Social Psychology

Social Psychology

Date: 26/01/2023

Studying the Social Animal

• Social functioning is essential to human well-being; this has been known for centuries!
  • Lack of social contact leads to physical and mental health problems (e.g. Hawkley & Capitanio, 2015).
  • “When can I start to be socially normal again?”

What is Social Psychology?

• Social psychology: the scientific study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in regard to other people in a social context.
• “Scientific” : based on empirical research studies… and NOT on anecdotes, traditional beliefs, “common sense”, etc.
• “Social context” : concerning other people, or involving the real or imagined influence of other people.

“A-B-C” Triad: Interaction with Others

• Sometimes “other” is a group of people, or an environmental situation.

  • Ex: conducting a study near a cemetery.
  • Ex: exposing people to members of other groups.

• Channel Factors: (Lewin, 1952): situational variables that appear minor but can have a major impact in guiding behavior.

• No “isolated mind” in psychological functioning — thoughts and behaviors are always guided by social environment as well as by:

  • Schemas (generalized knowledge constructions about the world)
  • Construals (interpretations about situations and stimuli)

• Social behavior has a lot of MOVING PARTS

  

Date: 31/01/2023

True or False

• Defendants with religious-themed tattoos receive harsher criminal sentences than defendants with non-religious tattoos.
• Intimacy is not necessarily correlated with the emotional intensity of fighting.

Social Psychology: Science vs “Common Sense”

• Hindsight bias: Overconfidence in one’s ability to predict a given outcome (“I knew it all along!”).
  • But “common sense” is not always accurate, and may even be contradictory. (cf. Teigen, 1986).
  • “Opposites attract” vs “Birds of a feather flock together”
  • “Love is stronger than fear” vs “Fear is stronger than love”
  • “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” vs “Familiarity breeds contempt.”
• Social psychological science revolves around empirical hypothesis testing and replication via scientific method.

Social Psychology uses the Scientific Method

• Step 1*: Theories* seek to explain phenomena.
  • Ex: Frustration causes aggression.
• Step 2*: Hypotheses* predict specific measurable outcomes of a single study.
  • Ex: People not allowed to eat cookies will administer more electric shocks to others than those who do eat cookies.
• Step 3: collect data
• Step 4: Interpret data
• Step 5: All findings should be replicated to strengthen theories.
  • Alt: “meta-analysis”

Two Major Types of Social Psychology Studies

• Experimental
  • One variable is Manipulated (IV) to see its effects on another variable (DV).
  • Ex: Does having candy in class help students do better on a test? (Test scores are what is being measured)
  • Ex: Do people sleep better when soft music is played or when the room is silent? (Sleep quality is what is being measured)
  • Ex: Are people in a better mood when the weather is sunny than when it is rainy? (Quasi experiment)
• Random assignment to conditions allows for assumption of equivalent groups >> possible conclusions of causality.
• Correlational
  • No manipulation occurs; instead, variables are simply observed and measured.
  • Ex: Is marital happiness related to how long spouses have been together?

Example: Experimental Design

• Observation/Theory: Failures cause anger.
• Hypothesis: negative false feedback on an IQ test will increase the number of angry social behaviors.
• Collect data: Gather 50 participants and administer an IQ test. Give all women positive feedback and all men negative feedback. Then observe the number of angry behaviors in all participants.
  • Error: have not located independent condition; is the difference in gender or because of the feedback?
  • NO RANDOM ASSIGNMENT

Example: Correlational Design

• Observation/theory: Failure causes anger.
• Hypothesis: academic struggles can predict long-term anger.
• Collect data: use questionnaires to measure chronic feelings of anger and student GPA.

Comparing the Methods

• Advantages of the experiment?
  • High control; causal conclusions possible (“interval validity”).
• Advantages of correlational study?
  • Real-world authenticity; generalization to many situations (“external validity”).
• In either case, participants should be ideally randomly sampled from the population of interest.
  • Allows researchers to say the sample is representative of the population.

Ethics in Social Psychology

• Social psychologists often study controversial issues and may be forced to get creative to study them.
  • Deception and/or confederates may be involved (to minimize social desirability bias).
  • This necessitates stringent ethical guidelines to protect participants welfare:
  • Beneficence, respect, justice, fidelity, integrity.
  • (IRB) Institutional Review Board approval
  • Informed consent to participants before study
  • Full debriefing after study
• Famous examples of ethical violations in social psychology??

In Class Activity: Design an Experiment!

• Research question: Does playing “hard to get” increase other’s interest in dating that person?
• Develop an experimental design:
  • Dating profile on tinder, same picture, same bio
• Identify independent and dependent variables
  • Behavior changes and how quick they respond
• Make a measurable (operationalized) hypothesis
  • Run dating profiles in a randomized set for straight and homosexual couples.
• Identify possible ethical challenges in your chosen methodology
  • Sexuality, various orientation identities.

Social Psych: The Self

• Little interest in studying identity and the self before 1800.
  • European Romanticism and new democratic ideals encouraged exploration of the inner self.
• Today, identity is a rite of self-discovery, with distinct “levels of representation” (see Brewer & Gardner, 1996):
  • Social-group memberships, demographic info (“collective self”)
  • Relational-roles and attachments (“interpersonal self”)
  • Personal-traits, tastes, internalized values/goals/beliefs (“individual self”)
• Self-Concept: One’s own collection of beliefs and perceptions about who you are.
  • Personal attributes (tall, outgoing)
  • Group memberships (Asian, middle class)
  • Roles (student, son)
• What contributes to our self-concept?
  • Self-esteem
  • Self-perception
  • Feedback from others
  • Social comparison
  • Self-regulation/self-presentation
  • Cultural norms and traditions
• Self-perception theory: we determine our self-concept by observing our own behavior.
• Ex: Wells & Petty (1980) “test the headphones” study.
  • Similar findings found in linguistics, interviewing, even body posture (e.g. Carney et al., 2010)-- supports the theory of “embodied cognition.”
• See also facial feedback hypothesis and “pencil test” (e.g. Laird et al., 1974; Strack et al., 1988).

Self-perception and Motivated Action

• Lepper et al. (1973): “overjustification effect” study. Children given felt-tipped markers and told they could:
  • Draw with markers
  • Draw with markers to receive a “good player” award.
  • Draw with markers (then were given an unexpected reward).
• One week later: observed time spent with markers.

Feedback from Others

• How other people see you will influence your self-concept (cf. Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934).
• Self-fulfilling prophecy:
  • People treat you in a way that is consistent with their expectations…
  • So you respond and behave in ways that confirm those expectations.
  • Additionally: self-perception causes you to internalize that belief about yourself!

Internalization of Feedback

• Person A’s perception: “Person B is not friendly” — Person A’s behavior is not very warm.
  • Person B’s behavior: Not very warm in return.
  • Person B’s self-perception: “I must not be that friendly”
  • A Lot of the time its an unconscious cycle
• If you change your cognitive mindset and say
  • “This person is behaving to me this way, but that person doesn’t behave in coordination with my own self-concept.”
  • the cycle can be disrupted.
• “Pygmalion in the classroom” (Rosenthal & Jacobsen, 1968):
  • Administered an IQ test on k-5 students
  • Teachers were told certain students were “bloomers” — going to grow intellectually.
  • “Bloomers” were actually chosen at random but showed greater gains in IQ later!

A Final Note on Feedback

• Beliefs regarding how others see you (“reflected self-appraisals”) are strongly related to how you see yourself.
• But those beliefs are NOT strongly related to how others ACTUALLY see you.

Comparison with others

• Morse and Gergen (1970):
  • Participants interviewed for a research assistant position.
  • Complete measure of self-esteem in the waiting room.
  • Another applicant arrives
  • Mr. clean or Mr. dirty
  • Participants then completed a second measure of self-esteem.

Social comparison and self-esteem

• Social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954): we evaluate the self by implicitly comparing it to others.
  • It can be upward or downward.
  • Affects all parts of the ABC triad (e.g., Klein et al., 2009; Cullen & Perez-Truglia, 2018).
• The self-concept also incorporates “possible selves” for internal social comparison (e.g., Higgins, 1989).
  • Actual/ideal/ought selves.
  • Large discrepancies result in negative emotions, reduced self-esteem.

Social comparison and Self-presentation

• Implicit self-awareness is apparent in the self we present to others:
  • Impression management: one’s strategies for quickly communicating to others information about one’s identity.
  • E.g. social media posting behavior as social signaling?
  • Self-monitoring: extent to which one “changes who they are” to meet situational social expectations for behavior (Snyder, 1974).

Self-esteem and Self-Enhancement

• Self-enhancement preserves self-esteem through:
  • Self-handicapping (e.g Berglas & Jones, 1978).
  • Basking in Reflected Glory (BIRG e.g., Cialdini et al., 1976).
  • Self-serving cognitions:
  • Fabrication
  • Self-serving attributional bias (e.g., Greenwald, 1980)
  • Naive optimism / positive illusions (e.gTaylor & Brown, 1988)
  • Implicit egotism
  • Egocentric comparison
• Example of a self-enhancement scenario (Miller, 1976):
  • Participants completed a (bogus) multiple choice “social perceptiveness test.”
  • “High involvement”: told test is well-validated and the ability is important for everyday life.
  • Performance feedback was randomly negative or positive.
  • Asked, “What caused your performance?”
  • Luck
  • Difficulty of test
  • Attribution to ability

2-14-23

More Self-Serving Biases: The Dunning-Kruger Effect:

• The least competent are often the most confident in their skills (Dunning & Kruger, 1999).

Cultural Relativity in the Self-Concept

• All social behavior must be viewed through a cultural filter.
• Individual-collectivism: dimension of individual-focused vs. group-focused views of self. Applies to…
  • Self-description
  • Linguistics (?)
  • Social interactions
  • Beliefs, personal space…
  • Attentional focus
  • Worldwide pandemic behavior!!

Social Cognition 2-16-23

Perceiving Persons and Actions

• Attributions: How you explain your own or other’s behavior
  • “What caused them to do that?”
• Attributions are grouped into 2 types (see Heider, 1958):
  • Personal (internal characteristics)
  • Situational (external factors)
• Making an attribution may depend on consistency, distinctiveness, and/or consensus of the behavior (Kelley, 1967: “Covariation principle”).

Attributions

• Fundamental Attribution Error: the tendency to overemphasize personal causes and underestimate situational causes of a person’s behavior.
  • Variations: actor-observer difference; ultimate attribution error.
• Gilbert & Jones (1986): Participants asked political questions via microphone to “participant” next door.
  • Instructed to try and elicit a specific partisan response from “other participant,” then heard (pre-recorded) appropriate response.
  • Asked to judge the “other participant’s” true attitude.
• Gilbert & Jones 1986 Results:
  • Our differences about people’s dispositions will usually match (but oversimplify) the behaviors we observe.
• Why do we do this?
  • Natural desire to explain behavior;
  • Disinclination to think about complex contributing factors;
  • Difficult to adjust initial judgments!

Introduction to Social Cognition

• All people are “Cognitive Misers”:
  • Desire to save cognitive resources by not thinking deeply;
  • Rely on automatic over effortful processing;
  • Are often lazy or careless when thinking about others.
• Evidence:
  • Priming effects
  • Cognitive heuristics
  • Snap judgments
  • Motivated cognition

Priming Effects

• Priming: subtly activating a cognition or concept in a person’s mind.
  • Influences memory and judgments of event likelihood.
  • Ex: Macleod & Campbell (1992): mood/recall of childhood events.
  • Influences judgments of others
  • Ex: Rudman & Borgida (1995): sexism in the workplace.
  • Influences behavior in certain situations
  • Ex: Bargh, Chen, & Burrows.

Priming Effects - Memory

• Macleod & Campbell (1992):
  • Positive / negative mood priming conditions.
  • Received a list of positive and negative events; told to “press the button when you recall an event like this.”
  • Also rated the likelihood of those events occurring in the future.
  • People in the negative condition took longer to recall positive events and rated those events as less likely to occur.

Priming Effects - Judgment of Others

• Rudman & Borgida (1995)
  • Sexual objectification / neutral priming conditions.
  • Male participants watched and rated beer and car ads.
  • Then they interviewed a female “participant” for a research job.

Social Perception and Heuristics 2-21-23

• Heuristics are the “Mental shortcuts” we use to categorize things and make quick decisions.
• Availability Heuristic: judgments based on ease of remembering examples.
  • Ex: Ideas about terrorist injuries/deaths; lists of famous names, frequency of letters in words (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973).
  • See also: “Mean world syndrome” (sensational media coverage + availability heuristic)--- can lead to negative life outcomes.
• “False Consensus Effect”: overestimating the degree to which others share one’s own opinions, attitudes, and behaviors.
  • Ross et al.,
  • Participants performed an embarrassing activity, then estimated the percentage of other students who would agree to the activity.
  • Krueger (2000)
  • Participants rated themselves on various traits, then estimated the percentage of other people who had each trait.
• Representativeness heuristic: judgments based on how closely something fits a prototype of the category.
  • Ex: “Linda” problem (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982) showcases conjunction fallacy.
  • “Is Linda more likely to be (a) a bank teller, or (b) a bank teller active in the feminist movement?”
• Anchoring Heuristic: estimates based on a completely arbitrary quantity.
  • Ex: Number of babies born each day in the U.S.
• See also: Planning fallacy, regression fallacy, etc.

Snap Judgments

• People make judgments of others quickly and effortlessly.
  • Ex: judgments of personality traits from photographs and/or facial features (see tinder decisions; Chopik & Johnson, 2021)!
  • Clothing color (black vs white) seen as predicting behavior and misconduct.
  • Vrij (1997): aggression and mug shot suspects
  • Frank & Gilovich (1988): sports teams and penalties
• Snap judgments are also very consistent.
  • Willis & Todorov (2006): Human faces presented to participants for extremely brief time periods. (.1 sec, .5 sec, 1 sec).
  • Judgments of traits were highly correlated across all times, and even closely matched judgments made without time constraints!
• So people make judgments very quickly and don’t change them, even given more time and/or information!
  • Due to primary effects (e.g. Asch, 1946)?
• Snap judgments are not always poor judgments; some are fairly accurate (e.g., zer-acquaintance, or “thin slice” judgments; Ambady et al., 1999):
  • Sexual orientation by 10 seconds
  • Personality traits by 60 seconds (perhaps much, much sooner!!)
  • Judgments of teachers by 30 seconds!!
• But they are not foolproof; with important decisions or disputed topics, careful thinking is essential.

Motivated Social Cognition

• People’s thoughts about the world are influenced by their own desires, needs or preferences.
  • “Thinking what you want to believe”
  • This can help people feel good about themselves and their attitudes… but it can also blind people to important realities.
• Confirmation bias: we tend to seek out and attend only to information that supports our existing beliefs. Examples:
  • Paranormal experiences
  • Control of random events
  • Political/moral viewpoints
  • Social loyalties
• Attempts to reduce confirmation bias in others can often backfire and cause polarization of beliefs.
  • Ex: attitudes about vaccines; capital punishment, crime, etc. (see Nyhan et al., 2014; Ross et al., 1979).
• Scientific inquiry means assuming “nothing is there” until shown otherwise; confirmation bias assumes the opposite.
  • Facts are rejected in favor of emotion-based beliefs and personal values.
• Why is the confirmation bias so persistent?
  • It is “safer” to retain existing beliefs than seek out new ones.
  • It conserves cognitive resources.
  • It strengthens group affiliations.
  • It protects the self-concept.
  • It feeds off emotion.
• Belief perseverance: the tendency to retain beliefs that have already been convincingly discredited.
  • E.g., conspiracy theories; doomsday prophecies.
• Reducing confirmation bias: weapons of critical thinking?

Attitudes 2-28-23

Components of attitudes

• Cognitive: Thoughts and beliefs about the attitude object.
• Behavioral: Behavior toward the attitude object.
• Affective: Emotional reactions to the attitude object.

Attitudes may stem from:

• Pre-existing internal values
• Immediate sensory experiences
• Learning from operant or classical conditioning

Sources of Attitudes: Classical Conditioning

• Fazio & Olsen (2001):
  • Participants viewed several hundred paired images on a computer screen.
  • Pokemon characters paired with either positive or negative images.
• Participants also estimated the number of times characters were presented with positive/negative/neutral images.
  • No evidence they were aware of the conditioning!!

Explicit vs Implicit Attitudes

• Explicit attitudes: Evaluations one is aware of and can (willingly?) report. Stem from more recent events?
• Implicit attitudes: Evaluations that may be unconscious and uncontrollable. Formed from older experiences? (Rudman et al., 2007).
  • So they can be distinct from, or even oppose one another
• Most people believe they see the world objectively (naive realism; see Ross & Ward, 1996).
  • But implicit biases influence all people’s behavior—more than we think!

Cognitive Dissonance

• Cognitive dissonance: feelings of discomfort when one’s thoughts or self-concept are inconsistent with one’s behavior.

Cognitive Dissonance: Theoretical Roots

• Dissonance research is based on Heider’s (1946) “Balance theory” (a.k.a. P-O-X theory).
• Relationships may be “rebalanced” without changing attitudes or behaviors through denial , bolstering, or integration.

Research Example:

• Festinger & Carlsmith (1959): classic dissonance study.
  • All participants engaged in boring activities for 1 hour, then were asked to “introduce the study” to the next person.
  • Control condition (not advised as to how to describe the study);
  • Paid $1 to tell the next participant that the study was “interesting and fun”; or
  • Paid $20 to tell the next participant that the study was “interesting and fun”
  • Everyone then rated how enjoyable they actually found the experiment.

Cognitive Dissonance: Applications

• Why is this relevant to your life?
  • Social identity: many groups utilize uncomfortable initiation rituals:
  • Physical assault
  • Humiliation
  • Servitude
• Initiates resort to dissonance coping to conclude they must value being in the group; “justification of effort.”
• Consumer behavior: Avoidance of “buyers remorse” from an extravagant purchase.
  • Reduce dissonance by enhancing the purchased object and derogating the rejected object (e.g., Brehm, 1956).
• Dissonance may even be embraced humorously… which lowers dissonance!

Using Dissonance as an Intervention

• Safe sex:
  • Having attractive people talk about safe sex increases safer practices.
• Eating disorders:
  • Telling other sorority sisters about negative aspects of thinness reduces eating disorder incidence.
• Alcohol use:
  • Writing about negative effects increases discomfort >> decreases alcohol use.

Persuasion and Attitude Change

• Persuasion: The process by which attitudes are actively changed by outside information.
  • Its effectiveness can be modulated by source, message, or audience factors (“WHO said WHAT to WHOM?”).
• Source factors (“WHO”): Mainly credibility and likability.
• Message factors: (“WHAT”): Two main approaches (Elaboration Likelihood Model; e.g., Petty & Cacioppo, 1986):
  • Central (systematic) route
  • Peripheral (heuristic) route
• Other message considerations (“WHAT”) may include emotional arousal:
  • Humor appeals
  • Fear appeals

Social Influence: Norms, Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience

3-7-23

Norm-Informed behavior: Fads and Music Downloads

• How do “fads” become popular?
• Why do you listen to the music you like?
• Salganik et al., (2006): Study on popularity of music.
  • Participants previewed and downloaded songs from an online service.
  • Control group: Saw only the name of the artist and song.
  • Experimental group: also saw a number of prior downloads.
  • Results: Seeing the number of prior downloads affected the frequency of participant downloads–recognition of a social norm impacted behavior.

Social Norms as behavioral influence

• Behavioral convergence: basic-level “mirroring” of social behavior between people.
  • Often subtle (see “chameleon effect”; Chartrand & Bargh, 1999).
• Social norms: shared cultural expectations for behavior.
  • Can be explicit or implicit (e.g., Goldstein et al., 2008).
  • Descriptive norms: what people tend to do
  • Injunctive (perspective) norms: what people should do.

Conformity

• Conformity: adjustment and adherence to an established group norm or standard for behavior.
  • More common when one is faced with novel, ambiguous, or acceptance situations.
  • Evolutionary adaptive? (Can create strong group bonds)
  • Increases in times of crisis (war, panic, recession…) and under cognitive load (triggers automatic behavior)

Two Main types of Conformity

• Normative social influence: people conform out of a desire to be accepted or liked.
  • This type of conformity increases upon being observed, or after being socially rejected.
• Informational social influence: people conform in belief that others must have “correct” information.
  • Actions of others are interpreted as evidence about reality.
  • Ex: Latane & Darley (1968)-- the “smoke-filled room study”
• Ex: Sherif (1935): “autokinetic effect”?
  • Participants observed a (stationary) point of light in a dark room and estimated how much it moved.
  • Repeated in subsequent days. As participants heard estimates provided by others, all answers converged.

The Door-In-The-Face Technique 3/21/23

• “Door-In-The-Face”: starting with a large request to gain agreement with a smaller request.
• Why does this work?
  • Comparison: second request seems trivial in contrast.
  • Reciprocity norm: lowering the request seems like a favor–which should be repaid.
• Similar compliance technique: “That’s not all”--persuader sweetens the deal with discounts/testimonials.
  • Ex: home shopping vendors.

Obedience

• Obedience: following orders or commands from a perceived authority figure.
• Milgram’s Obedience Study
  • Advertised as a “study on memory, punishment, and learning.”
  • Participants were paired with a confederate.
  • Rigged drawing for roles:
  • Participant: “teacher”
  • Confederate” “learner”
  • “Learner”: strapped in a chair, electrodes placed on arms.
  • “Teacher” read a list of word pairs over the microphone to the learner, then administered a memory test.
  • Told to administer electric shock to the learner for the wrong answer.
  • “Shocks” were to increase in intensity, in increments of 15 volts (no shocks were actually given).
  • “Learner” gave appropriately scaled pain responses.
  • Four levels of “prod” where the teacher would be urged to continue.
• Predictions: most people would quit around 135 volts; only 1/100 to 1/1000 would administer maximum shock.
• Results: 65% went through to the top level (450 volts)
• Participants showed many signs of agitation but continued.
• Factors influencing obedience rates:
  • Proximity of victim
  • Proximity of experimenter/authority figure
  • Legitimacy of authority figure
  • Direct responsibility
  • Presence of dissenters
  • Certain personality traits
• Factors NOT influencing obedience rates:
  • Gender
  • Prestige of the organization
  • Authenticity of victim
• Milgram also conducted a variation where “teacher” was free to choose the shock level themselves.
• Why do so many people obey?
  • External cues: uniforms = officialdom / legitimacy.
  • Denial of responsibility: punishment avoidance; dissonance reduction.
  • Human nature: Obedience is critical for efficient social group/organizational functioning.

Thurs 3-23-23

Others can Cause Arousal

• Robert Zajonc (1965): “Social facilitation”--one’s typical responses increase in the presence of others.
  • Evaluation apprehension > heightened arousal > regression to habitual performance tendencies.
  • Novice’s performance is impaired under observation…
  • But skilled persons’ performance is enhanced.

Or Others Can Cause Apathy

• “Social Loafing”: people often reduce effort working in a group compared to working alone.
  • Don’t want to be a “sucker” while others share credit!
  • Occurs when individual identities are subverted beneath an unvalued group identity.
  • See Ringelmann (1916); Latane et al. (1979).
  • Solution: accountability

The Need To Belong

• People need acceptance from groups, and to interact positively within those groups.
  • “Connections and affections”
  • Affects experience of emotion and memory.
  • Ex: Blackhart, Eckel, & Tice (2007)
  • Participants interacted with other students.
  • “Next task will be done in pairs”; individuals then told they would need to do the next task alone (rejection / acceptance / control conditions).
  • Completed basic measure of mood.
• Blackhart et al. (2007) results: rejected condition showed worst mood and highest levels of stress hormones.
• People form bonds willingly and easily and habitually show interest in others. (e.g., infant attachment).
• We show consistent “approach behavior” toward our existing groups:
  • Evaluate groups and members positively;
  • Show “in-group” favoritism;
  • Feel connected to other group members.
• Conversely, people strongly resist breaking bonds (e.g., crying at separations, reluctance to leave abusive relationships, homesickness…).

Why do we have a need to belong?

• Natural selection: what adaptive advantages can groups provide that individuals by themselves cannot?
  • Mating pool
  • Food sharing
  • Care for offspring
  • Help with hunting
  • Exchange goods and services
  • Etc.
• Result: more people today need to belong.

Satisfying the Need to Belong

• Belonging is correlated with many health outcomes:
  • Mental Health (incidence of psychopathology and self-injury);
  • Physical Health (mortality rates, circadian functioning, recovery time…);
  • Socioemotional health (e.g., “belonging uncertainty” in some populations).
• Belonging requires a caring bond AND frequent interactions.
  • Both quality and quantity of relationships are important!

3-28-23

The Need to Belong: Stimulation Through Simulation

• Alternative Strategies: How do we supplement our belonging needs?
  • Cell phones
  • Social networking services
  • Ex: Kramer et al. (2017): “Ambient Awareness”
  • Hobbies (e.g. Photography)
  • “Social Snacking” (e.g., talking to one’s self, background tv)
  • Ex: Jonason et al. (2008)
  • Parasocial relationships (e.g., with media character or celebrity)
  • Ex: Paraveti et al. (2020)

Simulating Belongingness

• Epley et al. (2008):
  • Participants watched one of three videos:
  • Loneliness - inducing: (person on deserted island)
  • Fear-inducing: (horror film)
  • Control film
  • Then rated human-like traits of various pets.

Social Rejection

• Williams et al. (2000):
  • Participants completed an online version of the “cyberball” game.
  • Two IV conditions: “Ostracized” or “Included.”
  • Then completed measures of belonging, self-esteem, and mood.
  • All three DVs were lower in ostracism condition… even if participants knew a computer had made the decisions.
• Experiencing rejection is much like experiencing physical pain, and may have behavioral/perceptual effects for all involved.
  • E.g., Eisenberger et al. (2003); Pitts et al. (2014); Legate et al. (2013)

Positive Outcomes of Social Rejection?

• Increased memory for social events
  • Ex: Gardner et al., (2000): Participants showed greater recall of interpersonal information following a rejection.
  • Result of becoming more “other” - oriented than “self” - oriented?
• More interest in establishing future relationships.
  • Ex: Maner et al. (2007): Students asked to recall a time they were rejected/accepted, then indicated interest in trying a new student social media service.

Joining a Group

• Groups are defined by:
  • Roles
  • Norms
  • Cohesiveness
• Group joining involves adjustment for both group and individual:
  • Socialization > Assimilation > Alteration of social identity.

Joining a Group

• Digital technology facilitates group joining and belongingness, allowing for exploration of (and support from) any identity group.
  • Ex: Stigmatized identities (“concealable” vs “Conspicuous”) who lack offline support (e.g., DeHaan et al., 2013).
• Option for anonymity helps avoid shame, loneliness, and rejection… even within rigid cultures (Hou & Lu, 2013).
• But such advantages also serve hate groups and other extremists, leading to radicalization and easier recruitment!

Group Behavior

• Groupthink: members seek agreement above all else, leading to poor decisions.
  • Ex: Bay of Pigs incident, Challenger space shuttle disaster.
  • Belief: teams will always be highly effective for improving performance.
  • Pressure for unanimity > self-censorship.
  • Stems largely from cohesion, isolation and stress.
• Group polarization: Initial attitudes become exaggerated after group interactions.
  • Resulting in group decisions may become more extreme than any individual.
• May be due to:
  • repetition (“fluency”) and confirmation bias
  • discovery of additional support
  • emotional appeals
  • perception of threat from out groups.
• Deindividuation: loss of personal identity leads to disinhibited and impulsive behavior–being “lost in the crowd.”
  • Loss of self-awareness (anonymity?), less concern for evaluation, weakened impulse control.
• Many explanations for deindividuated behavior:
  • Social identity theory (Tajfel, 1979)/ normative social influence
  • Lack of accountability or responsibility for own behavior
  • Overstimulation from situation or presence of others
  • Ingroup - outgroup conflict.
• Exacerbated by the Internet! (e.g., 8kun)
• Solution: remind people of identity (e.g., Diener et al., 1976). Force registration for online forums?

Group Conflict: Cooperation vs Competition Motives

• “Prisoner’s Dilemma” accentuates conflict between cooperation and competition.
  • Adds concern of exploitation to a tense situation.
  • “Tit-for-tat” approach works best (if repeated trials are possible).
  • Exemplifies “game theory” – predicting strategic social behavior in risk/reward scenarios.

Group Behavior–Summary

• Social group dynamics affect all aspects of psychological functioning.
  • Sometimes prosocially, sometimes antisocially
• “Optimal distinctiveness theory” (Brewer): when we feel too similar, we try to be different, and vice versa. Find a good balance!

Interpersonal Experiences

• Attraction to others also depends on the results of our dynamic interactions with them:
  • Interpersonal reciprocity: if A likes B, B will probably like A.
  • Personal attributes that feel “rewarding” to others (competence / intelligence, sense of humor, social skills).
  • Psychological transference
  • Resemblance of new people to pre-existing friends / partners >> same feelings toward the new person
  • Self-Disclosure
  • Intimacy associated with emotional involvement and trust; e.g., Anolli & Ciceri (2002)
  • Misattribution of arousal? (Dutton & Aron, 1974)

Interpersonal Closeness

• Attachment: children depend on caregivers for safety, food, shelter, growth…
  • Pioneering work done by John Bowlby, Harry Harlow, and Mary Ainsworth
• Secure adults:
  • Enjoy greater satisfaction, trust and commitment in relationships.
  • Are more likely to seek and provide support.
  • Respond better to conflict.
• Disclosure and responsiveness cycle results in closeness.
• Close relationships can be:
  • Exchange
  • Communal

Interpersonal Closeness – Commitment

• Investment model of commitment (Rusbult, 1980): People will commit to existing relationships based on:
  • Perceived balance of costs and rewards (social exchange; “equity”).
  • Relationships they feel they deserve.

Maintaining Relationship Quality

• Responsiveness
  • Certain behaviors predict romantic break-ups (see “four horsemen” of relationship failure–criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt; Gottman et al., 1998).
  • Communication, kindness, and generosity are important “healthy” behaviors.
• Willingness to sacrifice
  • Forego immediate self-interest for well-being of partner or relationship.
• Remaining curious
  • See partner as growing, dynamic work in progress rather than a “known quantity".
• Avoiding boredom (“self-expression”)
  • Relationship satisfaction typically declines after the “honeymoon period.”
  • Solution: do more novel activities together!
• Aron et al. (2000): Couples performed a random task at a lab session:
  • Novel / mundane /no activity
  • Reported relationship quality before and after task.
  • Only novel activity increased quality rating.
• Doing new things with your partner tends to be good for maintaining relationship quality.

Prosocial vs. Antisocial Behavior: Helping, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Prosocial Behavior – Social?

• Prosocial Behavior: doing something that is good for someone else or for society as a whole: “helping.”
• Usually stimulated by presence of others >> social arousal / normative social influence.
  • E.g Satow (1975): research donations far greater under belief of observation.

Prosocial Behavior – Conditioned?

• Prosocial behavior allows us to receive positive consequences of helping…
  • Social rewards
  • Pride / moral affirmation
  • Relationship building
• And avoid negative consequences of not helping:
  • Guilt / Negative self-evaluations (see “negative state relief”)
• Why might people not help others who need it?
  • Physical / emotional dangers, time, money, effort…

Egotism vs. Altruism

• Egoistic helping: Motivated by concern for one’s own welfare.
• Altruistic helping: Motivated entirely by concern for others welfare.
• Empathy Altruism hypothesis: (Batson, 1991), Imagining how someone in need feels >> empathy >> more likely to help.
  • Empathetic concern predicts altruistic helping;
  • Lack of empathy predicts only egoistic helping (or no helping, when there is an “escape” possibility).
• Research example: Batson et al., (1997)
  • Participants listened to a tape recording of a student who broke both legs in a car accident.
  • IV 1: Perspective (empathetic vs. detached)
  • IV 2: Personal cost of not helping (low vs. high)
  • DVs: Empathy; willingness to help (meet with her and share lecture notes).
  • Results: empathetic people likely to help no matter what; detached people only likely to help if there is a high chance of personal distress.

When people fail to help

• 3/13/1964: Kitty Genovese, 28, stabbed her to death near her NYC home.
• Investigation: A dozen people saw or heard portions of the attack.
• Why did people not intervene?
• Compared to incidents in 2009 (CA); 2017 FL, etc.

The Bystander Effect

• Bystander Effect: people are less likely to offer help when in the presence of others than when they are alone.
• Why?
  • Diffusion of responsibility (someone else will do it)
  • Pluralistic ignorance: assume they are the only one thinking something is wrong.
  • Group norms (audience inhibition)
  • Informational social influence
  • “Just world” beliefs
  • Deindividuation
• Latane and Darley (1968): Participants discussed student problems over an intercom with one or more “discussants.”
  • Groups were either 2, 3, or 6 people.
  • Took turns talking and providing feedback to others problems.
  • All “Others” were really tape recordings.
  • One of the “discussants” had a seizure and the real participant’s speed of response was timed.
• Nearly all participants believed the seizure was genuine.
• People in the larger groups were less likely to respond to emergencies and were slower to do so.
• Effect is moderated by demographics and social observation, but not by cultural dimensions like individualism-collectivism.

Promoting Helping Behavior

• Steps to helping:

  • \
  1. Notice emergency; Distraction
  • \
  1. Interpret as emergency: Pluralistic ignorance
  • \
  1. Take responsibility: Diffusion of responsibility
  • \
  1. Decide how to help: Incompetence
  • \
  1. Provide help: audience inhibition

• “Good Samaritan” laws now designed to protect bystanders from negative consequences of intervening.

Prejudice, Discrimination, and Stereotyping

Why do we stereotype people?

• Social categorization: natural human tendency to sort people into groups using common characteristics.
• Based in cognitive miser dom / heuristic processing (cf. “law of least effort”).
  • Evolutionarily adaptive?
  • But we overextend these categorizations, and also use secondhand info over direct experience!

Social Categorization

• Allport & Postman (1947) “telephone” study: participants described a picture to a person, who then described it to another…
  • Razor blade typically “moved” to Black man by fifth retelling.
  • Pre-existing schemas altered perception.
• Stereotype: Over-generalized belief (schema) about a particular group of people. (Leads to homogenization)
• Prejudice: Negative feeling toward an individual based solely on group membership. (Leads to stigmatization)
• Discrimination: Unequal treatment based on group membership. (Leads to marginalization)
• Practical functions of holding these biases:
  • Boost self-esteem
  • Rationalize oppression
  • Perpetuate status quo for those in power

Us v. Them: In-group - Outgroup Conflict

• Ingroup: People belonging to the same group/category as ourselves.
  • Preference given to own group members; group is seen as diverse.
• Outgroup: Those seen as belonging to a different group.
  • Members often degraded and viewed as similar to one another (outgroup homogeneity).
  • Extreme form: outgroup dehumanization.
• Even “minimal groups”--groups based on trivialities–will experience conflict.
  • Ex: Jane Elliott: 1968 “Brown eyes / blue eyes” class exercise
• Pervasive societal norms for outgroup derogation can adversely affect one’s self-concept.
  • E.g., Clark & Clark (1947): “doll studies”
  • See also “microaggressions” – Subtle forms of discrimination that may be unconscious or unintentional. Correlated with negative health outcomes (e.g., O’Keefe et al., 2015).
• Realistic conflict theory: Perceived competition for scarce resources increases intergroup hostility.
  • Anti-immigrant attitudes/behaviors increase during recessions.
• Sherif et al. (1954): “Robber’s Cave” study at summer camp for boys.
  • When competing, “Rattlers” and “Eagles” were intensely hostile.
  • Regular contact (mere exposure) NOT enough to reduce conflict!
  • Solution: induce cooperation through equal status and subordinate goals.
• See also Aronson et al. (1978): “Jigsaw classroom”
  • I'm gonna give you tasks that require cooperation and I'm gonna make sure you're in a group where you are with different people.

Targets of Stereotyping and Prejudice 4-25-23

• Explicit prejudice against many groups is generally in decline.
• But trends in implicit prejudice are less clear and persist to varying degrees.
  • Modern (“aversive”) racism: publicly deny prejudice; “true” attitudes may be revealed on implicit or indirect attitude measures.

Impact of Prejudicial Attitudes

• Research on implicit prejudice finds that it still affects many areas of social behavior:
  • Jury decisions (e.g., Sommers and Ellsworth, 2001)
  • Use of excessive police force
  • Bank loans
  • Prison sentence length
  • Drug arrests
  • School discipline
  • Job callbacks
  • Sports fandom
• Stereotype threat: Fear that one’s behavior may confirm a stereotype that others hold.
  • Can interrupt performance or cause self-fulfilling prophecy.
  • Need not believe in the stereotype.
  • May partly explain group differences in achievement.
• Steele & Aronson (1995): Black and White participants took GRE verbal test.
  • Test presented either as:
  • Measuring intellectual ability – “tests strengths and weaknesses” OR…
  • Not diagnostic – “just a research tool.”
• Steele & Aronson (1995): Results for performance scores…

Reducing Prejudice

• Most people are aware of stereotypes; but not everyone is willing to apply them!
  • Non Prejudiced people make a conscious effort to override stereotypes in making decisions (e.g., Devine, 1989).
• Better societal outcomes are observed when people are formally educated about prejudice (e.g., Nelson et al., 2021).
• See also intersectionality – challenges and/or privileges stemming from combinations of social identities.

Aggression in Social Behavior 4-27-23

The Roots of Aggression

• Aggression: Any behavior that is intended to disadvantage or harm another living thing.
  • More broad (but typically less extreme) than “violence.”
  • Intent matters—both of actor and target.
• Typical aggression is:
  • Hostile (impulsive, angry) or..
  • Instrumental (premeditated, goal-driven).

United Airlines Assault

• April 9th, 2017 (Chicago, IL)
• Dr. David Dao dragged forcibly off an overlooked United Airlines flight after being “bumped” for a UA employee.
  • Dao was alleged to have been belligerent but also suffered several moderate injuries.
  • Three city officers were suspended.
• Hostile or Instrumental?

Prisoner Abuses at Abu Ghraib, Iraq

• 2004: Extreme physical and psychological abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Baghdad by U.S. military.
• Abuse included poking at genitals with wooden sticks, setting snarling police dogs on inmates, and soldiers firing live ammunition around them.

The Roots of Aggression

• Aggression is instinctual: animals who are aggressive are often more likely to pass on their genes…
• We are at our most aggressive right around age 3!
• …But modern human culture prohibits wanton aggression.
  • This creates a behavioral conflict of interests!
• Aggressive expression in humans is modulated by variables such as culture (e.g., Nisbett, 1993) and gender (e.g., Archer, 2004).

Situational Causes of Aggression

• Frustration-aggression hypothesis: (Dollard et al., 1939): being blocked from reaching a goal triggers aggression.
  • Ex: Baker et al. (1941): Children made to wait before playing with toys played more destructive than those who did not have to wait.
  • Assumption: Frustration always elicits the motive to aggress; all aggression is caused by frustration. Moderated by:
  • Whether frustration is complete or partial;
  • How often frustration occurs;
  • Closeness to goal
• Harris (1974): studied people standing in 12 person lines at stores, banks, and restaurants.
  • Experimenters cut in front of either the 1st person in line or last person in line and coded their verbal and physical responses.
• Negative mood/affect: May be brought on by social rejection, jealousy, physical pain, crowding, heat, etc.
  • Ex: Some school shootings; ex-partner violence…
  • Aggression here may be a displacement defense mechanism.
• Behavioral conditioning can also reinforce aggressive behavior.

Internal Causes of Aggression

• Poor self-control (high-trait impulsivity).
• Hostile Attribution Bias: Default belief that other people’s behavior is hostile.
  • Assumes others are deliberately belligerent (ex: “horns effect”; “road rage”).
  • Common in those raised in aggressive environments.
• Internalized outgroup dehumanization attitudes.

Internal Causes of Aggression continued 5-2-23

• Bushman (2002): Made participants angry (read negative essay evaluations from another “participant”).
• Results: “venting” groups showed far more aggression than controls
• Lessons from “catharsis” debate:
  • Urge for “payback” is too tempting, and in fact usually escalates (e.g., Khan, 1966; Shergill et al., 2003)!
  • Behaving aggressively only allows people to maintain negative thoughts and feelings.

Interpersonal Causes of Aggression continued.

• Social cognitive theory - observing others influences how we behave.
• Bandura (1961): “bobo doll” studies.
  • Preschool children played in a toy-filled room.
  • Adult (confederate) — the “model” — also played in the room.

Social Roles and Aggression

• Stanford Prison Study (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973)
  • August 1971: Ad called for participants for a “two-week study on prison life.”
  • Coin flip decided prisoners and guards.
  • “Prisoners” realistically arrested and taken away in handcuffs.
  • Stripped, searched, given a number.
  • Made to wear smocks and chains.
  • Guards had uniforms on.

Results from Study

• Roles apparently were accepted and internalized completely.
  • Guards became abusive and authoritarian.
  • Prisoners became depressed, even emotionally disturbed.
• Brief rebellion suppressed with retaliation: humiliation, sadism, tyranny.
• Experiment terminated after six days.
• Zimbardo has suggested numerous social psychological concepts to explain guard aggression:
  • Role internalization (acceptance of situational norms)
  • Deindividuation
  • Conformity
  • Outgroup dehumanization
  • Hostile attribution bias
  • Desensitization to victim suffering…
• Recent evidence (Carnahan & Mcfarland, 2007) suggests personality traits may also have been a factor:
  • Authoritarianism, narcissism, low empathy…

“Life and Liberty”: Two Applications of social psychology

Eyewitness Testimony as Social Influence

• Eyewitness memory is crucial to the criminal justice system.
• Ex. Loftus (1974): Mock jurors given summary of a violent robbery.
  • IV: No eyewitnesses / store clerk eyewitness / Extremely nearsighted eye witness not wearing glasses.
• Human memory is reconstructive

Social Influence and Misinformation

• Misinformation effect: tendency to integrate false information provided after an event into memory.
• Loftus and Palmer (1974): participants viewed film of a traffic accident.
  • “How fast were the cars going when they ____ each other?” (Contacted, hit, collided with, smashed into)
  • Responses differed significantly simply by changing the wording of the question – respondents were “cued.”
• Ex: After misinformation, many participants internalized yield signs as a stop sign.
• Delays in questioning mitigate this effect…
• …But once people believe the misinformation, they often will embellish upon it.
  • Ex: “lost in a mall” study (Loftus, 1993).

Social Influence and Recovered Memory

• Can forgotten memories really be recovered?
  • Roots in clinical dissociation cases and Freudian idea of repression.
  • Problem: Hypnosis can create an influence relationship between therapist and client (iatrogenic effects? Hawthorne effect?).
  • Ex: celebrity rehab stories; dubious tales of “ritual abuse.”
• Example of the Barnum (Forer) effect on memory: “These are common characteristics that exist in families where abuse takes place. You may not have experienced all of them, but you probably experienced several.”
  • “There were things I wasn’t allowed to talk about”
  • “I felt ashamed of my family”
  • “There were alot of secrets in my family”
  • “At least one of my parents drank and did drugs”

False Confession Cases

• Central Park Jogger: Rape and assault of Trisha Meili (1989).
  • Five Black and Latino teenagers (14-16) charged; all confessed and were convicted.
  • The boys were intimidated and coerced into confessing.
  • Actual perp confessed 13 years later, confirmed by DNA tests.
• Many people can be socially “bullied” into false confessions

Social Psychology

Cumulative Final Exam Study Guide—Spring 2023

The final exam will be taken in our regular classroom and will consist of multiple choice and short answer questions. You will take the exam from 2:00 - 4:30 PM on Tuesday, May 16.

The following are the most essential concepts that may be on the exam; this is not an exhaustive or fully comprehensive list, so make sure you use ALL your available resources to study! For the listed researchers, make sure you know the major social psychological concept(s) associated with each name. For studies, know the basic procedure and findings. You are also responsible for understanding the general content and findings from outside reading articles #1-3. Good luck!

UNIT 1 (Chs. 1 & 2): Introduction and Social Psychology Research Methods

Concepts

• “ABC Triad” of social psychology
  • Social behavior has a lot of moving parts.
• “Common sense” and the hindsight bias
  • Hindsight bias: Overconfidence in one’s ability to predict a given outcome (“I knew it all along!”).
  • Social psychological science revolves around empirical hypothesis testing and replication via scientific method.
• Steps of the scientific method
  • Step 1*: Theories* seek to explain phenomena.
  • Step 2*: Hypotheses* predict specific measurable outcomes of a single study.
  • Step 3: collect data
  • Step 4: Interpret data
  • Step 5: All findings should be replicated to strengthen theories.

-Experimental vs. correlational studies

-Ethical considerations in social psychology (informed consent, deception, etc.)

UNIT 2 (Ch. 3): The Social Self-Concept

Concepts

• Self-perception theory (see also Ch. 7)
• Self-fulfilling prophecy (see also Chs. 4 & 11)
• Social comparison theory
• Methods of self-enhancement
• Culture-driven views of self (see also Ch. 1)

Names and/or studies

• Daryl Bem
• Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968)
• Leon Festinger

UNIT 3 (Chs. 4 & 5): Social Cognition

Concepts

• Fundamental attribution error (see also Ch. 1)
• People as “cognitive misers”
• Priming effects
• Cognitive heuristics
• Perceiving others: “snap judgments”
• Confirmation bias

Names and/or studies

-Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky

UNIT 4 (Chs. 7 & 8): Attitudes and Attitude Change

Concepts

• Explicit vs. implicit attitudes: formation, distinction and measurement
• Cognitive dissonance
• Persuasion: WHO said WHAT to WHOM?
• Elaboration likelihood model (two routes to persuasion)

Names and/or studies

• Festinger & Carlsmith (1959)
• John Cacioppo and Richard Petty

UNIT 5 (Ch. 9): Social Influence

Concepts-Social norms

• Normative vs. informational social influence
• Determinants of conformity (e.g., group size)
• The foot-in-the-door technique
• The door-in-the-face technique
• Factors influencing obedience to authority

Names and/or studies

• Sherif (1935)
• Latané & Darley (1968): “Smoke-filled room”
• Solomon Asch (and 1951 study)
• Stanley Milgram (and 1963 study)

UNIT 6 (Ch. 12): Group Processes

Concepts

• Social facilitation / social loafing
• Meeting the need to belong
• Groupthink
• Group polarization
• Deindividuation
• Prisoner’s dilemma (see also Ch. 14)

Names and/or studies

• Robert Zajonc
• Mark Leary
• Irving Janis

UNIT 7 (Ch. 10): Attraction and Close Relationships

Concepts

• Major predictors of attraction
• Propinquity / mere exposure effects
• Elements of healthy relationships: disclosure, etc.
• Investment model of relationship commitment

Names and/or studies

• Festinger, Schachter, & Back (1950)
• Bowlby / Ainsworth / Harlow

UNIT 8 (Chs. 14 & 11): Helping Others/Stereotyping and Prejudice

Concepts

• “Selfish gene” theory
• Empathy-altruism hypothesis
• Bystander effect / Diffusion of responsibility
• Social categorization heuristic
• “Minimal groups” research on group conflict
• Microaggressions
• Implicit bias/prejudice
• Stereotype threat

Names and/or studies

• Kitty Genovese
• Latané and Darley (1970)
• Jane Elliott (“Brown eyes-blue eyes” exercise)
• Kenneth and Mamie Clark (“doll studies”)
• Muzafer Sherif (& 1954 “Robber’s Cave” study)
• Steele & Aronson (1995)

UNIT 9 (Ch. 13): Aggression

Concepts

• Frustration-aggression hypothesis (see also Ch. 11)
• Weapons effect
• Hostile attribution bias
• Catharsis view of aggression
• Social / Observational learning of aggression
• Aggression and media violence

Names and/or studies

• Brad Bushman
• Albert Bandura (and 1961 “bobo doll” studies)
• Phil Zimbardo (and 1973 Stanford Prison study)

UNIT 10 (App. Modules 3 & 1): Applications of Social Psychology to Law and Health

Concepts

• Misinformation effect
• Recovered memory controversy
• False confessions
• Stress and the sympathetic nervous system
• General Adaptation Syndrome
• Coping strategies for stress

Names and/or studies

• Elizabeth Loftus (e.g., Loftus & Palmer, 1974)
• Hans Selye