College Psych Unit 6 (Social Psychology)
4.1 Attribution Theory, Locus of Control, and Person Perception
Essential Question: How do attribution theory, locus of control, and personal perception apply to behavior and mental processes?
The school dance scenario is typical: we worry about what others think and make assumptions.
Social Cognition: How we think about ourselves and others in social situations.
Social Situation: Behaviors and mental processes in a group or when an individual thinks they are being observed.
Example: Adjusting speed on the highway due to a "Speed Controlled by Radar" sign.
Social cognition involves efforts to make sense of what's going on around us and inside us.
Psychologists have developed theories about how individuals perceive and interpret their behavior and that of others, involving cognitive processes like perception, judgment, and interpretation of social stimuli.
Attribution Theory
Attribution: The way we explain the cause(s) of behavior.
Example: Concluding that a friend likes roller coasters because he is a sensation seeker.
Dispositional Attribution: Assumption that behavior is driven by internal characteristics (intelligence or personality).
Situational Attribution: Explaining behavior as a result of an external source (a person's situation).
Attribution theory was developed by Fritz Heider in 1958 and expanded by other researchers.
Explanatory Style
Explanatory Style: Predictable way of explaining the causes of events.
Global Explanatory Style: Attributing negative events to causes affecting many areas of life.
Example: "This always happens to me," or "I'm bad at everything."
Specific Explanatory Style: Attributing negative events to causes limited to particular circumstances.
Example: "I didn't study enough for this particular subject."
Optimistic Explanatory Style: Attributing negative events to external and specific causes and positive events to internal and global causes.
Pessimistic Explanatory Style: Attributing negative events to internal and global causes and positive events to external and specific causes.
Explanatory styles impact motivation, emotional well-being, and mental health.
Optimistic individuals are more resilient and have better mental health.
Pessimistic individuals are prone to learned helplessness and depression.
Explanatory styles can be influenced by cultural background and personal experiences.
Cognitive Biases and Attribution
Cognitive bias = A systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective social reality" from their perception of the input. A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that affects how people process information, perceive others, and make decisions, often leading to distorted or irrational judgments that can result in negative outcomes in social interactions, as individuals may overlook critical information or misinterpret other's intentions.
In the 1960s, researchers found the actor-observer bias.
Actor-Observer Bias: Tendency to attribute dispositional explanations for others' behaviors but situational explanations for our own.
Example: Attributing a classmate's poor test performance to being disorganized but blaming your own poor performance on the alarm not going off.
Fundamental Attribution Error: Tendency to attribute others' behavior to dispositional factors, ignoring situational factors (coined by Lee Ross in the 1970s).
Example: Believing someone who hits another person is aggressive rather than considering other factors.
Ultimate Attribution Error: Applying the fundamental attribution error to an entire minority or underrecognized group.
Example: Believing everyone from a specific ethnic group is aggressive if one member hits someone.
Self-Serving Biases: Tendencies to see ourselves in a positive light.
People see themselves as having above-average intelligence and high moral standards.
Students attribute success to intelligence or hard work (dispositional cause) and failure to the teacher (situational cause).
This bias protects our own interests or self-esteem and can create a problem-solving barrier.
Cultural Norms, Expectations, and Circumstances
Scenario: Sara (American), Kofi (Ghana), and Ji-eun (South Korea) study group meeting.
Sara perceives Kofi and Ji-eun's lateness as disrespect due to her individualistic culture.
Kofi helped a friend, valuing social obligations.
Ji-eun had family obligations.
Both assumed Sara would understand.
Locus of Control
Julian Rotter proposed in 1954 that people seek pleasant outcomes and avoid unpleasant ones.
Behavior is influenced by social context and related factors, not just psychological ones.
Locus of Control: Perception of where control over life events resides.
Internal Locus of Control: Belief that people have the ability to control their lives and choices.
Inner-driven individuals tend to have high motivation.
Proactive ways to handle life's stressors.
Likely to blame themselves for circumstances beyond their control.
External Locus of Control: Belief that they have little or no control over their lives.
Believe that life is a function of chance, luck, or fate.
Tend to be pessimistic, passive, and accepting.
Beliefs may lead to learned helplessness.
Person Perception
Person perception is our brain's ability to form impressions and make judgments about others based on limited information.
These judgments shape our attitudes and behaviors toward ourselves and others.
The Mere-Exposure Effect
The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon whereby people tend to develop a preference for things simply because they are familiar with them.
The more we are exposed to a particular stimulus, such as a person, object, or idea, generally, the more favorable our attitude toward it becomes.
Advertisers use this effect by repeating commercials.
Social Interactions and Relationships
Person perception strongly shapes how we engage in social interactions and manage our relationships.
We use shortcuts, heuristics, or stereotypes to interpret others' actions.
Relying on stereotypes can lead to misunderstandings and unfair treatment.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: An individual's belief or expectation about a situation influences their behavior in a way that causes those expectations to come true.
Example: A student who believes he is not good at math may avoid studying math, leading to poor performance.
Social Comparison
Social comparison theory explores how individuals evaluate themselves by comparing their abilities, opinions, behavior, status, or attributes to others.
Social comparisons can affect our self-esteem and motivate us to change or improve.
Upward Social Comparison: Comparing oneself to others who are perceived as superior.
May lead to feelings of inadequacy or motivation for self-improvement.
Social media often has this effect.
ex. comparing yourself to someone richer
Downward Social Comparison: Comparing oneself to others who are perceived as inferior.
May boost one's self-esteem.
Could lead to anxiety.
ex. comparing yourself to someone poorer
People make social comparisons of wealth, status, appearance, and achievement.
Relative Deprivation: Feeling of dissatisfaction that arises when people perceive themselves as having less than they deserve compared to others
Studies on the Mere-Exposure Effect
Study 1: Students rated the attractiveness and perceived similarity of women who attended different numbers of class sessions.
The woman who attended 15 sessions was rated higher.
Study 2: Participants rated their preference for Chinese characters, some of which were presented more frequently.
Participants showed a higher preference for more frequently seen characters.
Study 3: College students chatted with a partner via email with varying frequencies.
More interactions led to more liking and interest in staying in contact.
4.2 Attitude Formation and Attitude Change
Essential Question: How do stereotypes and implicit attitudes contribute to the behaviors and mental processes of prejudice and discrimination? How do belief perseverance and cognitive dissonance affect attitude formation and change?
Attitudes are formed about virtually everything we encounter and represent how you feel and what you think about objects, people, events, or issues.
Kurt Lewin considered attitude social psychology's most indispensable concept, with three components: affects (feelings), cognitions (thoughts), and behaviors. The ABCs of psychology.
Contemporary research proposes that attitudes do not necessarily predict behaviors.
LaPierre's 1934 study revealed the role of prejudice in attitudes. A Chinese couple was only refused service by one of 184 restaurants, yet 91% of the restaurants stated they would never serve Asian customers.
Stereotypes
Stereotypes are generalized attitudes about a group of people based on their membership in the group.
Often false or containing only an element of truth.
Serve the purpose of controlling or putting down the stereotyped group.
Can contain an element of truth but do not account for individual differences within a group.
Serve as cognitive shortcuts that streamline the decision-making process.
Can lessen cognitive load, especially in complex situations.
However, relying on stereotypes can lead to inaccurate or unfair assessments.
Shape biased perceptions and experiences and can lead to discrimination. For example, a hiring manager may prioritize an Indian candidate over others based on stereotypes.
Influence self-perceptions and behaviors, such as girls internalizing negative stereotypes about math and science.
Fuel discriminatory behaviors, such as racial profiling and unequal treatment in healthcare, education, and financial settings.
Stereotypes are persistent, even when people try to overcome them.
Neurocognitive Study on Stereotypes
Underlying science is the theory: "Neurons that fire together wire together."
Participants determined whether a male was gay or straight based on social media profiles.
*The profiles provided interests that could be equally relevant to both men, as well as some that are more stereotypically associated with one or the other.Raters received confirming, disconfirming, or no feedback on their selections.
Raters receiving confirming feedback selected an even higher percentage of profiles as gay.
Raters who were told their selections were incorrect still chose more profiles as gay, but not as many more as the first group. Raters who received no feedback selected a higher percentage of profiles as gay than those who were told their selections were incorrect.
Confirmation bias played a role in the results.
The reward system in the brain may have played a part in the results.
Overconfidence bias was also a factor.
Prejudice and Discrimination
Prejudice is an attitude based on unjustified judgments about a group of people.
Prejudice usually involves bias or stereotypes.
Discrimination is negative behavior toward members of a target group.
Stereotypes and prejudices occur in your head and do not directly hurt others, while discrimination involves behavior and can hurt people.
Discrimination can lower self-esteem and create stress, leading to mental and physical health problems.
Workplace Hiring Discrimination Study
Meta-analysis of field experiments showed no change in racial discrimination in hiring over time.
Whites receive 36% more callbacks than African Americans and 24% more than Latinos.
Levels of discrimination remain largely unchanged at hiring.
Implicit Attitudes
Implicit attitudes are unconscious evaluations of biases toward certain objects, groups, or individuals.
Unlike explicit attitudes, implicit attitudes operate unconsciously and may not align with stated beliefs.
Tend to lead to negative evaluations of others.
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) has demonstrated implicit biases toward certain social groups.
People tend to associate racial or ethnic groups with negative stereotypes.
Can lead to discriminatory behaviors in hiring, housing, education, and criminal justice systems.
The Just-World Phenomenon
The just-world phenomenon is the tendency to see the world as fundamentally fair and believe that people get what they deserve.
People see victims as having "asked for it" or "deserved what they got."
Those experiencing poverty are implicitly evaluated negatively and attributed to personal failings rather than socioeconomic factors.
In-Group Bias and Out-Group Homogeneity Bias
Prejudice is strongly tied to in-group or out-group membership.
In-group is a group with which one identifies; out-group is a group with which one feels no identification.
In-group vs Out-group: In-group is a group with which one identifies; out-group is a group with which one feels no identification. This is often described as an "us" versus "them" mentality. Increases prejudice against the out-group, all members of the out-group tend to be generalized and stereotyped together
This is often described as an "us" versus "them" mentality.
In-group bias involves reserving positive feelings for in-group members, while prejudice is a negative feeling toward an out-group.
Can show in implicit attitudes, leading people to unconsciously hold more positive evaluations of in-group members than out-group members.
Out-group homogeneity bias is a phenomenon in which people see members of an out-group as more similar to each other than members of their own in-group.
Can contribute to negative implicit attitudes toward out-group members.
Fosters a sense of "us versus them" and worsens social distance and distrust.
Ethnocentrism
Operates on larger social and cultural levels.
Ethnocentrism: Judging other cultures based only on the values and characteristics of one's own culture.
Coined by William Sumner (1906).
Can lead to negative implicit attitudes toward other cultures.
Research: Basketball Team Perspectives
Sports psychologist investigated how members of two basketball teams viewed each other.
Athlets completed questions using a Likert scale from 1-7.
Developing and Changing Attitudes
Attitudes represent how we feel and reflect how we think about objects, people, events, or issues.
Attitude formation is influenced by interactions, experiences, family, peers, cultural norms, socialization, observation, knowledge, emotions, reasoning, logic, and beliefs.
Belief Perseverance
Belief perseverance is the cognitive bias that causes people to cling to their initial beliefs, even after the basis for them has been discredited.
Belief perseverance is a form of denial.
Jurors' evaluations of eyewitness testimony are unaffected even when the evidence is discredited.
Confirmation bias also plays a role.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for information that supports our beliefs.
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance arises when clinging to attitudes despite new evidence refuting them.
People will rationalize, ignore, and even deny anything that doesn't fit with the core belief.
Psychologist Leon Festinger said that people tend to love the things for which they have to work more.
Effort justification means the harder we have to work for something, the more we love it.
Festinger introduced the theory of cognitive dissonance in 1957.
In Festinger’s 1959 “Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance” experiment, participants experienced cognitive dissonance when they were asked to tell another person that a boring task was actually interesting, which conflicted with their true belief that the task was dull. Those paid only $1 had insufficient external justification for lying, so they reduced their dissonance by convincing themselves that the task was actually enjoyable. In contrast, those paid $20 had enough external justification and did not change their attitudes. This demonstrates how people change their beliefs to align with their actions when external justification is low, in order to reduce psychological discomfort.
Occurs when we act in a way that conflicts with our beliefs and feel guilt or tension.
To reduce discomfort, we might change our actions or beliefs so the two positions align.
Cognitive Dissonance Relief Stages
Inconsistency triggers tension, leading to cognitive dissonance.
Rationalization is a way of relieving such tension: changing values, changing the behavior, or understanding/re-interpreting the behavior helps to reduce the dissonance.
Influences of Context and Nonverbal Communication in Multicultural Persuasion
The context in which communication occurs – power dynamics or relationships between the communicators – greatly influences its persuasive effectiveness
Nonverbal cues – body language, eye contact, and tone of voice – are also interpreted differently across cultures can either enhance or undermine a persuasive message
Effective persuasion in a multicultural context requires a deep understanding of cultural subtleties and the ability to adapt communication strategies accordingly
Developing a Claim On Cultural Values Influencing Persuasive Messages
Need to develop a claim based on cultural values impacting the effectiveness of persuasive messages
Conformity and Obedience
Conformity and obedience are fundamental aspects of social behavior demonstrating how individuals adjust their actions, attitudes, and beliefs in response to the influence of others
Conformity involves changing one has behavior to match the norms/behaviors of a larger group, often to fit in or get social approval
Obedience, on the other hand, is about following orders or rules from an authority figure, even when personal preferences may differ
Both processes demonstrate the powerful impact that social environments and authority figures can have on individual behaviour, creating attention between personal autonomy and social influence
Conformity
Whether unspoken rules, norms and expectations influence a person's thoughts, feelings, and behaviours depends on a number of factors
Social psychologists revealed some of these factors through studying conformity
Conformity is behaviour that is in accord with accepted group standards
Solomon Asch set out to determine to what degree other people influence our opinions (or the external expression of our opinions) in his conformity experiments at Bryn Mawr College in the early 1950s
When asked in separate experiments which one of three lines on the second card matched the height of the single line on the first card, seven subjects chose the wrong line unanimously
The eighth participant, known to be set up to go last, knew the answer was wrong and chose the real matching line at first
Eventually, however, they shifted their answer and went along with those who chose the wrong answer
Thirty-seven percent of participants conformed to the group judgement. The same results occurred in other groups.
When later interviewed about their answers, some real subjects said they knew that the others had chosen the wrong answers, but they didn't want to be different from the group
Majority of the participants did not conform, sticking to what they knew was correct
Obedience to Authority
Asch studies show people's willingness to "go with the crowd", but has not significant consequences
Obedience is the act of following the commands, instructions, or orders given by an authority figure or ruling body and involving compliance with established rules, laws, or social norms.
In a landmark series of studies in the 1960s, Stanley Milgram randomly assigned one of two subjects to be the "teacher" and the other to be the "learner".
Milgram did this research to understand obedience from subject, whose job was to deliver an electric shock for incorrect answers.
When the learner got the incorrect answer, the subject was urged by an authority figure to administer the electric shock to the subject and increase voltage with each mistake.
*The shock was recorded to match the levels of electricity shock (Mild to Harmful/Deadly)Nearly two-thirds of the subjects complied with the researcher's demands and proceeded all the way to 450 fake volts
Certain conditions are shown to make people less obedient, however.
*One is the emotional distance of the victim.
*Closemess and legitimacy of the authority figure also influence obedience.
*Finally, remember the Asch studies on conformity? When Asch's participants were in a situation where all of the other confederates gave incorrect answers, some of the participants conformed to the group answer at least once.
*Milgram studies show several reasons why people might obey an authority figure.
*from an evolutionary perspective, we seem to have give up our responsibility to engage in risky or dangerous activity if they're is an authority figure to take on this responsibility
*second, we have been socialized from childhood to obey authority figures, such as our parents, our teachers, and the police.
*Third, the shocks were delivered incrementally by only 15-volt jumps
*although all participant had a choice to continue and all participants had a choice to continue with the experiment are not, they may not have perceived that they had the chance to discontinue"