Exam 2 Study Guide

Chapter 6: Emotion

• Emotion: a brief, specific, subjective response that contains both psychological and physiological components 

  • Lasts seconds or minutes

• Paul Ekman’s Research: The Universailty of Facial Expressions of Emotion

  • There is strong evidence of the universality of facial expressions (70-90% accuracy)

  • Limitations > Study 2: traveled to an isolated tribe providing a story in which the members would select pictures that resembled their reactions

    • Adults had 68-92% accuracy and the children 81-98%

  • Evidence remains strong and supports the hypothesis

• Positive Psychology:

  • Correlated with Happiness: high SE, extraversion, sense of control over life, sense of flow (challenging tasks, but not too much), exercise 3x a week, sleep, physical health, where you live in the world

  • Not Correlated with Happiness: age, gender, race (with respect to SES), educational level

  • Wealth and Happiness Relationship: Wealthier people are happier than poorer people BUT

    • Latin American Countries: defy the correlation, why?

      • Interdependent culture

      • Focus on family

      • Being part of a group is the priority, not $

    • Benefits of Wealth:

      • Safety/Control

      • Support

      • Opportunity

      • Autonomy/Experiment

    • Disadvantages of Wealth:

      • Unfairly educated

      • Dependence

      • Relationships

      • Lack of empathy

      • Struggle to appreciate life’s pleasures 

      • Materialism: less happy, less satisfying friendships, less likely to help others

  • Adaptation: Human’s ability to get used to good and bad things in life 

  • Hedonic Treadmill: after a positive or negative event, people quickly return to a happiness set point

  • Relative Deprivation: the feeling deprived in comparison to wealthier others, leading to discomfort and a desire for change

  • Using Money to Increase Happiness: Acts of generosity like gifting and buying experiences, not items

  • Importance of Gratitude: Gratitude is important in maintaining social relationships and increasing personal happiness 

  • Importance of Strong Social Relationships: Relationships of all kinds tend to increase or maintain personal happiness

    • Religious Engagement is associated with greater happiness

    • Isolation is detrimental 

• Focalism: Focusing on the most immediate elements of significant events and we fail to consider how other aspects of our lives will influence how happy we are

  • We tend to assume that once a particular event happens we will be truly and enduringly happy not considering other potential (negative) events that may occur following the significant event

• Focal Emotions: emotions that are relatively common in the everyday lives of the members of a culture

  • Anger: common in cultures that value honor

  • Embarrassment/Shame: common in interdependent cultures

    • Value modesty and appreciation of others’ opinions

• Oxytocin Importance: a chemical that fosters commitment in long-term relationships 

  • Given Oxytocin: they are more generous and cooperative, look more consistently at people's faces, and score higher on empathy

  • Only promotes commitment towards one’s group and can enhance biases against another

Chapter 7: Attitudes, Behavior, and Rationalization

• Cognitive Dissonance: Dissonance occurs when there is an inconsistency between attitudes and behaviors

  • Alleviating Dissonance: we change our behaviors or our attitudes

    • Behaviors: harder to change

    • Attitudes: easier to change (often so)

  • Examples: 

    • Boring Task Experiment: students felt more justified for lying with higher incentive ($) and the less justified (with dissonance) changed attitudes to believe the task was more interesting than it was

    • Forbidden Toy Paradigm: children given milder threats to not play with a specific toy negatively changed their attitudes towards the toy in order to justify not playing with it

• Rules for Effective Punishment: 

1. Provide alternatives before punishment that are not punished 

2. Be clear about what behavior you are punishing; being a “bad boy” is not good 

3. Apply punishment immediately after undesired behavior and every time thereafter

4. Avoid mixed feelings; parents should agree on punishment and not provide immediate comfort

• Self-Perception Theory: When attitudes are weak, people introspect on their behavior to infer what their attitudes are

• Implicit Attitude Measures (IAT): used when there is reason to believe that people may be unwilling/unable to report true feelings/opinions and allows us to tap into nonconscious and immediate attitudes; they don’t realize attitudes are being examined

• Bad is Stronger Than Good: Negative evaluations are stronger than positive evaluations

  • Evolution: it would make sense why we are more vigilant about avoiding harm than we are for pleasurable experiences; if a predator is not avoided today, there is no tomorrow

  • Negative stimuli elicit more rapid and stronger physiological responses

  • Losing $20 is more painful than gaining $20

• Attitudes Conflicting with Behavior: 

  • Norms of Appropriate Behavior: expectations and norms can differ and oftentimes, we sway toward norm

    • Oriental couple example

  • Introspection for Reasons of Attitudes: Introspection may lead us to focus on the easiest-to-identify reasons for liking/disliking something at the expense of the real reasons

    • This applies when the true source of attitude is hard to pin down

  • General Attitudes and Specific Targets: If we encounter a specific situation or person who doesn’t fit the general prototype, our behavior probably won’t reflect our stated attitude

    • Think of Dad with black guys 

• Terror Management Theory: what people do to deal with the anxiety associated with the knowledge of death in order to get on with life

  • Denial: It’s only the end of the physical body

  • Symbolic Immortality: thinking of themselves as connected to a broader culture, worldview, and set of values that lives beyond them

Chapter 8: Persuasion

• Elaboration Likelihood Model: people in certain contexts process persuasive messages rather mindlessly and effortlessly and on other occasions deeply and attentively

  • Central Route Persuasion is most effective when the audience is anticipated to be alert and attentive

  • Peripheral Route Persuasion is most effective when the audience is preoccupied or on “auto-pilot” 

• Heuristic for Decisions on Products: For peripheral route persuasion, people rely on simple heuristics that guide them in how to respond to a persuasive message 

  • Attitudes might change simply because the ad applies to our heuristics

    • We trust experts

    • We trust family/friends (if they like it, so will i)

    • Peripheral cues change emotional reactions

      • Attractiveness > feel more positive > reflect it onto a product 

• Elements of Persuasion:

1. Source > Who is delivering the message

• Attractiveness/Likeability

• Credibility/Expertise

• Similarity 

2. Message > How is the message getting across

3. Audience > Familiarity with the audience

• The Effect of Good Feelings: messages become more persuasive through association with good feelings

• Fear and Persuasion: the more frightened and vulnerable people feel, the more they respond

  • Identifiable Victim Effect

• Poison Parasite: using a company’s well-known advertising campaign to deliver the opposite message

  • Poison > strong counter information

  • Parasite > mechanism of message delivery 

• Study on Embodiment: Bodily movements signal varying degrees of thought confidence and it’s the confidence that determines whether or not persuasion occurs

  • Past study > Participants expressed more agreement in editorials when listening to them while nodding their heads up and down 

  • Brinol and Petty Study > Participants listened to strong or weak arguments in favor of headphones while nodding or shaking their heads

    • Favorability > Strong arguments elicited favorable thoughts, while weak arguments elicited unfavorable thoughts

    • Confidence > Nodding in either strong/weak conditions leads to more confident favorabilities

  •  Nodding enhances confidence in one's thoughts, whether favorable or unfavorable

• Thought Polarization Hypothesis: Public commitments make us think more extensively about thoughts on a particular issue/object, which tends to produce more extreme, entrenched attitudes

  • The repeated expression of attitudes leads to a more extreme position in a variety of domains because we want to align with the initial attitude

  • Increased thought can lead to more moderate attitudes for people who previously had little motivation/preexisting knowledge about it

• Selective Evaluation: the evaluation of information in ways that support their existing beliefs and values

  • Flaws are exaggerated when reading a rival’s position

  • Strengthens are enhanced when reading personal position

  • Violates cherished beliefs about one’s personal health; oftentimes we downplay the credibility of a doctor or the seriousness of a diagnosis 

• Attitude Inoculation: small attacks on our beliefs that would engage our preexisting attitudes, prior commitments, and background knowledge and thereby counteract a larger attack 

  • Helps people resist persuasive arguments by exposing them to weaker versions of those arguments

• Genetic Basis of Attitudes: Opinions and beliefs are partly inherited

  • Heritable Attitudes > More accessible, less susceptible to persuasion, and predictive of attraction to strangers with similar attitudes.

  • Hereditary Transmission > through temperament traits like impulsivity, risk-taking, or novelty distaste

  • Political Attitudes > Genes influence not only opinions but also political participation and party affiliation.

    • Hard to change political attitudes because it would be changing a core part of a person