Social

Important terms

• Social comparison theory - we evaluate our values and beliefs by comparing ourselves to others. In doing this comparison, we have a better understanding of ourselves and the world\

  • Upward - comparing ourselves to someone who has it better than us. (ex. Silver medalist is using upward comparison-making them feel worse whereas bronze medalist use downward comparison- making them feel better)

  • Downward - comparing ourselves to someone who has done worse than us

• Enlightenment effect - when you learn about a psychological effect and it changes your real world behavior for the better

• Halo effect- when someone has one good trait, we assume that they have many good traits.

• Self-fulfilling prophecy - people behave as they are expected to behave → can confirm negative stereotypes.

• Chameleon effect - humans have a tendency to unconsciously mimic those around you

Attitudes

• Component - 

  • Affective - the emotionala reaction to the stimulus

  • Behavioral - how you want to behaviorally respond to the stimulus

  • Cognitive - what do you think about the concept  

• Dimensions

  • Strength: strong attitude is unlikely to change, weak attitude is more open to change 

  • Accessibility: what attitude you can easily access 

  • Ambivalence: positives and negatives when it comes to processing response

Attitude change components

• Source -  the person trying to cause change

• Reciever - whos attitude are you trying to change

• Message - what they are telling you in order to change your attitude 

• Channel - the way you are delivering your message

Attitude change

• Cognitive dissonance - when we have contrasting thoughts or behavior, it makes us feel uncomfortable. We seek to eliminate this discomfort by making our thoughts more in line with each other or the behvaior (cognitive dissonance study)

• Self-perception theory - we don’t actually know what our attitudes are → instead, we determine our attitudes by looking at our behavior. 

• Impression Management theory - in some environments attitudes are supported, you can change your attitude to give different impressions. Different at family and work 

• Elaboration likelihood model - 

  • Central route-  you think you have a strong argument to create change and are relying on that argument to create change → if this is successful, you will create long term change but it will be more difficult. (ex. Most politicians use this– trying to get you to vote for them)

  • Peripheral route - very weak method → trying to distract them with other things. This route gives you short term change but it will be easier. (ex. Kids breakfast cereal)

• Foot in the Door - asking for something small and going to larger and larger requests and progress until you get to the one you are actually interested in 

• Door in the face - where you ask for an extremely large unreasonable thing, expecting them to say no, then you follow it up with something reasonable that you actually want.

Attributions - how we explain people's actions and events 

• Stable vs unstable

  • Stable - the reasoning is unlikely to change

  • Unstable - the reasoning is likely to change 

• Internal vs external

  • Internal - about the person doing the behavior 

    • Stable Internal attribution - you scratch your eye and vision is blurry so you have difficulty seeing the road

  • External - anything outside of the person doing the behavior 

    • Stable external attribution - there is a building that makes it hard to see the stop sign

• Individualism vs collectivism

  • Individualism - focuses on an individual → more likely to make internal attributions

  • Collectivist culture - more focused on the groups success → more likely to make external attributions

• Fundamental attribution error - when we are observing other people, we are more likely to make an internal attribution for their actions

• Defensive attribution Error - when explaining our own actions, we make internal attribution for our successes and external attributions for our failures (I fail because of someone else)

Prejudice and discrimination 

• Prejudice - Emotional reaction to “out group” members

• Stereotypes - Cognitive patterns when it comes to an “out group” member. Not necessarily a bad thing but often associated with negative things for “out groups” 

• Subtyping - uphold current stereotype but also explaining an exception for that stereotype that you encounter.

• Discrimination - behaviors towards an “out group” members

• Perceptual confirmation - more likely to accept ambiguous information as it fits with our stereotype

• Illusory correlation - you believe that you’ve encountered more instances that uphold your stereotype than you actually have. Ex. stereotype of a scary dog but you encounter a friendly dog. You will interpret their friendly actions as aggressive bc that is going to uphold your stereotype

• Adaptive Conservatism - from an evolutionary perspective it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to outgroups

• Out-group homogeneity - out group members are more similar to each other than in-group members are more similar to each other

  • Variability hypothesis - men as a group are more variable than women. Way of saying that men are more evolutionarily fit for existence than women. 

• Contact hypothesis - the more contact you have with outgroup members that is either neutral or positive → there is a decrease in how much discrimination you see

• Superordinate goals - a goal that 2 groups have to work together to accomplish → as a result you see a decrease in stereotypes/ discrimination

Group influence

• Common knowledge effect - when you are in a group, you are more likely to discuss information that all group members share

• Social Loafing - where you work less hard when you’re in a group because you assume that your group is going to pick up for your slack

• Group polarization - through discussion with the group members, the group's opinion becomes more extreme. Overtime, it can become more extreme than any individual group member's opinion.

• Groupthink - where you don’t want to go against the group because you care about the cohesion/health of the group (ex. Yes men. (saying yes bc you are worried about the consequences of going against the group))

• Deindividuation - end up losing your self-identity. The more unanimous you are, the more likely you are to experience this. When you are part of a large group, the group identity matters more than your individual identity does.

• Conformity - changing your behavior to go along with a group, you are doing so without a direct request

• Compliance - someone asks you to do something and you say yes

• Obedience - when you are going along with a direct request from an authority figure

Conformity

• Informational influence - you are going along with the group because you genuinely believe that the group is right

• Normative influence - you are going along with the group to avoid causing issues in the group

• Unanimity - when everything in the group is saying the same thing, it creates more pressure which makes it more likely to conform to the group

• Co-conspirator - someone who is willing to go against the group. 

• Group size - the larger the group, the more likely you are to conform

• Anonymity - giving your answer anonymously, group no longer knows your opinion

Obedience study - specific example of compliance, going with direct request from authority figure

• Milgram study - demonstrated that people are willing to obey authroity figures, wven when it means harming others, with a significant percentage administering what they believed to be dangerous electric shocks. Women conformed equally to men 

Obedience

• Closeness - if they are closer you are more likely to obey (spatial closeness)

  • Temporal closeness - the time between hearing the request and the opportunity to go along with that request 

• Legitimate authority - ability to put the responsibility for your actions onto someone else. Perceptions of authority matter when you are more likely to obey. (ex. Yale university vs strip mall)

• Prestige - can be a way of looking at authority (Yale vs. Bing)

• Depersonalized victim - if you cannot see the victim, you are more likely to obey. Milgram study → Cannot see the real person that your actions are causing an effect on.

• Defiant models - when there is someone who is going against an authority figure, it will make them seem less authoritative and it will influence you to also go against this authority figure.

Attraction

• Sternberg’s triangular theory of love - states that there are three different types of love

  • Intimacy - ability to share personal information and feeling connected/bonded with another person

  • Passion - hot physical attraction you feel towards another person (lust)

  • Commitment - conscious decision to continue the relationship

• Matching hypothesis - people tend to end up in relationships with people of equal attractiveness as them

• Facial symmetry - the more symmetrical someone's face, the more attractive they are.

• Attitude alignment - the process of changing your attitude or opinion to be more similar to that of your partners

• Proximity - one of the most influential things on whether if you find someone attractive (are they nearby)

Aggression

• Relational aggression - seeking to cause harm within someone's relationships 

• Physical aggression - seeking to cause someone physical harm

• Hostile aggression - known as spontaneous aggression (choosing in the moment to cause harm)

• instrumental aggression - using aggression as part of a plan (most aggression seen in sports. Used to win a sports match or in mean girls when they are planning to destroy someone's life)

• Roles - certain roles have certain aggressive tendencies connected to them (positions you play in sports)

  • Stanford Prison experiment - 40 college men play a role of either prisoner or guard. Half were assigned to each group and they were aware that it was randomly assigned. Guards started to abuse their authority and showed physical aggression to the prisoners. 

Alturism

• Kin selection - we are more likely to help those who we are biologically related to

• Reciprocal alturism - you help me, I’ll help you. (reciprocate help) we usually don’t ask for help unless we can give help back

• Empathy-alturism hypothesis - can you do a truly alturistic behavior without getting some sort of positive self-benefit.

• Darley & Batson, 1973 - wanted to examine the role of religion when it came to social behavior. First varibale: topic of a speech that the person was going to give.Other variable: if you leave rn you will be early, late, or on time to your speech. Students who were told they were "hurried" were significantly less likely to stop and help the person in distress compared to those who were told they had time. The study highlights how situational pressures can override even strong moral beliefs and intentions to help others

• Bystander effect - you are more likely to give help where there are fewer people around

• Social responsibility norm - we are more likely to help those who are socially vulnerable. (ex. People are more likely to help the elderly or animals)

Important terms/people

• Cognitive miser - the tendency of individuals to seek solutions to problems that require the least mental effort, relying on mental shortcuts rather than careful, reflective thinking

• Inductive reasoning - drawing general conclusions from specific evidence. This reasoning tends to be less certain because we are starting from the end and working our way back

• Deductive reasoning - going from general statements to understand specific conclusions. 

• Syntax vs grammar

  • Syntax - the order of words we put together in order to create a string of meaningful thought

  • Grammar - general rules relating to a specific language

• Genie - A child raised in social isolation and subject to severe abuse and neglect. demonstrated that language is more of a sensitive period rather than a critical period. 

• Homesign - deaf children born into hearing households don’t have much of a way to communicate with those around them, their own sign language to communicate

Language

• Rules - specific rules we expect to see in language

  • Symbolic - must be able to use sounds, words, pictures to represent abstract concepts. 

  • Generative - small number of symbols or sounds can be combined to an infinite number of words and messages

  • Structured - have to be rules with how you are combining things in order for it to have meaning

• Semantics - how we understand the meaning of words in a language

  • Denotation - the dictionary definition of a word

  • Connotation - personal interpretation of a word

Language acquisition theories 

• Sociocultural - children are learning language through interaction with other people

• Behaviorist - believed taht language came from operant conditioning. 

• Nativist (Chomsky) - humans have a natural inclination towards language

  • Language acquisition device - biologic directive that facilitates speech

• Interactionist - belief that everything is through interaction

Language components

• Phonemes - the smallest unit of speech (sounds that form a language). Different languages have different Phonemes. Newborns seem to have the best ability to differentiate all phonemes

• Morphemes - smallest units of meaning (root words, suffix, presuffixes)

• Receptive vocabulary - words that you understand (will always be larger than productive vocabulary)

• Productive vocabulary - words that you use

• Telegraphic speech - children use this when starting to speech, subject verb. (ex. Mommy draw)

Language errors

• Overextension - using a word more than you should be (baby calls all silverware spoon)

• Underextension - using a word more conservatively than they should (baby only calls green spoon a spoon)

• Overregularization - apply regular grammar rules to irregular examples. (ex. Mouses instead of mice) They have not learned the exceptions

Cognition barriers 

• Field dependence - focuses on the context on the problem or situation

• Field independence - ignore the context of the problem/situation. Instead, we focus on singular objects and singular properties.

• Irrelevant information - tendency to focus on irrelevant information when coming up with answers or solutions (ex. riddles)

• Mental sets - using the same strategy that worked for you previously even when it is no longer relevant

• Functional fixedness - inability to see uses for objects outsite of their typical use

• Unnecessarary constraints - assuming there are barriers in a problem when there aren’t

• Anticipated regret - We are making decisions about assumed feelings or an assumed reaction we might have. 

Cognition errors

• Theory of bounded rationality - people are only bounded to a certain degree (largely irrational)

• Conjunction fallacy - when you think two events/ items are more likely to occur together than independently (feminist cat lady)

• Recognition heuristic - when given an option between two choices, we are going to choose the more recognizable option (ex. Oreos vs hydrax)

• Hindsight bias - once we know the outcome, we believe that we have always believed in that outcome (we do this bc it makes us seem like we were right)

• Affect heuristic - we tend to make decisions based on emotional or gut feeling rather than rational thought

• Alternative outcomes effect - aka gambler's fallacy. Where you assume that past outcomes have an influence on a future random event. Explains why gamblers keep gambling whether theyre on a losing or winning streak. 

• Anchoring heuristic - when asked to give a numeric response, we tend to anchor ourselves or respond similarly to those who responded before us.

• Availability heuristic - people judge the likelihood of events based on how easily examples instead of those events come to mind (ex. Shark vs vending machine)

• Confirmation bias - tendency to remember information that supports us and ignore/forget information that goes against us

• Overconfidence - humans have way more confidence in themselves than they should

• Ostrich bias - tendency to ignore negative information and focus on positive information (more about emotional information)

Emotions

Important terms

• Mood - not an emotion, changes in affect that will last longer than emotions.

• Nonverbal leakage - trying to hide our emotional response. Oftentimes still show that emotional response through nonverbal behaviors.

• Affective forecasting - trying to predict how we feel as well as how others feel (we are bad at this). We often make decisions based on this forecasting

• Hedonic Treadmill - after we experience a positive experience, we chase the next positive experience to maintain in this positive emotional state

• Self-determination theory - motivated to satisfy our needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness.

Social motivations

• Hedonic - maximize our pleasure and minimize our pain

• Approval - motivation for approval. Like to be accepted instead of rejected 

• Accuracy - we like to be right instead of wrong  

THEORIES OF MOTIVATION

• Instinct/Evolutionary Theory: our instincts are complex behaviors that have a fixed pattern and our motivations are related to those fixed patterns

• Drive-Reduction: when drive is out of balance you are motivated to bring that biological necessity back into balance/ homeostasis. EX hunger is a drive  

– Drive: biological desire/ necessity

• Incentive: rewards that you get for engaging in a specific behavior. EX favorite food is incentive  

THEORIES OF MOTIVATION

• Arousal: focus, our attention, how aware we are in the moment. Don't like a constant low level or arousal, this means boredom. YET too much arousal is anxiety

  • Yerkes-Dodson Law: optimal level of arousal is a medium level for optimum level of performance. Inorder to reach performance peak need ideal amount of arousal. Too much or too little cannot focus. 

• Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs - in order to move up the hierarchy of needs, you have to satisfy the lower components. (ex. Bottom of the pyramid are necessities like food, sleep, and water. Top of the pyramid are things like esteem and self-actualisation.) 

Hunger motivation

• Glucostatic Theory: there are specific neurons in our brain that are sensitive to the levels of glucose in the fluid and blood around the brain. Glucose is important because this is what our brain uses for fuel. Will send signals that you need to eat. Sending signals of hunger. 

• Learned Preferences: negative classical conditioning for a type of food, you will not feel hunger for that type of food. Can be cultural too, what you eat for breakfast in said culture 

• Stress: stress causes negative emotions and one way we try to avoid these emotions is eating comfort food. FOOD makes you happier. Also stress makes our body use more resources and replenish resources through eating. 

Contextual hunger cues

• Palatability - when food tastes good we eat more of it

• Quantity - we typically eat what we are given

• Quality - we will often eat higher quality food if given the option

• Variety - we tend to eat more with more options

  • Sensory-specific satiety - where you eat the same food across multiple instances until you get tired of it

• Others - the presence of others increase how much we each

Motivation in the workplace

• Extrinsic motivation - motivation that is coming from external of the person 

  • Undermining effect - overjustification effect. Once you start to get extrinsic motivation for something that used to be intrinsic motivation, you see a decrease in intrinsic motivation. Ex. artists doing art bc intrinsic and then make money and turns extrinsic

• Intrinsic motivation - the drive to engage in activities because they are inherently interesting or enjoyable, stemming from internal satisfaction rather than external rewards or pressures. 

  • Challenge - how much do you enjoy challenges, if you enjoy trying to solve or accomplish new challenges, higher levels of intrinsic

  • Enjoyment: does the task bring you joy. Higher joy, higher levels of intrinsic motivation.

  • Mastery - do you like getting an accomplishment in your task? Feeling of solving a task or becoming adept at the task. If you desire this, you have stronger intrinsic motivation.

  • Autonomy: how much independence you feel like you have in your decisions. More independence, higher intrinsic motivation

• Organizational support - looks at how much support the workplace is giving to their workers both to the work that they are doing but also as human beings

Variations in pursuing achievement 

• Motivation to achieve - some people have a personality trait where they want to achieve: learn new things, be the best at certain things.

• Probability of success - if you fit the criteria, you are more likely to succeed. (Ex. tall basketball player)

• Incentive of success - what do you get from achieving in this area? If the incentive is higher, the more motivated people feed

• Self-discipline - able to control your impulses and urges in order to stay focused on the task at hand. This has surpassed intelligence. People with more self-discipline are seen to do better in school than naturally smart people.

Motivation to belong

• Evolutionary - humans were never the strongest nor fastest. In order to hunt and survive, we had to work together. This contributed to how social humans are.

• Emotional benefits - strong close relationships are one of the strongest indicators of happiness 

• Health benefits - happy marriages are predicted for longevity. Can be reversed, new immigrants or prisoners or orphans w no strong social network = worse health outcomes

• Social media - our reward pathways light up when we get interactions with social media but we also see higher rates of social comparison. People who spend more time on social media tend to score higher on scales of narcissism  

Emotion components

• Cognitive - very personal, very influenced by culture

• Physiologic - biological response to an emotion. (Lie detector test)

• Behavior: how an emotion is likely to make you behave. Mix in terms of the effective culture 

  • Display Rules/Norms - typically govern how, when, and to whom you display your emotions to.

Base emotions

• Valence - we can separate emotions into positive and negative.

• Universal emotions - emotions that seem to be experienced and displayed in similar ways cross culturally. 

• Emotion families - rather than thinking of emotions as distinct, think of how they connect to one another.

• Confusion - oftentimes you will see some sort of blend of emotions. Not a singular emotion by itself. 

Self conscious emotions

• Pride - associated with our superiority over others (ex. Winning competition)

• Embarrassment - violating a rule/exploitation in a minor

• Envy - jealousy 

Emotion theories

• Discrete emotions theory - humans only experience a few discrete emotions

• James Lange - external stimuli causes a physiological resonse (heart beat increasing). This reaction leads to your emotional experience

• Canon-Bard - external stimuli causes a physiological reaction and will simultaneously cause a cognitive response

• Schacter-singer - SKYZONE AND TACOBELL

• Continuous theory - arousal and low arousal. Pleasure and displeasure . Can plot any emotional experience humans have placed on the spectrum.

• Somatovisceral afference Model of Emotion (SAME) - emotions that have a strong physiological response are much easier to distinct from each other (Ex. disgust vs. sadness)

The brain and emotions

• Amygdala - how we recognize the stimuli is relevant to our emotions. particularly relevant to the appraisal of relevance. Really important for our experience of both fear and anger

• Prefrontal cortex - important for understanding when we should react to different stimuli emotionally. Left positive emotions ,right negative emotions.

• Hypothalamus - responsible for positive emotions, reward emotions, as well as telling the brain what to when it comes to emotional experience

• Insula - extremely closely tied to disgust. Monitor reactions for things like disgust

• Anterior cingulate cortex - critical for emotional thought and experience of pain in terms of both physical and emotional aspects

Emotion regulation

• Reapprasial - if we can change the way we are thinking about the stimulus, we can oftentimes change our emotional response

• Expressive suppression - deliberate, concious, effortful desire to hide what we are feeling

• Duchenne smile - what we look for in deciphering if something is a genuine smile or not