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Exam 2 Guide
Persuasion
Process by which a message influences one’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors
Involves social influence and attitudes as well as behaviors
Elaboration Likelihood Model
Two main routes by which people process persuasive messages:
Central: Direct, Explicit (Requires Logical Thinking)
Occurs when are able to think about the quality of our argument
Utilize it: when we can think carefully OR when we’re sufficiently motivated or when the audience has more personal expertise/knowledge
Peripheral: Indirect, implicit, relied on emotional appeals
When people focus on incidental information that’s easy to process
Utilize it: when we are distracted or tired or when we lack motivation, interest, and/or knowledge (Emotional Responses)
Petty, Cacioppo and Goldman (1981)
Study Setup: College students listened to an argument advocating for a new university policy requiring seniors to pass a comprehensive exam to graduate. The researchers manipulated three independent variables
Personal Involvement (RELEVANCE):
High: policy starts next year (directly affecting the students)
Low: policy starts in 10 years (after they would have already graduated
Source Expertise:
Expert (written by professional Carnegie Commission on Higher Education)
Non-expert (written by a local high school class)
Argument Quality:
Strong (compelling statistics and logical data)
Weak (anecdotes and personal opinions)
Key Findings:
Students’ favorability toward the exams depended on an interaction between personal involvement and the type of cue provided:
High Personal Involvement → Central Route Processing: When the exam policy directly affected them, students carefully evaluated the argument quality. They were persuaded by strong arguments and rejected weak ones, regardless of whether the author was an expert or a high schooler.
Low Personal Involvement → Peripheral Route Processing: When the policy wouldn't affect them, students did not expend effort analyzing the facts. Instead, they relied on superficial mental shortcuts (source expertise)—agreeing simply because a prestigious committee wrote it, even when the arguments were weak.
Overall:
Central Route Attitudes: Stronger, longer-lasting, more resistant to counterarguments, and better predictors of actual behavior.
Peripheral Route Attitudes: Weaker, temporary, easily changed, and poor predictors of behavior.
Persuasion, Primacy and Recency
Primacy: The information presented first is most memorable and influential because there is not competing information (higher likelihood to be stored in long term memory)
Less information being stored
Recency: Information presented last is most memorable and influential
More accessible in your short term memory
Sources of Persuasion: The Message-Learning Approach
There are four elements to the persuasion process:
The source (WHO is doing the persuading)
The message (the persuasive INFORMATION)
The recipient (to WHOM they are persuading)
The context (HOW they are persuading)
Message Variables (the persuasive information)
Characteristic of a message that can make it more or less persuasive including:
Does the message relate to topics that you personally care about
How the message is presented (Method of delivery: face to face vs phone or TV)
Framing
Positive Framing: Framing information or arguments in a positive manner (Emphasizes potential of an outcome)
Negative Framing: Framing information or argument in a negative manner (Effective when using fear appeals)
Framing the message in a positive frame rather than a negative frame increases the chances of persuasion
Methods of Communication
Face to Face Communication: highly persuasive because it allows for more mediate feedback
Communication via Phone: less personal and less emotional
All of these can still be effective depending on how well crafted the message is
Recipient Variables (to WHOM they are persuading):
Attitude Strength: The degree to which your attitudes are firmly held
Beliefs that you have thought about are much more resistant to change
Weaker attitudes are more susceptible to compelling information
Personality:
Different personality traits can influence how individuals respond to persuasive messages
Individuals that are higher in openness to experience meaning you are more open to novel ideas
Individuals that are higher to consciousness (someone that is organized and timely) you are more resistant to persuasion
Intelligence:
Able to make critical evaluations of persuasive messages
Help you with considering evidence and detecting flaws in argument
Self Esteem:
Overall evaluation of self concepts and self worth
If you are higher in self esteem you may be more confident in your opinions
Need for Cognition:
High: Tend to process information more deeply and thoroughly SO you are more likely to be persuaded by messages that have more information
Context (HOW they are persuading):
Distraction: We are exposed to persuasive messages when there are external or internal factors
Not necessarily positive or negative
Decreases our ability to counterargue
More likely to take the peripheral route
Forewarning: Alerting in advance of persuasive message
Primed: much more likely to be attuned to the fact that you are about to see a persuasive argument
If you know it will go against your beliefs you are more likely to give a persuasive stance
Repetition:
Illusory Truth Effect:
The more something is stated (or repeated), the more likely we are to believe it
Repetition is very powerful and reinforces existing attitudes and believes
Makes it more salient (it is in our minds)
Source (WHO is doing the persuading):
Characteristics of the individual that make the message more or less persuading
Credibility:
The extent to which a person is perceived as an expert and trustworthy
High expertise on knowledge → more likely to trust that person and be persuaded
Someone can be an expert but not necessarily trustworthy
Ex: buying a used car but the individual selling will not have your best interest in mind
How to sound credible:
Look and sound confident and certain
Look and sound competent and knowledgeable
Give clear direct answers and SEEM certain of opinion
Attractiveness:
People who are physically attractive are often perceived more positively in other factors
Physical and or interpersonal attractiveness
Halo Effect: cognitive bias that leads people to assume that one positive quality will make people have other positive qualities
Ex: someone who is seemed as attractive will have other positive qualities
Social Power:
Social influence
Motivated Reasoning
When it comes to believing ideas that may not have evidence:
We use reasoning strategies that allow us to draw our preferred conclusions:
We selectively attend to information that confirms our existing attitudes and beliefs → confirms our original attitudes
Conclusions which we are motivated to draw: we selectively attend to info on that
We selectively evaluate information, looking positively on info that agrees with out POV and critically on info that contradicts it
Difference from confirmation bias:
Confirmation bias is mostly an automatic mental shortcut
Broad, umbrella term for the end result
Motivated reasoning involves active, effortful thinking to justify a specific outcome.
These are specific mental tactics, arguments, and justifications you actively deploy to reach that preferred conclusion.
Taber and Lodge (2006):
Participants saw a matrix of 16 pro- or anti- gun control arguments, and were allowed to view any 8 of them
RESULTS: Participants read more arguments that confirmed their existing view
Political Arguments:
Participants then saw pro- and anti-affirmative action arguments and rated how strong or weak each argument was.
RESULTS: Participants rated arguments as stronger if they were consistent with their existing views
Previous Commitments:
Persuasive messages have to overcome audiences existing commitments
EX: Apple vs Androids, Republicans vs Democrats
Prior Knowledge:
Pro-environmental preservation:
Whether students knew a lot about the issue or not
The students who did know a lot DID NOT shift their attitudes as much after hearing anti-preservation message (stronger attitudes are less resistant to change)
Able to anticipate those counterarguments
The students who did NOT KNOW ALOT were more likely to shift their attitudes
PRIOR KNOWLEDGE HAS A LOT TO DO WHETHER WE CAN SHIFT OUR ATTITUDES ARE NOT
Attitude inoculation
The process of building up resistance to attempts at persuasion
Small attacks on people’s beliefs that engage their preexisting attitudes,
prior commitments, and background knowledge, enabling them to counteract a subsequent larger attack
When individuals may be exposed to persuasive attempts that challenge beliefs
Persuasion Techniques
Norm of Reciprocity:
Social expectation when someone does something for us, we do something in return
Foot in the Door:
getting a person to agree to a small, easy request makes them significantly more likely to agree to a much larger request later on.
This connection creates consistency which is why the technique works
Door in the Face:
a requester starts with a massive, unreasonable request that you are almost guaranteed to turn down ("slamming the door in their face"), and then immediately follows up with a smaller, more reasonable request—which was actually their real goal all along
Reciprocal of Concessions: a branch of the broader rule of reciprocation (the deep social obligation to repay favors, gifts, or compromises)
Free Samples:
They are not just giving you free samples but they are persuading you to buy the products (increasing the likelihood that you will make a purchase)
May feel obligated to buy the product
Social Proof:
People look to the behaviors
Where people look to the actions, choices, and behaviors of others to determine what is correct, safe, or desirable—especially when they are uncertain.
“Everybody is doing it, so should you”
Group Processes
Mere presence of other people influences our behavior and our behavior extends to how we perform
Ways in which other people change what we do and how we think
Collectives vs Groups:
Collectives:
Two or more people together
Engaging in a common activity
Little direction interaction with one another
Ex: a group of people watching a movie
Groups:
Two or more people together interacting with one another
Interaction is a part of the relationship: members of a group are going to respond to one another
Interdependence: the extent to which group members are dependent upon each other to reach a common goal
Triplett (1898)
First Sports Psychologist
Examined cyclists competing against each other vs competing solo against the clock
RESEARCH QUESTION: Would other cyclists stimulate effort beyond what they could do alone
Faster times were recorded when cyclists competed directly against each other compared to when they raced solo against the clock
Social Facilitation Theory:
helped us understand how performance would improve with the presence of other people (how Triplett understood it)
DID ANOTHER STUDY: kids performed faster when they turned a fishing reel in a group compared to when they turned a fishing reel alone
Cockroach Study (Zajonc, 1969)
Had cockroaches run a maze:
IV (1): Easy vs Difficult Maze
Were there spectators:
IV (2): Cockroaches vs No Cockroaches (same species)
DV (Outcome): How fast did they get through the maze
Results:
EASY MAZE: Roaches ran a simple maze faster in the presence of others than alone
COMPLEX MAZE: Roaches were not as quick to run the complex maze (ran it slower) in the presence of others
Social Facilitation: It depends on if the task is easy OR if the task is difficult
Has to do with specific animals observing other animals
Doesn’t just occur in human beings
Physiological Arousal: the presence of others can trigger an arousal response, increasing heart rate, adrenaline, etc.
Helps connect social situations with performance
Other people may make us more alert and ready
Yerkes-Dodson
If you have certain levels of physiological arousal, it can improve performance (some pressure some arousal)
HOWEVER, if you have too much physiological arousal - that can affect an individual in a negative way
Social Facilitation
The mere presence of others increases arousal → leading to an increase of dominant response tendencies:
Simple Task or well learned tasks:
The dominant response is the correct response
Performance is facilitated
Ex: since you have prepared, the presence of other people might actually improve your performance
Difficult or novel tasks:
The dominant response is an incorrect response
Performance is impaired
Ex: if you don’t prepare, the dominant response will not be good enough
What causes this sense of arousal?
Mere presence of others:
Even if that person is not openly judging us, people introduce uncertainty
Human beings don’t like uncertainty
We can’t predict what someone else will do in a given situation if we are being evaluated (What is that person thinking about our performance?)
Feel uncertain about what others might do and how they respond
Evaluation Apprehension:
We feel concerned about being judged by others
Distraction Conflict:
We are distracted from the task by having an audience
Evaluation Apprehension (Sasfy & Okun 1974):
Constant: Students perform a difficult motor task
INDEPENDENT VARIABLE (FIRST):
Non expert Audience (“Bob a student”)
Expert audience (“Dr. Brinkley, a visiting professor”)
INDEPENDENT VARIABLE (SECOND):
Evaluation
No Evaluation
DEPENDENT VARIABLE:
Performance on the task (relative to a control condition with no audience)
Findings:
with the expert audience both direct and indirect audience created impaired performance
Dominant Response: difficult → the dominant response is the incorrect response
Just merely the apprehension of being evaluated impaired performance
For peer audience, performance was impaired (but not to the same extent)
Social Loafing
The idea that there is reduction in motivation and effort when individuals work collectively compared to when they work individually
Contributing less because other people are available to do the work/job
Believing that individual performance cannot be evaluated
Consequences do not seem as immediate
Ringelmann Effect (1913):
Tendency for individual members of a group to become less productive as the size of their group increases
Performance is not a reflection of individual performance but the collective
Ex: tug of war - as more people join less effort is exerted
Difference between Social Facilitation and Social Loafing:
When social performance IS evaluated: we tend to feel higher arousal and social facilitation occurs
When individual performance is NOT evaluated: we tend to relax and social loafing occurs
Decreasing Social Loafing
1. Individualize:
If you make individual performance identifiable and evaluated
2. Identification:
Give members a sense of “us”
Making sure the group success matters to you as an individual
Cohesion: giving members a shared purpose
Ex: working on a google document and see who did what in history
3. Rewards:
Give members a reason to work hard and punish poor performance
This is similar to individualize
But giving credit recognition and satisfaction to their individual work
Have negative outcomes associated with not doing their individual work
4. Challenge:
Make members feel like they must ALL work hard in order to succeed
Not creating a task where one person can do all the work and feel successful
Group Polarization
The idea that discussion (overall discussion) within a group moves them toward a more extreme version of the members average initial position
Can help explain why discussion helps make an existing position more extreme
Informational and Normative Social Influence
Groupthink: Symptoms, causes and solutions
What happens to the quality of the discussion when agreeing with people in the group becomes the highest good (having cohesion and conformity)
Consensus within the group is encouraged and thus alternatives are not considered
8 Symptoms:
High group cohesiveness (members feel connected)
Having a strong bond within the group improves cooperation
It can make disagreements feel more costly
Someone that raises a problem might seem disloyal
Isolation
Members may consult the same people (same sources)
Strong and directive leadership:
Good leaders would actually reduce pressure by inviting criticism BUT that doesn’t always happen so groupthink occurs
Stressful situation:
Deadline or decision with serious consequences - a clear shared answer can feel reassuring
Stereotyping outgroup as weak or evil
Collective Rationalization:
Members are working together and explaining away outside warnings or concerns
Belief in own group’s moral rightness
Group’s actions will have moral correctness
Self-appointed “mind guards” that protect the group from adverse information
Bay of Pigs Invasion:
Groupthink:
1400 Cuban exiles were killed or captured when they tried to invade Cuba in an operation backed by the CIA
According to experts, the failure of the mission was obvious and should have been foreseen
Deindividuation
Reduced sense of being distinct and identifiable (Zimbardo, 1969)
When we are in a large group, we lose our sense of individual identity. We feel less personally accountable for our actions
When people engage in uncharacteristic behavior when they are in a large group and feel reduced sense of individual identity
People seem to act in uncharacteristic ways when they are on social media because they don’t feel identifiable
Stealing Candy on Halloween (Deiner et. al 1976)
Trick or treaters visit a house with a bowl of candy - “take one”
Alone, Identified: adults ask kids questions about themselves → 8% took more than one candy
Alone, Anonymous: Adults asks nothing → 21% took more than one candy
Group, Identified: Adult asks group of kids questions about themselves → 21% took more than one candy
Group, Anonymous: Adult asks nothing → 57% took more than one candy
A reduced sense of individual identity
Reduced sense of self-awareness, regulation, and restraint
Individuals become “able to indulge in forms of behavior in which, when alone, they would not indulge”
Individuation
the opposite of deindividuation is focusing attention on the self and being more self aware
A reduced sense of individual identity that can come over people when they are in a large group
Accompanied by reduced self awareness, regulation, and restraint
Students were less likely to cheat if they were seated in front of a mirror (individuating students and reminding them of their personal identity) (Deiner & Wallbom, 1976)
“Watching eyes” images decrease likelihood of littering and increase payment in honesty boxes (Ernest-Jones, Nettle & Bateson, 2010; Bateson, Nettle, & Roberts 2006)
Prejudice
Social Identity Theory:
Ingroup: a group we experience as us - serves as the basis of social identity theory
An in-group formation that allows individuals to differentiate the social landscape that people acknowledge to be us and fall outside of that group boundary
We have a tendency or motivation to remain in our ingroups and think highly of our ingroups BECAUSE it will translate to thinking positively of our self-concept
Outgroup:
Stereotypes vs. Prejudice vs. Discrimination
Stereotypes:
Cognition/Belief
Beliefs about traits, attributes, and behaviors of members of various groups
Negative and Positive Stereotypes:
Negative: Young people are lazy OR older people are bad at driving
Positive: Asian students are naturally and innately good at math (while it sounds complementary there are a multitude of consequences)
Can cause pressure for people that are a part of that group
Fiske et al. (2002):
Groups are often stereotyped in terms of:
Warmth (is this group friendly or trustworthy)
Competence (perceived capabilities or perceived capacities: whether a group has the ability to have some sort of skill in some area)
Stereotype Content Model:
Warmth and Competence work together to form 4 different types of prejudice:
Paternalistic Prejudice (high warmth, low competence)
This is producing pity
Ex: Elderly adults: Often stereotyped as kind, gentle, and well-meaning ("sweet little old lady"), yet viewed as frail, forgetful, or incapable of handling
Admiration Prejudice (high warmth, high competence)
Oftentimes directed a lot of times toward our ingroups
One’s own social group
Ex: Your own ingroup: A college student viewing students from their own university as both friendly and brilliant
Contemptuous Prejudice (low warmth, low competence)
Produces contempt
Someone who stereotypes someone based on their good will and capabilities
Ex: People who experience homelessness are stereotyped this way
Envious Prejudice (low warmth, high competence)
Produces feelings of jealousy or envy
Ex: Billionaires and corporate executives: Viewed as razor-sharp, strategic, and powerful (high competence), yet ruthless, greedy, and uncaring about regular people (low warmth).
Prejudice:
Affect/Attitude/Feeling
Involves attitudes or emotional responses toward someone because of members in a social group
What YOU feel ("I feel uneasy around people from Group X and dislike them.")
Benevolent Prejudice:
A compliment with a catch
When a dominant group praises a marginalized group for flattering traits, while subtly using those same traits to justify keeping them out of power or underpaid.
Ex: "Women are naturally more nurturing, empathetic, and pure than men—they should be cherished and protected."
Because they are viewed as naturally suited for caretaking and needing protection, they get steered away from tough leadership roles, high-stakes negotiations, or dangerous assignments—and are expected to take on unpaid emotional labor or childcare.
Hostile Sexism:
Explicit judgement towards women who do not fit prescribed gender stereotypes
Ex: A woman acts assertive, direct, and ambitious in a corporate meeting—traits rewarded in male leaders—and is labeled "bossy," "aggressive," or "abrasive,"
Ambivalent Sexism:
Describes the coexistence of hostile or benevolent attitudes
Ex: Women are kind, caring, need to be taken care of, more emotional than men
Discrimination:
Differential treatment of behavior towards others based on membership in a group
Old fashioned prejudice: Obvious, overt prejudice that is considered inappropriate by most social standards today, such as forcing people of a specified race to drink only from a certain water fountain
Ex: racial segregation or exclusion from voting
Overt Racism: Explicit racial hostility or openly discriminatory treatment
Ex: intentional exclusion based on race, racial slurs, threats based on race (defined in textbooks as old fashioned prejudice)
Still occurs today
Interpersonal:
Tenant laws in place that prohibit landlords from renting based on group (there are laws against that but somebody could still choose who to rent too)
Institutional:
The idea that organizational rules or policies and established practices that have been in place distribute opportunities unequally
Ex: Redlining - banks would take a red marker and draw red lines around neighborhoods that they seemed to be high risk (more black individuals that lived there) → families were denied mortgage credit
Modern and subtle racism
Modern Racism:
Known as symbolic racism, modern symbolic prejudice, racial resentment
Related approaches to measuring racial attitudes especially in settings where an overt racial hierarchy is widely rejected
A negative belief system towards people of color that exists alongside the rejection of overtly racist beliefs
“Racial discrimination is no longer a serious obstacle”
“I don’t see race/race does not matter”
Not taking into account the experiences that these people go through
Subtle Racism:
Implicit or automatic negative behavior toward other races
Based on learned, automatic associations that may not match up with explicit beliefs
Subtle racism is more pervasive than overt (formal) racism and decreases more slowly over time
Causes and Consequences of Prejudice (know the 3 perspectives)
Cognitive Perspective:
How we process information
Prejudice arises based on people’s quick perspective and subconscious reactions
It saves us time/energy to use stereotypes BUT it can make us unfair
Illusionary Correlation:
Where your brain perceives a meaningful link or pattern between two things that are actually completely unrelated
Typically when two events happen at the same time that is uncommon (creating a mental stamp)
Ex: You wear a specific shirt on the one day your favorite team wins a massive upset. Both events are memorable, so your brain links them ("It's my lucky shirt"), ignoring all the games they lost while you wore it.
Outgroup Homogeneity:
Perceptions that members of a particular outgroup are identical to each other
One outgroup member can become a representative of millions of people
Ingroup Heterogenity:
The tendency of individuals to see wide diversity within their in groups
The belief that ingroup members have unique attributes
Ultimate Attribution Error:
We explain behavior that protects our ingroup and keeps and unfavorable view of outgroup
The explanation of an outgroup’ negative behaviors as due to internal traits, and the ingroup’s negative behaviors as due to external factors
And the explanation of an ingroup’s positive behaviors as due to internal traits, and the outgroup’s positive behaviors as due to external factors
Motivational Perspective:
Social Identity Theory: Positive Distinctions between our ingroup vs outgroup helps us maintain a positive social identity
Emphasis on psychological needs
People want to maintain a positive social identity; positive social identity is based on comparisons that positively differentiate our group from a relevant outgroup (positive distinctiveness)
Threat (Economic) Perspective:
Emphasis on resource competition and conflicting interests and values
Prejudice is the result of perceiving an outgroup as being in a position to cause the ingroup harm
Realistic Group Conflict Theory: Conflict arises due to competition of valued resources (when groups believe that only one group to win there is an incentive to view the other group with suspicion)
Relative Deprivation Theory: Feeling angry or cheated because you believe that you are getting less than you deserve compared to other people around you
Scapegoating: people blame outgroups for causing their own relative deprivation (scapegoating)
Value Dissimilarity Hypothesis; prejudice also arises when people perceive that an outgroup’s values differ from their own
Stereotype Threat
The feeling that you could be judged in terms of negative stereotypes of your group, or that you might do something to inadvertently confirm the stereotype
Explained by increased feelings of stress and anxiety
Stigma: An identity that is devalued
Health Consequences of Stigma:
Experiencing discrimination → Experiences more chronic stress → negative mental and physical health outcomes
Reducing Prejudice
Contact Hypothesis: increasing contact between demographic groups will reduce prejudice, increasing well being
You need the RIGHT type of contact
Wrong type can increase prejudice
Contact that is interdependent: people from different groups need to depend on one another to achieve a superordinate goal
Equal status individual: no one should come in with more power
Influences informal one on one interactions
Involves contact with multiple people from different subgroups: avoids the “exception” problem
Happens in a context that supports/promotes equality
Aggression
Behavior with intention to harm others who do not want to be harmed
Questions asked on Aggression:
What is aggression?
Why are we aggressive?
When are we aggressive?
Who is aggressive?
How can we reduce it?
Aggression descriptive typology
Direct: Are you doing it to their face
Active: Are you actively doing something to hurt them
Physical: headbutting, hitting, kicking (something that causes bodily harm directly)
Verbal: insulting somebody or hurling a threat directly
Passive: Are you refusing to do something so they get hurt
Physical: Prevent their lane change
Verbal: silent treatment (withhold communication)
Indirect: Are you doing it behind their back
Active: Are you actively doing something to hurt them
Physical: Hitman - hiring somebody to cause physical harm
Verbal: Gossip
Passive: Are you refusing to do something so they get hurt
Physical: not getting them medical care
Verbal: let them be insulted
Motivational typologies
Sorting aggression based on WHY someone is doing it (their underlying goal or motivation)
TWO GROUPS:
Hostile Aggression: aggression driven by anger, pain, or frustration (only goal being to hurt the other person)
Reactive: it happens as a knee jerk reaction to provocation or insult
Emotion: Driven by "hot" emotions in the heat of the moment without thinking through the consequences.
Instrumental Aggression: Aggression used as a tool (an "instrument") to get something else you want—like money, power, status, or victory.
Proactive: Planned or initiated intentionally rather than just reacting to anger.
Logical or goal-driven: Cool-headed and calculated to achieve a reward.
Why are we aggressive (nature and nurture)
Nature:
Genetics, mate selection, biology
Genetic Determinism: our genetic code determine our behavioral traits and physical
We can attribute aggression to our genetics
Aggression is adaptive (Darwin) → aggression was naturally selective (it provided survival and reproductive advantages) it was a mechanism that evolved to defend themselves and compete for mates
Biological Mechanisms:
Fight or Flight:
Either confront or flee from a threat
Trigger aggressive behavior when people decide to confront the threat
Tend and Befriend:
We have an evolutionary predisposition to tend to offspring
Alcohol Disinhibition Hypothesis:
Alcohol consumption reduces self control
It affects our ability to control ourselves
Reason: alcohol impairs the function of the Prefrontal Cortex → region of the brain that is involved in decision making and impulsivity control
Gives you more opportunities to be aggressive: impulse goes straight from feeling angry to throwing a punch or yelling an insult
Testosterone and Serotonin:
High levels of testosterone associate to aggressive behaviors
Low levels of serotonin is associated with higher levels of aggression
Nurture:
Situation, Culture
Honor Culture:
A society or region where a person’s reputation, social status, and toughness are treated as the most valuable asset (where responding aggressively to an insult is seen as necessary to protect that reputation)
Walking away from an insult makes you look weak, cowardly, like an easy target
Fighting back or retaliating aggressively is viewed as the only way to wipe away the disrespect and prove you shouldn’t be messed with
Social Learning Theory:
We learn behaviors by watching other people closely
We learn through rewards and punishments
EXPERIMENT: BOBO DOLL (BANDURA, 1961):
Participants were assigned to watch either:
1. No adult model (Control Group)
2. Non-aggressive Adult Model
3. Aggressive Adult Model
DV: Children’s aggressive behavior toward the Bobo Doll
RESULTS: The children who had observed the aggressive adult model imitated that aggressive adult behavior
Revised Frustration-Aggression Theory:
3 Step chain reaction required for frustration to actually turn into aggression:
Step 1: Unjustified Frustration:
Blocked from attaining a goal (like waiting in line)
Something is getting in the way of what you want to do (and it feel unfair or unnecessary)
Step 2: Anger and Aggression Cues:
Become angry in a situation where you can express it
Frustration doesn’t automatically make you violent
It first creates anger
You only act on that anger if the environment gives you “aggression cues” (triggers where lashing out feels possible or safe)
Step 3: Aggression:
Lash out in response
When unfair or frustrating thing combines with anger and the right situational cue you then can actually yell, insult, slam a door, or get physical
Priming and Cues:
Weapons Effect:
Exposure to certain information can influence subsequence information and subsequent behavior
EXPERIMENT (Berkowitz and LePage (1967)):
Research Question: Does simply seeing a weapon act as an "aggression cue" that makes people behave more aggressively?
Independent Variables (What Researchers Manipulated — 2 Variables):
Emotional State (Anger Induction): Half the male participants were deliberately angered (given 7 electric shocks by a fake partner), while the other half were kept calm (given only 1 mild shock).
Object on the Table: Each emotional group was split across three setups—sitting next to weapons (a shotgun and a revolver), neutral objects (badminton rackets), or an empty table (control).
Dependent Variable (What Researchers Measured — 1 Outcome, 2 Measures):
Aggression, measured by:
How many electric shocks the participant gave back to the partner.
How long the participant held down the shock button.
Key Findings:
Angered + Weapons: Participants who were already angry and saw the guns delivered significantly more and longer shocks than angry participants who saw badminton rackets or an empty table.
Calm + Weapons: Participants who were not angered gave the same low number of shocks regardless of whether guns, rackets, or nothing were on the table.
Core Conclusion: Weapons do not create aggression out of thin air in calm people, but they amplify aggression in people who are already angry or frustrated by priming aggressive thoughts ("The trigger pulls the finger, just as the finger pulls the trigger").
Anonymity:
lends itself to aggressive (people have more anonymity being online vs in person)
Ex: Road rage you are feeling anonymous (because you will never see this person again so people are more likely to act in ways they never would)
Gender differences in aggression
Despite variations across culture: Males on average are more violent than females
90% murderers, 80% victims in the US
Social rejection/reactions to social rejection
Social Rejection: When someone is deliberately excluded from a social relationship or interaction
Includes peers, significant others, family, strangers, etc.
Effects of Social Rejection:
Impaired Cognitive function and self regulation
Attempts to regain self acceptance
Hypersensitivity to signs of acceptance of threat
A person’s brain goes into high alert, becoming hyper-aware of every social cue around them to figure out whether they are safe or about to be rejected again
Reactions to Social Aggression:
Increased Aggression:
Derogate others
Send noise blasts to strangers
Stab a voodoo doll that represents the person who rejected them
SCHOOL SHOOTINGS (Leary et al., 2003):
Content Analyzed Media Reports of School (Shootings between 1995 - 2001):
Analyzed 15 cases:
Chronic Rejection (long term, ongoing teasing, bullying or ostracism): 80% of cases
Acute Rejection (recent rejection before the shooting (romantic break up): 67% of cases
Social Rejection alone doesn’t explain school shootings. Instead, extreme violence almost always happens when social rejection combines with MULTIPLE OTHER RISK FACTORS:
Mental Health Issues
Access to and interest in guns and explosives
Fascination with themes of death
Video Games and violence (what does the literature say)?
A meta study was conducted to see if violent games are associated with aggressive behavior
There was a statistical link between playing violence video games and acting slightly more aggressively
BUT: beneficial effects too
Playing video games isn’t all bad, research also shows positive outcomes (stress relief, improved hand-eye coordination/spatial skills, etc.)
Overall effect of games on aggression might be less than watching TV
The actual size of their effect on real-world aggression is relatively small
Catharsis (does it work?)
Catharsis: Venting anger reduces the inclination to act aggressively (it helps get the negative thoughts out of your system)
There is a difference between whether that increases performance or not
It doesn’t work in terms of reducing anger
What works:
Dwelling on our negative mood actually exacerbates the negative mood
Distracting our attention away from being helps the anger dissipate in time
Prosocial cues and aggression
Praying prosocial video games (these are games that are designed with the primary objective of helping, supporting cooperating with, or caring for other characters)
Observing nonaggressive, prosocial models
Bandura study: if children viewed the nonaggressive model of bobo dolls
Emphasizing prosocial emotions: forgiveness, gratitude, empathy
Empathy and dehumanization
Take the perspective of the other person reduces aggression
It is harder to aggress when one feels a personal connection with a person
Empathy is a skill that can be taught
Apologizing and reducing aggression
Avoid explaining behavior at the moment of the apology
Make our side of the story better
Explaining ourselves rather than engaging in a sincere apology
It is important to avoid explaining your behavior at the moment of your apology (don’t use BUT because then you are explaining and justifying their apology)
Reducing extreme aggression (deradicalization)
Deradicalization: the process of helping someone step away from extremist beliefs and give up violence as a solution
Make people understand violence isn’t actually working or bringing them the respect/success they want
Reactivate other normal life needs (getting a job, supporting their family, building a peaceful future)
Joining a new social group that is less radical