Chapter 13: The Connected Mind: Social Psychology

Social interaction - A basic human need

Social isolation - Shares similar risks of death with obesity and a sedentary lifestyle and is positively correlated with risk of suicide

First impressions - Formed "rapidly" - in some cases, less than a minute - also persistent

"Thin slices of behaviour" - Exposure lasting less than 30 seconds - initial impressions did not change much after longer periods of exposure

Speed-dating - A way to observe the accuracy of these thin-slice impressions - Ex. 3 min social exchanges - people accurately predicted their compatibility with a potential partner - (CQ)

Compatibility quotient (CQ) - Reliable instrument that predicts compatibility between two people

Behaviour can be seen as - a combination of dispositional attribution (internal) factors and situational attribution (external) factors

Fundamental attribution error - People do not underestimate situational variables as proposed by correspondence bias, but instead completely fail to consider situational variables while making attributions - leads to a reliance on dispositional contributions to explain the resulting observed behaviour

Self-serving bias - we view our successes differently than our failures

• success - dispositional variables, failing - situational factors

Group-serving bias - an organization tends to attribute success to its dispositional characteristics but blames failures on the situation

Members of collectivistic cultures - tend to place more emphasis on situation than on disposition - group-serving bias

Members of individualistic cultures - more likely to use defensive attributions - self-serving bias

Eastern cultures - focus on context or situations and relationships

Western cultures - more likely to focus on objects than on situations

To survive animals must make - appropriate approach or avoidance responses to stimuli

Attitudes - can be positive and negative - share three basic elements: affect (ex. emotion), behaviour, and cognition (the ABCs)

Operant conditioning suggests - approval or disapproval shapes a person's attitudes

Observational learning - can be a powerful mechanism for learning attitudes

Addiction - includes attitudes and preferences that are not in the best interests of anybody concerned

Cognitive dissonance - uncomfortable state that occurs when our outward behaviour doesn't match our attitudes - tool for producing attitude change

The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) - organizes and predicts our responses to persuasive messages - two major pathways leading to changes in attitudes

• Central route to persuasion - occurs when a person considers persuasive arguments carefully and thoughtfully - Ex. educated on a topic, pre-existing attitude

• Peripheral route to persuasion, occurs when a person responds to peripheral cues - Ex. heuristics, emotional appeals

A person's motivation - influences which route is used to evaluate a particular argument

Persuasion - influenced by the medium, crediblity, and age and intelligence of audience, used to communicate a message - typically we find face-to-face contact the most effective

Perceptions - generalizations that we form about other people based on factors such as race, gender, age, socioeconomic status etc

Prejudice - is an attitude (usually negative) about others - usually formed by stereotypes - can lead to discriminatory behaviour

Contact - particularly beneficial in reducing prejudice when groups participate in cooperative activities

• Ex. The jigsaw classroom (1970s) - Children in cooperative groups were assigned a part of the answer that their group needed to learn - children helped their teammates by listening to and teaching each other - overall helped with prejudice

Social norms - Unspoken rules for behaviour - constitutes conformity

Conformity - Matching your behaviour and appearance to the perceived social norms of a group - can be useful in ambiguous situations, reduces the risk of rejection

Compliance - Occurs when we simply agree to do something because another person asks us to do it

Reciprocation - Feeling obligated to give something back to people who have given something to us - powerful tool of social influence

Obedience - defined as compliance with the request of an authority figure

Stanley Milgram - attempted to demonstrate the power of authority over personal ethics

Milgram Experiment - Participant (teacher) believed they were in a study of the effects of punishment on learning - other "participant" was learning words that the teacher would give - punishment for failing to learn pairs of words was an electric shock - administered by the teacher to the learner using an intimidating piece of equipment - the shocks were not being inflicted and were prerecorded - rates of obedience dropped to about 30 percent

Informed consent - participants are fully debriefed about the deception and informed of the true nature of the experiment after the study is complete - asked for their consent again

Voluntariness - the ability to opt out of a research study

Social facilitation - occurs when the presence of other people changes individual performance

Social loafing - the reduced motivation and effort shown by individuals working in a group as opposed to working alone

Deindividuation - refers to the immersion of the individual within a group, which makes the individual relatively anonymous

Common sense - suggests that discussion with others who express different opinions should produce more moderate attitudes for everyone in the group

Group polarization - appears to be even more powerful in online discussions - people are exposed to many more arguments on issues than they might generate on their own

Groupthink - especially likely in cohesive groups with high morale whose members already share similar attitude

Attraction - refers to our attitudes about other people and can vary along a continuum from strong liking to strong disliking

Proximity is important to relationships - simple contact can increase liking.

Mere exposure effect - regular exposure to neutral or positive stimuli generally leads to increased liking

People tend to choose friends and romantic partners - who are similar in race, ethnicity, religion, values, education, and age

Physical appearance is a dominant factor in romantic attraction

Matching hypothesis - Most romantic couples share a common level of physical attractiveness

Cultures - frequently have their own definitions of physical beauty, but we appear to have some underlying, biological preferences

Males become jealous of sexual infidelity, whereas females are more distressed by emotional infidelity

More than one-third of female homicides worldwide are committed by - intimate partners

Cooperation - working together toward common goals

Competition - where we struggle with one another to obtain limited resources

Both cooperation and competition have a long history in shaping our behaviour

Tit-for-tat (TFT) strategy - you make cooperation your first move and then repeat your partner's successive moves

Altruism in which the helper is exposed to risk or experiences harm - heroism

Reciprocal altruism - expectations that a favour might someday be returned by those you have helped

Aggression - the conscious intent to harm others - it can take several forms

Instrumental aggression - is the intentional harm, usually physical, done to others to obtain a goal, such as attacking a person to steal a wallet or purse

Relational aggression harms another person's social standing through behaviours such as ignoring, excluding, and gossiping

Defensive aggression - in which the person may do harm to others in self-defence

Passive aggression - in which people who aren't comfortable being openly aggressive get what they want under the guise of still trying to please others

Maternal aggression - a rather common phenomenon in the animal world in which sickly or unwanted offspring are killed

Biological explanations of aggression point to several possible sources of human aggression - genetics, biochemistry, and nervous system structure and activity

Human twin and adoption studies imply that aggressive tendencies - at least partly influenced by genetics

Prenatal exposure to high levels of androgens - increases the aggressive play of both male and female preschoolers

High testosterone levels in teen and adult males are positively correlated with - delinquency, drug abuse, and aggression

Serotonin levels are negatively correlated with aggressive behaviour

Psychoactive substances affect the likelihood that a person will behave aggressively - E.x alcohol - Silences higher cortical areas responsible for impulse control, often leading to behaviour that is normally actively suppressed, including aggression

Abused kids vs non abused kids - nonabused individuals showed an unusually reduced level of activity in the frontal lobes