SOCIAL PSYCH
Chapter 1. What is Social Psychology
Social Influence
The scientific attempt to explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other human beings
Emphasis is situationism
The Person-situation Debate-Disposition-Personality
Who they are
Social psych is the opposite
Debate began in 1968 due to the book by Walter Mischel; Personality and assessment ( it is stupid and a waste of time)
Funder identifies 3 central issues to Mischel's stance
What is a predictor of predicting behavior
Are our intuitions about other people flawed Ex. Meet a new person you draw inferences.
More about Mischel’s Stance
Does personality lead to behavior IT CANT HAS TO BE CORRELATION
He did a meta-analysis of 100 personality research of study the correlation between personality and behavior. Personality, regardless of how it was measure correlation and behavior at .3
Look into correlation
The situationist argument
There is an upper limit to how well we can predict behavior based on any measure of personality
The ceiling is LOW An +.4 that r squared (personality coefficient so personality accounts for 16% o f variance in behavior being that 84% must be due to situations
Therfore situations are more important
The "Big 5" personality traits in psychology are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, often remembered using the acronym OCEAN. [1]
Reality
Personality psychologist admit that their research consists mostly of self report questionnaire.
OCEAN tests are not honest. People lie and don't have good self-insight.
Smoking and lung cancer is a 0.40
Personality is a correlation, and social experiments cannot be compared
Stats r vs F
You can look at effects ( obedience, cognitive dissonance ((the mental discomfort you feel when your actions do not match your beliefs, or when you hold two contradictory thoughts at the same time))
Social Psych has a “replication crisis” (boomed in 80/90s can not be replicated)
Social psych importance
Overemphasis of personality (existing research)
Underestimation of situation (Cognitive biases)
Personality studies dispositions (distinct)
Personality predictions are not exact
Sociology- macro
Social psych- micro; macro presents of someone else
Big OVERLAP
Core social motive
Not established in social psych
To make it manageable and boil them down
WE ARE SOCIAL ANIMALS
First described in the motivation literature
5 social motives
Belonging 2. Understanding 3. Controlling 4. Enhancing self, and trusting
1. Belong to groups 2. Understand others 3. Control others/others 4. Feel good about self 5.
Belonging
Whole point
Benefits strong stable relationships with others
Health psych physio benefits
Larger group=larger goals
Understanding
Cognitive
Need to predict what is going to happen in case of uncertainties
Explain why
Adaptive coordinate
Drive attraction and prejudice
Understanding social influence and persuasion
Control
Cognitive
Contingency between behavior and outcomes
Ties into behavior modifications/clincial psychology
Good people=reward bad people=punishment
Main concept to depression
Associate with better physical and mental health
Enhancing self
More affective
Feelings and emotions
Maintaining self-esteem or being motivated by improving oneself
We want to feel loved praise yk
Associate with better physical and mental health, possibly due to reduction in self-destructive behavior
Trusting
Seeing others and the social world as a good place
Everyone is a good person at fault
Dependable
Love bargaining just world hypothesis cohesion prosocial and antisocial social influence
Correlation between location where people are less trusting and more violent crime
Individualistic vs Collectivistic
Individualistic-emphasis the individual you are in charge of the screw up Ex.MVP
Collectivistic- The group (family community, organization country)
Difference in Continents
North america and europe-individualistic
Asia south america africa-collectivistic
Two separate spectrums
Low individualism-high individualism
low collectivism-high collectivism
Most Collectivist: Hawaii very insular
Most Individualistic:Frontier west.
Application of Core motive
Belonging is more important in collectivist cultures
Understanding
Rural africa will sacriifice precision to maintain relationship
It is not polite to ask questions directly. Ex. Refusing a invitation
Control
North America-value control over environment and believe individuals can have a major impact
Harmony Control- control but distinct from environmental control
Choose to give control over their own outcomes to other people of higher power
“I feel secure knowing my friends will take care of me
Periods of good and bad luck even out in the end
Harmony with others
Higher in women and latinos
Self-enhancement
Can feel good as an individual and as a group member
Trust
Collectivist (Japan)- expect to take care of each others, trusting close others but not outsiders.More adaptive
Individualistic(USA- trust in general until someone gives us something we do not trust
Chapter 5. The Self: Social to the Core
Dynamic self-who are or communicate ourselves in social situations
Level 1-Body self/material self-physical body
Level 2- Inner thoughts and feeling- interest attitude abilities interests. If someone attacks it would you defend it?Yes then it is.
Level 3- Interpersonal,social relational sel
Level 4-Societal self- social and cultural identities
Agent self or “I”- the self as an agent or actor
Operation Definition and Core Motive
The self and cognition (self-concept) our rep of ourselves how we think of ourselves. Ex. Self schemas ( how we see ourselves).
The core motive is to seek to understand oneself
The self and emotion (self-esteem) feelings about yourself
Two types. Trait self-esteem, state self-esteem (temp state) (performance social regard and appearance
Sociometer theory: one of the dominant theory is a measure of ones social standing/successful relationships; a social gauge
The core motive: self-enhancement (and self-improvement facilitates group interaction and action.
The self and behavior (self-presentation) goals and process of attempting to convey one's identity to others
Example Operational- difference between public and anonymous behavior; behavior after a public failure
Core motive: Belonging through self-reg of behavior
Self concept
Three of them
1. Self schema
A framework of who one is:predominately involved personality traits one views as important
Affect behavior. Ex: I am bad at math regardless of how good you actually are
Actor-observer effect applies: we view ourselves as more complex than others. We believe we can have opposite traits
Fish in Water effect
2. Self Concept
A variety in complexity
Those who see themselves as more com;ex have greater well being
More possible selves. Imagining I am a good student
3. Identities
Same Idea as possible selves
Socially created
Non overlapping
Buffers stress and is associated with openness
Self concept (Coherent)
Accessibility
Certain parts of the self come to midn at different times spending on context. Not to every aspect of our self at all times
Working self-concept: currently active aspects of self
Pressure with inconsistency
American are uncomfortable with being hypocritical
Situational attribute
Blame inconsistencies on the situation
Formation of self concepts.
Four sources
Isolated self-concept (identity that is separate from family and friends) 1. Self perception 2. Introspective
Interrelated self concept 3. Social Comparison 4. Social feedback
Isolated self concept
Self-Perception (Bem)
We observe ourselves doing something and it clicks
Self observation tends to be more accurate in terms of consensus with others
People rarely do it (or pay attention to do it)
Introspection
More common. Soul searching really digging into your thoughts and feelings
Believe that thoughts are in our head that our self concept but behavior is most revealing about others
Interrelated self concept
Social Comp Theory
Learn about comparing to other people
Assess how we are doing and where we stand on attitudes and preferences (what are special talents?)
Serves Two functions
1. Understanding through comparisons with similar others
2. Self-enhancement through comparisons with people who are worse off (make us feel more competent/healthier).Exception is slight upward comparisons which serves to motivate
Social Feedback
Symbolic interaction theorist- self is how one thinks others react. Meta-perception shape elf
Sometimes called the looking glass self
Perception how we think other people see us (metaperceptions)
Side note about conflict between self-understanding and self-enhancement.
Self understanding or self verification entails gaining consensus you want others to see you on yourself
-Reduces conflicts in interaction, improves connections with others and fosters harmony
Self enhancement involves wanting to see oneself and have others see you in a positive light.
Survival function but can sometimes conflict
Roles of Culture
The self concept diffes in 6 ways
Cultural Differences
Self-definition
• Independent: self is unique, autonomous, and people describe
themselves with abstract concepts (personality traits). High-
achievers do so for themselves, they want to be the best, achieve
their personal best, and reach their full potential.
• Interdependent: self embeds, connects, and enmeshes in the
social context. Self is the intersection of various roles and groups
with individuals describing themselves using concrete behavioral
responses. Achievement is done to obey and honor the family,
teachers, school, and other important social groups.
Self-structure
• Independent: self is unitary and stable; must always be “yourself”;
related to the idea of consistency.
• Interdependent: self is fluid and variable. Personal preferences are
irrelevant. An individual does whatever the role demands.
Importance
• Independent: inner thoughts and feelings considered most real or
true self and most important.
• Interdependent: Relationships are the true self
Life tasks
• Independent: finding one’s self and developing an
identity. Be unique, express our self, follow our goals.
• Interdependent: belonging, fitting in, acting appropriately,
following group goals, being diplomatic, being subtle.
Role of Others
• Independent: social comparisons that aid in self-
evaluation
• Interdependent: self-definition
Self enhancement and self-sympathy
• Independent: self-enhance via self-esteem or
optimistic illusions about oneself.
• Interdependent: self-improvement, self-
adjustment, self-sympathy (sympathizing with one’s
own weakness)
Take a ways
Self is complex and multifaceted… yet we feel pressure to feel consistent (it is a cultural phenomenon)
The self is more social than many realize: is constructed and understood socially
Culture impacts our self concepts
Self Esteem and emotions-self esteem
Global self esteem- general fondness of themselves
Self eval aree appraisal/judgement
Self worth is a momentary feelings
Trait self-esteem is similar to global self-esteem. Enduring global and relative to personality traits does not fluctuate
State self esteem is more flexible and changes more
Trait and self esteem run tandem
Broad Take-Home Points of the Self-Concept
The self is complex
We are driven for consistency
Culture impacts this
Self Esteem
There is a tendency to hold very positive views of ones self but relatively accurate views of others
Individualistic culture tend to have high self esteem. Which tend to be more persistent
Very unrealistic
Self Esteem Again
Self-Discrepancy Theory (humanistic theory of depression)
Broader than the positive to negative spectrum of self esteem
People compare themselves to internal standards that aid the regulating behavior.
Actual self-who you are now
Ought self-image who you think you should be. Prevention focus
Ideal self-image of who you want to be. Promotion focus
Actual self is to far from outself humanistic believe cause of depression
Self Esteem Again x2
Self-Evaluation Maintenance Theory
Addresses emotions of themselves and other person
A relationship has a sense of self
If the partner excels or surpasses the individual in the exact same area-feel threatened
If the area of excellence is not identical or too similar-feeling pride
Self Esteem Again x3
Affective forecasting- attempts to predict
Attempt to predict how future events will make us feel
Durable Bias- overetimated the duration of reaction to negative events
Focalism Bias- assumption that neg event will center our lives
Self and Behavior: Self-presentation, self-monitoring, and self-regulation
Self-presentation – how people present themselves to others and why.
Depends on context (underlying reason) (kind of like manipulation)
• Personal goals
• Audience – expectations based on audience (what they think others want)
• Immediate situation
• society
Help subjective well-being by
• Maximizing the rewards of social relations
• Enhancing self-esteem
• Establishing desired identities
Strategies of self-presentation
Ingration-flattery complimenting
Sucking up
Purpose-to be liked
Goal-elicit affection
Can backfire if the others pucks up on the fact the individual is only to be liked
Self promotion-involves presenting oneself in a higher achievement status. To like yk an employer
Purpose-sound competent
Goal- be respected
Backfire-defensive
Intimidation
Purpose- to seem as dangerous or routines
Goal- to illicit fear
Examples- standing to close
Backfire- empty threats
Exemplification
• Purpose – wants to be seen as worthy, moral, or saintly
• Goal – elicit guilt or shame
• Backfire – seen as sanctimonious or “holier than thou”
• Ex: “ When I was your age, I never drank; how can you drink so much?”
Supplication – self-deprecation and helplessness (depressed people do this)
• Purpose - to be seen as helpless or unfortunate
• Goal – obtain care or help from the other person
• Backfire – stigmatized, lazy, demeaning, calculating, or repulsive
Self Monitoring
Degree to which people monitor themselves and adjust their behavior
Either high or low yk
Self Regulation
• The goal of both self-presentation and self-monitoring is to regulate our own behavior.
• Self-regulation research studies when people can and cannot control their behavior.
• Ego-depletion model
• Limited inner resources and run out of the ability to resist temptation.
Chapter 3. Ordinary Psych
Ordinary Psych
Ways that scientist come to know about each others temporary states and enduring dispositions
Often occurs without awareness
Occurs via inductive inferences
Orgins
Fritz Heider (1958)- phenomenal description: an individual perception of others
Perfection is mediated
The situation our interpretive lens our experience
We are unaware of this mediation and believe we are objective
NAIVE REALISM
Scientist use a cas description of analysis
Selective interpretation-we use biases when making sense of others
Arguing classy v trashy
Objective vs Persons Perspective
People are causal agents with intentions
People engage in mutual perception
Observation of others implicate the self
Observed people may engage in self presentation
Nonobservable states and traits are more important
People are generally more changeable than objects
Harder to verify the accuracy of people observation
Core Social Motive
Understanding
We need to understand others to be social. Drive to create a shared meaning
Controlling
Learning about others allows one to predict htat person which afforeds them control over the situation
Knowing when to ask for a favor
self -enhancing
Lesser extent than understanding and controlling
Lies that save face and nonverbal behavior
Non Verbal Behavior
Pitch,tone,cry,smile
Women are more nonverbally expressive and sensitive
Southerners are more nonverbally expressive
Nonverbal Behavior:
Doing and Detecting Deception
• Nonverbal behavior can be a signal of lying. However, liars know this
and will try to conceal anxious nonverbal behavior.
• Liars have no problem with eye contact (because they know the myth
that liars can’t make eye contact).
• Microexpressions – brief reflex facial expression lasting only fractions
of a second.
Why do People lie
Self enhancement- small lies and fibs
People lie about no reason
Nonverbal Behavior:
Attraction & Coordination
• Listener gazes while the speaker shifts gaze.
• Speaker drops pitch when they are done speaking (turn taking).
• Reflexive smiles.
• Lean in and out based on other person.
• Begins in infancy via mimicry of mothers and continues into
adulthood. Called nonverbal reciprocity.
• May be predispositioned due to mirror neurons.
Attribution Theory
• Process by which an individual explains the causes of behavior and
events.
• It is adaptive and helps us predict and control our lives.
• Two categories of attributions:
• Situational: external causes such as situation, rules, norms, or laws.
• Dispositional: internal causes such as personality traits, values, mood, and
intentions; behavior occurred because a person wanted to do it – reflects intent.
Inferring traits from other people’s behavior
• Understanding (or prediction) and control
• Largely automatic: we don’t think about it or understand how we do it
• Two explanations:
• Correspondent inference theory
• Kelley’s covariation theory
• Both depend on the comparison of an individual’s behavior to others
in the situations even though both focus on explaining a single
individual‘s behavior.
Correspondent inference theory
• Jones and Davis – we make dispositional attributions when we see a
correspondence between motive and behavior (ex: act friendly and is
friendly).
• Focus is consequences of a single behavior
• We rely on several sources of information:
• Non-common effects: the more distinctive or unique the consequences of a
choice, the more likely it seems related to dispositions or intent
• Social desirability: more likely to make dispositional attributions for low socially desirable behaviors.
• Choice: more likely to make dispositional attributions if the behavior is freely
chosen.
Kelley’s Covariation Theory
• Focus is on repeated observations of behaviors and causes
• Three types of info influence attributions
• Consensus: extent to which other people behave in the same situations. Low
consensus = more dispositional attributions. (parallel to social desirability)
• Distinctiveness: extent to which the person behaves the same way in similar
situations. Less distinctiveness = more dispositional attributions (parallel to
unique effects)
• Consistency: extent to which the person behaves the same every time the
situation occurs. High consistency = more dispositional attributions
Inferring dispositions from our own behavior
• Two theories apply
• Bem’s self-perception theory
• Schachter’s two factor theory of attributing emotions
Bem’s self-perception theory of attitudes
• We do not know our own attitudes, we infer our own attitudes by
observing our own behavior and making inferences about ourselves.
• “Why did I just do that?” or “You really like that person don’t you?”
• We do this when our attitudes are weak or ambiguous (strong
attitudes are different)
• Subject to the overjustification effect – if one has situational
justifications for their behavior then they do not need or tend to use
dispositional justifications
• Extrinsic reinforcers undermine intrinsic reinforcers
Schechter's two-factor theory of attributing emotion
• We do not know our own feelings, we infer them from environmental
cues or context and our physiological state.
• Two factors: physiological arousal and the context from which we
assign a label (“emotion”).
• Examples:Toddler falls and scrapes knee, looks to parent/other adults
Errors and Biases in Attribution
• Underuse of consensus information: conversely to Kelley’s theory, we fail to take everyone else into account leading to behavior that seems unique and thus, more dispositional attributions.
• Correspondence bias: tendency of observers to see behavior corresponding to dispositions even when related to situations
• Fundamental Attribution Error: general tendency to overestimate the importance of dispositional factors relative to environmental influences.
• Actor-Observer Effect: people do not like to attribute dispositions to themselves
More Errors and Biases
• Defensive attributions – involves the interpretation of and
attributions made after negative events occur
• Tendency to search for a reason that the bad thing happened
• The more terrible the event, the more people attempt to blame someone
because it provides comfort that bad things “won’t happen to me”
Extreme form of defensive attribution
• Just-world hypothesis
• Study by Carli 1999
• Pam was having drinks at a club with her roommates, she met up with Peter (an
acquaintance), they talked, danced, she gave him her phone number, he later asked her out dancing at a club. She wore a new outfit for him, they danced, talked, had drinks, and he kissed her. When leaving he said he wanted to stop by his apartment before taking her home, she was tired but agreed.
• Natural disasters: “they shouldn’t have chose to live in Tornado Alley”; “They
should have expected a tornado”
• Disease: “she shouldn’t have laid in the sun if she didn’t want melanoma”
• Death: “He should’ve known better than to be in that part of town”
More Errors and Biases
• Self-serving bias/attribution – tendency to blame the situation and other people
for our misfortunes but to take credit for our successes.
• More common when the task or event is important
• Self-centered attribution bias – tendency to overestimate individual contributions when working with others.
• Occurs in group work, sports, career accomplishments, and relationships.
• Asked spouses to rate the amount of household chores they complete
separately – it added up to >100%
Chapter 4. Social Cognition: Making Sense of Others
Social Cognition
Process by which people think about and make sense of otherpeople themselves and social situations
Focus is impression formation-process by which people seek to understand or make sense of one another
Operationalized using cognitive psychological methods
Core Motive
Understanding
Think about people in order to interact with them and as a results of our interactions
One persons judgement about 2 different people have most common
Cog misers think about people is complex and we simplify. We think as hard as the situation requires
Controlling
Predict outcome
Trusting
Pos bias
Person pos bias
Vigilance-acute sensitivity to negativity
Social Cog theme
Accuracy
Structure inference and heuristics
Expectancies
Automaticity
Accuracy
Def-agreeement with some criterion (use consensus
Findings about accuracy
Observer variable-some people are more accurate judges
Actor variable-some people are easier to read some traits are easier to see
Some people get specific other people but not others
People are remarkably accurate judges of others
People are not as accurate as they think
Good friends are very accurate
Inferences
• Definition – judgements from limited information to uncertain outcomes.
• Process involves:
• Attending – paying attention to all the relevant info available
• Error: information salience – info that attracts attention
• Error: confirmation bias
• Encoding – interpreting and classifying the information
• Error: overestimating outliers and neglect regression to the mean
• Combining data
• Error: dilution effect – some info is more diagnostic but people tend to use the nondiagnostic info.
• Error: conjunction error – simultaneous occurrence of pieces of info are more likely than
either one alone.
• Error: illusory correlations – perceiving a relationship between 2 variables when none exists
• Error: people do not apply the appropriate weight to information
Examples
Regression to a mean
Conjuction errors
Serial killer in there 20s
Men 92.5 white 52.5 20s 27
Heuristics
Def- The shortcuts people use to make decisions or inferences when incomplete or ambiguous information is available
Representativeness heuristic- when people categorized based on past experiences or rely too much on expectation
Availability heuristic-when people make decisions based on the ease with which examples come to mind ex. Strange causes of death
Simulation heuristics-when people estimate likelihood of an event based on the ease of picturing the even mentally ex. Late to flight
Counterfactual??
Anchoring and adjustment heuristic- when people must make a decision based on a single piece of information and use it as a starting point