Social Psychology, Personality, Motivation, and Emotion - Comprehensive Study Notes
Social Psychology
Social psychology explores how individuals relate to one another, focusing on attitudes, attributions, social behaviors, and the influence of others.
Learning Objectives
Attribution theory.
Attitude formation and change.
Compliance strategies.
Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.
The psychology of social situations.
Group dynamics.
Key Terms
Prosocial behavior.
Social influence theory.
Attribution theory.
Dispositional attribution (Person attribution).
Situational attribution.
Self-fulfilling prophecy.
Situational variables.
Fundamental attribution error.
Actor-observer bias.
False-consensus effect.
Self-serving bias.
Just-world phenomenon.
Attitude.
Mere exposure effect.
Elaboration likelihood model.
Central route.
Peripheral route.
Persuasion.
Cognitive dissonance theory.
Foot-in-the-door technique.
Door-in-the-face technique.
Social reciprocity norm.
Social norms.
Social responsibility norm.
Norms of reciprocity.
Social traps.
Stereotypes.
Prejudice.
Implicit attitude.
Ethnocentrism.
Multiculturalism.
Individualistic cultures.
Collectivist cultures.
Discrimination.
Out-group homogeneity bias.
In-group bias.
Superordinate goal.
Social facilitation.
Upward social comparison.
Downward social comparison.
Relative deprivation theory.
Conformity.
Normative social influence.
Informational social influence.
Obedience studies.
Bystander effect.
Social loafing.
Group polarization.
Groupthink.
Deindividuation.
Social Cognition
Social cognition uses cognitive concepts like memory and biases to understand how people perceive themselves and others. Individuals gather data and predict events to act accordingly, functioning as "scientists" in their daily lives.
Social Influence Theory
Social influence theory posits that people's feelings and actions are influenced by those around them.
Attribution Theory
Attribution theory explains how individuals determine the causes of events they observe.
Dispositional Attribution (Person Attribution): Attributing behavior to personal characteristics (e.g., Charley is good at math).
Situational Attribution: Attributing behavior to external factors (e.g., the test was easy).
Stable Attribution: Attributing behavior to constant factors (e.g., Charley has always been a math whiz).
Unstable Attribution: Attributing behavior to temporary factors (e.g., Charley studied a lot for this one test).
Harold Kelley's Attribution Theory
Kelley's theory proposes that people make attributions based on:
Consistency: How similarly the individual acts in the same situation over time.
Distinctiveness: How similar the situation is to other situations.
Consensus: How others have responded in the same situation. Consensus is crucial for determining person vs. situation attribution, while consistency helps determine stable vs. unstable attributions.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
The expectations we have of others can influence their behavior. For example, if Jon is told Chet is funny, Jon might treat Chet in a way that elicits humorous behavior.
Pygmalion in the Classroom Experiment
Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson's (1968) study demonstrated that teachers' expectations of students' intellectual growth led to those students outperforming their peers. contains further details regarding this experiment.
Attributional Biases
People often make errors in attribution, including:
Fundamental Attribution Error: Overemphasizing dispositional factors and underestimating situational factors when explaining others' behavior. For example, assuming Claude is unfriendly at a party without considering situational factors.
Actor-Observer Bias: Attributing one's own behavior to situational factors, while attributing others' behavior to dispositional factors.
False-Consensus Effect: Overestimating the number of people who agree with us.
Self-Serving Bias: Taking more credit for good outcomes and less credit for bad outcomes.
Just-World Phenomenon (Just-World Bias): Believing that bad things happen to bad people, leading to victim-blaming.
Cultural Considerations
The fundamental attribution error is less common in collectivist cultures, which emphasize group relationships and situational influences, compared to individualistic cultures like the American culture.
Attitude Formation and Change
Attitudes, a combination of beliefs and feelings, significantly influence behavior.
Mere Exposure Effect: The more one is exposed to something, the more one will come to like it.
Elaboration Likelihood Model: Persuasive messages are processed through the central (deeply processing content) or peripheral (focusing on other aspects like communicator characteristics) route.
Persuasion Factors
Communicator: Attractive/famous people and experts are more persuasive.
Audience: Educated people are harder to persuade.
Message: One-sided messages work on uninformed audiences, while messages refuting opposing arguments work better on sophisticated audiences. Fear-inducing messages may work, but too much fear can backfire.
Relationship Between Attitudes and Behavior
Attitudes don't always perfectly predict behaviors. Sometimes, changing behavior changes attitudes.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
People are motivated to have consistent attitudes and behaviors. Inconsistencies cause unpleasant mental tension (dissonance).
Festinger and Carlsmith Experiment
In a classic experiment, participants paid $1 to lie about enjoying a boring task experienced more positive attitudes toward the task compared to those paid $20, as detailed in . This is attributed to the insufficient external motivation to lie causing a need to reduce dissonance by changing their attitude.
Compliance Strategies
Strategies to get people to comply with requests:
Foot-in-the-Door Technique: Agreeing to a small request makes one more likely to agree to a larger follow-up request.
Door-in-the-Face Technique: Refusing a large request makes one more likely to agree to a smaller follow-up request.
Social Reciprocity Norm (Norms of Reciprocity): Feeling obligated to reciprocate kind behavior. It involves a compulsion to send money to a charity that sent you free return address labels.
Social Responsibility Norm: The belief that we should do what we can to make the world and our society a better place.
Social Traps
Situations where individual self-interest undermines the betterment of society, such as overuse of environmental resources.
Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination can influence interactions with different groups.
Stereotypes: Ideas about what members of different groups are like.
Prejudice: An undeserved, usually negative, attitude toward a group.
Implicit Attitude: An attitude that influences behavior without conscious awareness.
Ethnocentrism: The belief that one's culture is superior to others.
Multiculturalism: Recognizing the contributions of different groups in society.
Discrimination: Acting on one's prejudices.
Out-group Homogeneity Bias: Seeing members of out-groups as more similar than members of one's in-group.
In-group Bias: Preference for members of one's own group.
Origin of Stereotypes and Prejudice
These stereotypes and prejudices often arise from cognitive categorization and social learning.
Combating Prejudice
Reducing prejudice can be achieved through contact theory.
Contact Theory: Contact between hostile groups reduces animosity if they work toward a superordinate goal.
Superordinate Goal: A goal that benefits all and requires the participation of all.
Robbers Cave Study
Muzafer Sherif's camp study demonstrated this by creating animosity between groups and then uniting them through camp emergencies, as shown in .
Aggression and Antisocial Behavior
Social psychologists also study aggression and antisocial behavior.
Instrumental Aggression: Aggressive act intended to secure a particular end.
Hostile Aggression: Aggression with no clear purpose.
Theories about aggression include Freud's death instinct (Thanatos), sociobiological adaptiveness, and the frustration-aggression hypothesis.
Prosocial Behavior
Prosocial behavior involves helping others.
Bystander Effect
The larger the number of people who witness an emergency, the less likely any one is to intervene, due to:
Diffusion of Responsibility: Assuming someone else will take action. The larger the group of people who witness a problem, the less responsible any one individual feels to help.
Pluralistic Ignorance: Deciding appropriate behavior by looking to others.
Attraction
Factors that increase liking include:
Similarity: We like others who are similar to us.
Proximity: We like those with whom we come into frequent contact.
Reciprocal Liking: We like those who like us.
Physical Attractiveness: Attractive people are perceived as having other positive attributes.
Self-Disclosure: Sharing personal information builds close relationships.
The Psychology of Social Situations
Behavior can be affected by others' actions or presence.
Social Facilitation: The presence of others improves task performance.
Social Impairment: The presence of others hurts performance on difficult tasks.
Upward Social Comparison: Comparing ourselves to people doing better than we are.
Downward Social Comparison: Comparing ourselves to people doing worse than we are.
Relative Deprivation Theory: Explains that people tend to feel less satisfied with their lives when they engage in a lot of upward social comparison.
Conformity: The tendency to go along with the views or actions of others. Also, it's divided by:
Normative Social Influence: Conforming to belong to the group.
Informational Social Influence: Conforming because the group knows best.
Asch Experiment
Solomon Asch's conformity experiments showed that people conformed to obviously incorrect judgments about one-third of the time, as shown in .
Obedience
Milgram Experiment
Stanley Milgram's obedience studies showed that over 60% of participants obeyed instructions to deliver all possible shocks, even when the learner demonstrated pain, as shown in . Also, it shows that compliance decreased with increased proximity to the learner and was affected by the presence of dissenting confederates.
Group Dynamics
Social Loafing: Individuals put in less effort when acting as part of a group.
Group Polarization: Groups make more extreme decisions than individuals.
Groupthink: Groups suppress reservations, leading to flawed decisions.
Deindividuation: Loss of self-restraint in a group, often leading to antisocial acts.
Zimbardo's Prison Experiment
Philip Zimbardo's prison experiment illustrated the powerful effects of roles and situations, leading to unexpectedly cruel behavior by students playing guards, as you can see in .
Personality
Personality encompasses unique attitudes, behaviors, and emotions that characterize a person.
Learning Objectives
Psychodynamic theories of personality.
Humanistic theories of personality.
Trait theories.
Social cognitive theories.
Key Terms
Psychodynamic theory.
Unconscious processes.
Preconscious, Conscious.
Id.
Ego.
Superego.
Instincts.
Defense mechanisms.
Repression.
Denial.
Displacement.
Projection.
Reaction formation.
Regression.
Rationalization.
Intellectualization.
Sublimation.
Projective tests.
Humanistic psychology.
Self-concept.
Self-esteem.
Self-actualize.
Unconditional positive regard.
Big Five.
Agreeableness.
Openness to experience.
Extroversion.
Conscientiousness.
Emotional stability.
Reciprocal determinism.
Self-efficacy.
Internal locus of control.
External locus of control.
Explanatory style.
Optimistic explanatory style.
Pessimistic explanatory style.
Personality inventories.
Type A and Type B Personalities
Type A people are competitive, ambitious, and easily angered while Type B individuals are relaxed and easygoing.
Psychodynamic Theories of Personality
Psychodynamic theory, rooted in Freud's psychoanalytic theory, emphasizes unconscious processes.
Freud's Theory
Unconscious: Thoughts inaccessible to awareness.
Preconscious: Thoughts easily brought to awareness.
Conscious: Current thoughts.
Freud posited that the personality consists of:
Id: Unconscious, driven by the pleasure principle (immediate gratification). Exists from birth.
Ego: Mediates between the id and environment, follows the reality principle. Emerges around ages 2 or 3.
Superego: Conscience, develops around age 5, dictating right and wrong.
Defense Mechanisms
The ego protects the conscious mind from threatening thoughts using defense mechanisms:
Repression: Blocking thoughts from conscious awareness.
Denial: Not accepting the ego-threatening truth.
Displacement: Redirecting feelings toward another person or object.
Projection: Believing that one's own feelings are held by another.
Reaction Formation: Expressing the opposite of how one truly feels.
Regression: Returning to an earlier, comforting form of behavior.
Rationalization: Justifying undesirable occurrences.
Intellectualization: Undertaking an unemotional study of a topic.
Sublimation: Channeling frustration toward a different goal.
Carl Jung
Proposed two parts of the unconscious:
Personal Unconscious: Contains complexes (threatening memories and thoughts).
Collective Unconscious: Passed down through the species, containing archetypes.
Alfred Adler
Focused on the conscious ego, motivated by fear of failure (inferiority) and desire to achieve (superiority), known for his work related to birth order shaping personality.
Projective Tests
Psychodynamic theorists use projective tests to assess the unconscious mind.
Rorschach Inkblot Test: Interpreting inkblots.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): Describing ambiguous pictures.
Humanistic Theories of Personality
Humanistic theories emphasize free will, viewing people as innately good and able to determine their own destinies.
Carl Rogers
Believed that people are motivated to self-actualize but need unconditional positive regard (blanket acceptance) to do so.
Trait Theories
Trait theorists describe personalities by specifying main characteristics or traits.
Nomothetic Approach
Believes that the same basic set of traits can be used to describe all people’s personalities
Hans Eysenck: Classified people based on introversion-extroversion and stable-unstable scales.
Raymond Cattell: Used the 16 PF test to measure 16 basic traits.
Big Five Personality Traits (Costa & McCrae): Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, and Emotional Stability (Neuroticism).
Factor Analysis
Factor analysis is a statistical technique used to identify clusters of related traits.
Idiographic Theorists
Assert that using the same set of terms to classify all people is impossible.
Gordon Allport
Believed that a full understanding of personality requires examining personal traits, differentiating between:
Cardinal Dispositions: A single trait that profoundly influences everything a person does.
Central Dispositions: More apparent and describe more significant aspects of personality.
Secondary Dispositions Have a larger influence on personality than secondary dispositions.
Social Cognitive Theories
Social-cognitive models blend behaviorist and cognitive perspectives.
Albert Bandura
Personality is created by an interaction among the person (traits), environment, and behavior (reciprocal determinism).
Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy, a person's belief in their own ability, affects their actions.
Julian Rotter
Locus of control (internal or external) affects personality through beliefs about responsibility for life events.
Explanatory Style
Explanatory style—optimistic (internal, global, stable attributions for good things) or pessimistic (opposite attributions).
Personality Inventories
Personality inventories (questionnaires) are used to gather self-report data and are considered objective personality tests. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) is a widely used instrument.
Barnum Effect
The tendency to see oneself in vague, stock descriptions, exploited by astrologers and fortune tellers.
Motivation and Emotion
Motivation and emotion explores the question of "why people do what they do."
Learning Objectives
Theories of motivation.
Hunger motivation.
Sexual motivation.
Social motivation.
Theories about emotion.
Nonverbal expressions of emotion.
Key Terms
Instincts.
Drive reduction theory.
Homeostasis.
Arousal theory.
Boredom susceptibility.
Optimal level of arousal.
Yerkes-Dodson law.
Incentives.
Self-determination theory.
Hypothalamus.
Ghrelin.
Leptin.
Sexual orientation.
Twin studies.
Extrinsic motivations.
Intrinsic motivations.
Lewin's motivational conflicts theory.
Approach-approach conflict.
Avoidance-avoidance conflict.
Approach-avoidance conflict.
Facial feedback hypothesis.
Cognitive appraisal.
Cognitive label.
Display rules.
Theories of Motivation
Instincts
Animals are born with instincts, which are automatic behaviors performed in response to specific stimuli.
Drive Reduction Theory
Our behavior is motivated by biological needs. A need is a requirement for survival; a drive is an impulse to act. The body seeks homeostasis (balanced internal state). Drives can be categorized in two ways: primary drives and secondary drives.
Arousal (or Sensation-Seeking) Theory
We seek an optimum level of excitement or arousal. People with high optimum levels of arousal might be drawn to high-excitement behaviors
Yerkes-Dodson Law: Most people perform best with an optimal level of arousal, although this varies with different activities.
Opponent-Process Theory of Motivation
States that people are usually at a normal, or baseline, state. We might perform an act that moves us from the baseline state. However, the theory states that we eventually feel an opponent process, meaning a motivation to return to our baseline, neutral state. This theory is often used to explain addictive behaviors.
Incentive Theory
Incentives are stimuli that we are drawn to due to learning.
Self-Determination Theory
Self-determination theory predicts that autonomy, competence, and relatedness can impacts our ability to be self-determined and work toward goals we want to achieve.
Hunger Motivation
Hunger involves biological, psychological, and social factors.
Biological Basis of Hunger
Hypothalamus: Monitors and helps to control body chemistry and makes us feel hungry when we need to eat.
Lateral hypothalamus (hunger center)
Ventromedial hypothalamus (satiety center)
Hormones: Two of the most important are leptin and ghrelin.
Set-Point Theory: Describes how the hypothalamus wants to maintain a certain optimum body weight.
Psychological Factors in Hunger Motivation
Externals: Are more motivated to eat by external food cues.
Internals: Are less affected by the presence and presentation of food and respond more often to internal hunger cues.
Garcia Effect: Occurs whenever nausea is paired with either food or drink.
Eating Disorders
Bulimia: Eat large amounts of food in a short period of time (binging) and then get rid of the food purging.
Anorexia Nervosa: Starve themselves to below 85 percent of their normal body weight and refuse to eat due to their obsession with weight.
Sexual Motivation
Sexual motivations facilitate reproduction.
Sexual Response Cycle
William Masters and Virginia Johnson documented the sexual response cycle, which has four stages:
Initial excitement.
Plateau phase.
Orgasm.
Resolution phase.
Psychological Factors in Sexual Motivation
Sexual desire is controlled largely by psychological rather than biological sources.
Sexual Orientation
Studies show that gay and lesbian sexual orientation is not related to traumatic childhood experiences, parenting styles, the quality of relationships with parents, masculinity or femininity, or the sexual orientation of our parents. Possible biological influences have been identified through brain structure studies and twin studies.
Social Motivation
Complex behaviors are influenced by attitudes, goals, and social context.
Achievement Motivation
Humans (and some other animals) seem to be motivated to figure out our world and master skills, sometimes regardless of the benefits of the skills or knowledge.
Extrinsic/Intrinsic Motivation
Extrinsic Motivations: Are rewards that we get for accomplishments from outside ourselves.
Intrinsic Motivations: Are rewards we get internally, such as enjoyment or satisfaction.
Management Theory
Managers Theory X: Managers believe that employees will work only if rewarded with benefits or threatened with punishment.
Managers Theory Y: Managers believe that employees are internally motivated to do good work and policies should encourage this internal motive.
When Motives Conflict
Approach-Approach Conflict: Choosing between two desirable outcomes.
Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict: Choosing between two unattractive outcomes.
Approach-Avoidance Conflict: One event or goal has both attractive and unattractive features.
Multiple Approach-Avoidance Conflicts: Choosing between two or more things, each having desirable and undesirable features.
Theories About Emotion
James-Lange Theory
We feel emotion because of biological changes caused by stress.
facial feedback hypothesis
suggests that we infer our emotions from our facial expressions
Cannon-Bard Theory
Biological change and cognitive awareness occur simultaneously.
Two-Factor Theory
Stanley Schachter's two-factor theory explains emotional experiences in that it points out that both our physical responses and our cognitive appraisal of them (our mental interpretations) combine to cause any particular emotional response.
Nonverbal Expressions of Emotion
The ways we express emotion nonverbally (through facial expressions, and so on) are universal.