will often apologize and tell the other person they can have 5 points now
They go back to trusting each other
Ingroup-outgroup bias
Tendency to think of positive things about your group
Tendency to think of negative things about other groups
If my group is better than the other group, of course it’s ok for us to get all of the good outcomes
Tends to happen in groups over with individuals
Social identity theory 🫡🫡
Part of our self-esteem comes from the groups that we belong to 🫡🫡🫡
It’s ok for us to think that our group deserves more because we have this ingroup-outgroup bias but also because self-esteem is tied to group so we want group to do better
Minimial group paradigm
If you randomly assign people ot group A and B, people will automatically say their group is better even though they were randomly assigned to the group
Social identity theory says this occurs because a person’s group becomes tied to their self-esteem
Study: 100 subjects randomly assigned to group A and B
Researchers randomly pick people in each group to give $100 to any subject except themselves
The people give the money to members in their group
Automatically try to benefit their group
Naturally think about us versus them
Reduction of Intergroup competition
simple contact effects
Robert cave study
higher level goals
jigsaw classroom
interdependence
positive intergroup examples
simple contact effects
Belief that one of the problems of having people going to school with only their own race is that they will start to believe that the only people like them are members of their own race
Beneficial to have desegregation is we have to interact with people of other groups
You can start to identify you have more similarities than differences
Breaks down ingroup-outgroup bias
Breaks down competition
Isn’t very effective
Robert cave study
Summer camp with assorted cabins
Social psychologist studied 10 year old boys
Tried to recruit kids very similar in demographic to go to this camp
Wanted to see if in this kids there could be intergroup competition
Researchers found that it was very easy to create intergroup competition
One of the first thing that happened at the camp is the boys were split into groups and they got to name their groups
Developing social identities with names
They thought differently with names
Groups lived in housing together
Activities with groups competing with each other
Trophy that the winner of the day’s competition could take to cabin
Led to more competition, kids sat in different groups in lunch room, extracurricular competitive activities (stealing the trophy, vandalism)
The social psychologists now tried to reduce this through simple contact
No segregation
Kids were forced to do mixed group activities
Trying to test simple contact theory
Didn’t work
Still same competitive behavior
higher level goals
when something bigger than intergroup completion effects both groups
Researchers created situations where groups would have to come together to solve problems that would help everyone
One day, the water truck that brought the camp water purposely went into a ditch so the campers had to get tools to help save the water truck
Some tools were with one group and some tools were with another group
Both groups had to come together to solve the higher level problem of getting the water truck out of the ditch
When groups had to come together for common goal, competition went down
jigsaw classroom
Interdependence
Educational benefits of having nontraditional environment in education and intergroup competition
Increase levels of comprehension but also reduce some intergroup demographic competition
In jiggsaw classroom, kids are broken down into small groups and group is given an assignment
Each kid within group is given a topic that they have to do research on and teach their group about
Kids become interdependent on each other and they have to work together
Kids relying on eachother reduces competition within demographics if mixed races have to work together
Academic performance also improved
positive intergroup examples
Researchers ran study on an afternoon Saturday - 5 hour study
Researchers randomly assigned kids to green group and blue group
Were given green or blue groups
People naturally started being competitive
In order to reduce intergroup competition, somewhere along the line within each group they had measures of who liked who and who could be a leader for each group
They made a big show of taking the leader from each group and had the leaders do a task together
The task was cooperative and the leaders had to rely on each other to solve
Researchers tried to see if after this task, would having this positive example of two leaders doing something together that went well change the opinions of the groups themselves
Groups were less competitive after this
Less ingroup bias
Interpersonal attractions
the attraction between people which leads to the development of platonic or romantic relationships.
first impressions have an enormous impact on how you preserve the person because that first meeting lingers
primacy effect
conformation bias
overconfidence
but… “the liking gap”
primacy effect
things that come first given more weight
conformation bias
ignore things that are inconsistent with schema, follows schema categorize quickly
overconfidence
more confident about impression of someone than we should
when people's subjective confidence in their own ability is greater than their objective (actual) performance
but… “the liking gap”
knowledge gained from first expression lead to how you feel/act/interact with person in future
interpersonal attraction orientations: physiological approaches
Pheromones
arousal as cue
misattribution of arousal
bridge study
lingerie slides
“secrets”
shock study
Pheromones
We are a mammal species
We have pheromones that show whether we are ready to mate
Predictor of interpersonal attraction
Cologne-perfume industry wants you to believe this is true
Research isn’t strong about whether it actually affects behavior
Role of pheromones in women’s menstrual cycles
Women get on same menstrual cycle because of pheromones
arousal as cue
Autonomic nervous system to show you’re attracted to someone
Rush of adrenaline, increase breathing, fight or flight behavior
Physiological arousal that a person is the cause of
Misattribution of arousal: bridge study
Study in national park outside of Vancouver, Canada
River in park where you can go to either side of river
One side - wooden wire rickety bridge over a deep gulch in river
Other side - newer bridge (more safe) over less of a pretty drop in river
They placed a woman in the middle of each bridge
This woman would stop men crossing the bridge
Random assignment and other conditions on who she would stop
She would ask men about their experience at the park as a survey from the park
Questions about the park
When the man got to the end of a bridge, a park ranger would show up and say oh I saw you talking to her… would you answer some questions about her performance and would also ask questions about her appearance
Men on rickety bridge found the women significantly more attractive than the men on the sturdy bridge
Rickety bridge → bridge is swaying → automatic nervous system arousal from fear → stopped by woman on bridge → confuse arousal for attraction
lingerie slides
Men given cover story about why they would be coming in and rating slides
Men are hooked into things that they are told will measure their physiology
Heart rate, skin conductance, breathing
Men are given headphones and told that they’re hearing their own heart beating
Show you slides of women in lingerie
Experimenter is controlling the heart beat, it’s not actually the mans
Randomly assigned the slide that the man supposedly had a heart rate increase to
The researchers bring back the men a week later and say oh we’re sorry we forgot to collect ratings of slides
The men rate the slide that they thought their heart beat faster on as the most attractive
Even though the slide was randomly assigned to them
“secrets”
Having to keep a relationship a secret can dramatically increase interpersonal attraction
Secrets are exciting → you feel energized → misattribution of arousal
Example: sensory perception study
You are randomly paired up with opposite sex person
Everyone is heterosexual
One person is given a blue star or red square and they are told to concentrate so much on it that their partner can use sensory perception to know what you’re thinking
Condition:
Both conditions: Told that they want to increase physical contact because it may increase ESP accuracy
Touch feet below the table
One condition: told that everyone will know they’re touching feet under the table
Other condition: told that they need to keep it a secret that they’re touching feet under the table from the other couple in the room doing the same task
The touching feet but everyone knows about it show same levels of attraction as control group (not touching feet)
The pair that had to keep feet-touching a secret tended to find each other much more attractive
learning theory
rewards and punishment
gain-loss hypothesis
Reciprocity effects
flattery effects
social exchange theory
how information is received and processed
rewards and punishment
We tend to like people who we are rewarded for being around
If it’s not pleasing to spend time with someone, we are less likely to want to be around them
Increase attraction for people who interacting with is pleasing
gain-loss hypothesis
Winning somebody over tends to make us more attracted to them
More troubled by losing somebody’s affection versus if they always didn’t like us
ex: is Mary like you 3 and Jane likes you 7 but after meeting and spending time together Mary like you 8 and Jane likes you 8 you are more attracted to Mary
gaining someone
Reciprocity effects
If someone likes me, I’m more likely to like them
flattery effects
We like people who flatter us
Even if there is a hint that the flattery is insincere, it still works
we like compliments
social exchange theory
Looks at rewards and costs that you might incur by hanging out with somebody
pros and cons of an interaction with someone
Cognitive estimate of likelihood of receiving the rewards or incurring the costs
Potential rewards and potential costs can influence behavior
Example:
Men will only ask a woman on a date if they are 75% sure that she’ll say yes
Less then 75% even if potential rewards are great → less likely to ask her out
example
motor coordination
men and woman are sorting papers, the men are told that the woman are either single and ready to mingle or in a committed relationship. they are then put in a room to sort and the card gall on the woman’s table.
men are more likely to help the woman that is single than the one in a relationship
interpersonal attraction- contact effects
proximity
familiarity
proximity
We’re more likely to have interactions with people who are close by
can also increase the amount you dont like someone/ something
MIT study
ex2: Chinese sysmbol study: the Chinese symbol you see more often in the slides you tend to like more
MIT STUDY
Famous study done post-WWII with GI Bill
Young people forego college to go fight in WWII
When they came back from war, GI Bill said they could be given scholarship money to go to college
At MIT, dramatic growth in student body caused lack of student housing room
Created new housing → similar to motel
Social psychologist said this would be a good way to look at proximity
MIT had new quad of dorms - four dorms around a quad
Sociometric measures of who you interacted with and how much you liked them
People who lived at bottom level of two-split level dorms were at base of stairs for people on second level → they were liked the most
Also tended to like people within our dorm the most
Everybody who lived upstairs were more likely to run into the people living downstairs because they had to go past that doorway all of the time
Being in same space at same time → liking people
We tend to form relationships with people we interact with
We tend to like people the more often we see them
Pleasant feelings become heightened by proximity
Unpleasant feelings become heightened by proximity
familiarity
Notion that we tend to be inclined to like somebody who reminds us of someone we had a good relationship with in the past
Example: interview
Going into an interview where you’re interviewed by a panel
If an interviewer reminds you of someone you know and like, you become less stressed during interview
Danger: ignore bad things about a person because they remind you of someone else who is a good person
Example:
Fifth grade girlfriend
Family moved away to new community and he starts middle school
He quickly latches onto a girl who reminded him of the girl he ‘dated’ in fifth grade
Took him a while to realize the whole reason he liked her was because she reminded him of his fifth grade girlfriend
interpersonal attraction- trait approaches- physical appearance
People make a lot of other positive assumptions about people who are physically attractive
Physical attractiveness plays a big role in a lot of things it probably shouldn’t play a role in
computer dance study
first impressions
social interactions
little kids
matching hypothesis
similarity
positive effects
small imperfection
computer dance study
Done at large midwestern state school
Researchers set up study where they could compare similarity of personality in terms of predicting interpersonal attraction
Over summer, sent all freshmen packet of surveys that measured things about them
When freshmen got to campus, they were invited to take part in school-sanctioned dance
Were told that one rule about dance was that they were assigned a person that they would have to spend first hour of dance with
When you got to dance, they took you aside and took your photo
Sent these photos off to another university where freshmen at that university made ratings of physical appearance
Not really a thing as types
Correlation between how everyone else rated you would be 0.6-0.65 - positive correlation
Less correlation between how you rate yourself versus how everyone else rates you
You were randomly matched up with someone and you have to go into dance with that person and stay with them for first hour
After the hour, lights come on and the researchers say everyone goes on their own and fills out questionnaire about dance
Hidden questions about whether they like the person who they spent the first hour with
You wear physical appearance on sleeve whereas you can’t figure out personality in an hour
Halo effect → physical appearance was main cause of whether the person liked the person they were with
Demographic or attitude similarity didn’t predict that much on the qeustionnaire
first impressions
hiring, jury’s, teacher rating
Physically attractive people are more likely to get job
Physically attractive professors get better teacher ratings
Physically attractive people are more likely to get away with a crime
UNLESS they use their physical attractiveness to commit the crime
Our perception is based on appearance and this perception lasts longer than we should
As we get to know the person, we have confirmation bias because they’re attractive
Can affect first impressions and lingering impressions
social interactions
Physical attractiveness has implication on quantity and quality of interactions
Diary record sheet
People in study got photos taken and they were sent to other university for students to rate the pictures for physical attractiveness
People in study were asked to keep diary record sheet of every interaction they had that lasted 10 minutes or more for 10 days
The thing that best predicted quantity and quality of conversations was physical attractiveness
Physically attractive women had more opposite sex conversations
Interactions tended to be more satisfying
More attractive women tended to be initiated into conversation by opposite sex whereas less attractive women initiated the conversation with opposite sex
Less attractive men basically only interacted with other men
little kids
(Moms, teachers, persuasion techniques)
Being attractive starts from a really early age
Example: moms
Researchers got ratings of how much each mother said they loved their baby days after the babies were born
Independent measures of physical attractiveness ratings of those babies
Measured how much mother spent time with newborn infant
All moms say they love their baby 100% but the best predictor of how much time mom would spend with infant was related to physical attractiveness of baby
Example: teachers
Teachers are more likely to call on attractive kids and give them positive encouragement
Kids can start to notice that attractive kids get different interactions
Example: persuasion techniques
Third graders’ effectiveness in persuasion techniques
Third graders were given a healthy cookie and they were told to try to convince their classmates to try the cookie
Attractive little girls just smiled and said “would you eat this?” as a technique and kids would eat it
Less attractive little girls got just as many people to eat the cookie but used different strategies: about strong arguments to convince them
Attractive little boys would use their charm to get kids to eat the cookie
Less attractive little boys say “try this or i’ll hit you”
matching hypothesis
We tend to wind up with romantic partners who are about same level of physical attractiveness as we are
One theory: we learn our marketplace and learn how attractive we are and by being with someone at same level, same levels of security and less problems
Another theory: everybody seeks out most attractive people and because everyone is trying to match with same people, the attractive people pair off first
Least attractive people find eachother in the end
ex: card game
we try to match up to our card without knowing what are card is
if u are the ace everyone want to come up to you which lets you know that you are the ace
similarity
Similarity breeds attraction
We like people similar to ourselves
Demographics & attitudes; not personality
Tend to like people of same race, socioeconomic background, etc.
Tend to like people with similar attitudes about things (people who like the same things)
