Personality & Social psych Flashcards
Compare personality and social psych
• Interested in the similar questions, but with different approaches
• Personality psych:
○ Focuses on the person as the locus of explanation
§ Eg how do stable individual differences influence thought, feeling, and action?
○ Uses cross-situational stability approach
○ Eg: are certain people more prone to conflict than others (across all situations)
• Social psych:
○ Focuses on the situation as the locus of explanation
§ How does the social context influence thought, feeling, adnd action
○ Uses situational contingency approach
○ Eg: are certain situational factors likely to lead (all) people to conflict
• Both use scientific method and grounded in empirical research
• Both have fuzzy boundaries that cross into other disciplines and each other
○ Often the case that personality and situational factors interact to explain thoughts, feelings, and actions:
§ People with low agreeableness will be prone to conflict when their interests are not aligned with other parties
§ Known as interactionism
What is interactionism?
○ Recognised by almost all personality and social psychs
○ Presented in the equation: x=f(P, S)
§ Where x = behaviour/thought/emotion, P=person,
S=situation
§ So a psychological outcome (eg particular
thought/emotion/behaviour) is a function of the
product of the person and situation
§ It is an interaction between the person and the social context that predicts actual psychological outcomes
• One seldom operates independently of the other
What is social psych?
○ Social = involving allies or confederates
○ A scientific study of the human mind in the social context (ie a situation characterised by the present of other people whether they be real or imaginary)
○ Studies the effects of social and cognitive processes on the way people perceive, influence, and relate to others
○ Recognises that the social reality is essential in our consideration of psychological process
○ People both influence and are influenced by the social context
○ Emphasises that the social world is subjective
• Uses scientific approach of empirical research, building and testing theories based on empirical data collection and analyses
What is the social context?
○ Other people as the content of psychological research
What are social processes?
○ Other people as the sources of influence
How is social psych a distinct discpline?
○ Unit of analysis = the individual, dyad (relationship), and group - not larger scale social structures
○ General methods: scientific
○ Analyses: quantitative
○ Theories: couched in terms of causal, mechanistic cognitive and social processes
○ Content and process: social
What was the significance of the football game between Princeton and Dartmouth?
○ Contested football game
○ There were completely different accounts by the supporters of the game, despite having viewed the same game
○ Princeton supporters blamed Dartmouth players for unnecessary rough-play, and portrayed their own team as the victims
○ The Dartmouth supporters reported the opposite
○ We are more likely to view our team in a better light than the opponents’
§ Basic perceptions are influenced by subjective frames of reference
○ Concluded that there is no such thing as an objective reality existing, and that reality is something everyone perceives subjectively which is highly dependent on our frame of reference
○ Conclusions laid groundwork of core tenets of social psych
What are the core tenets of social psych?
○ People construct their ow-n reality (within limits)
§ No such thing as an objective truth
§ Our identites, beliefs, attitudes, values, etc.
influence our perception of the world
○ Social influence is pervasive and powerful
§ Other people (real and imaginary) influence what
we think, feel, and do
What are the core motivations according to social psych?
○ Striving for mastery § Understanding § Control § Seeking meaning ○ Seeking connectedness § Belonging § Relatedness § Trust ○ Valuing 'me and mine' § Self-enhancement § Positive self-esteem
What are the core processing theories?
○ Conservatism
§ Beliefs and opinions are slow to change
○ Accessibility
§ Accessible info has the most impact on thoughts,
feelings, and action
□ Mind as an associative network
□ Some network elements are more active than
others
□ These influence ongoing thought, feeling and
action
○ Processing depth
§ Info can be processed with various levels of depth
□ Automatic (shallow: based on heuristics and
rules of thumb) vs controlled processes
(deeply and thoroughly)
® Mostly do the former because latter
requires effort
□ ‘System 1’ vs ‘System 2’ thinking
What is personality?
○ Very broad and difficult to articulate
○ Regularities in behaviour and experience - regular patterns of behaviour and experience
○ A person’s typical mode of response - the way in which they typically respond
○ Our identity and our reputation - how we see ourselves, and how others see us
○ An individual’s unique variation on the general evolutionary developing pattern of dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and self-defining life narratives, complexly and differentially situated in culture and social context
What are the three levels of personality?
○ Level 1
§ Dispositional traits
□ Broad descriptions that capture patterns of
behaviour and experience
□ Relatively decontextualised
□ Eg shy, bold, warm, aloof etc
○ Level 2:
§ Characteristic adaptations
□ Concerns and individual’s particular life
circumstances
□ Highly contextualised
□ Eg specific goals, social roles, educational
aspirations
○ Level 3:
§ Life narratives
□ The story we have constructed about who we
are
□ Timeline that has developed and is
constructed retrospectively and gives a sense
of purpose and unity to our lives
□ Highly/completely individualised
Describe dispositional traits
○ Easiest to conceptualise and operationalise
○ Definition
§ Personality traits are probablistic descriptions of regularities in behaviour and experience arising in response to very broad classes of stimuli and situations (relatively decontextualised)
How did the Big Five (as dispositional traits) come about?
○ Very early trait catalogues:
§ The characters of Theophrastus
○ Somewhat early trait catalogues
§ Allport and Odbert
□ Lexical hypothesis
® Important characteristics will, over human
history, be coded in language
® To study personality, we can look at the
words we have developed to describe
what people are like
® If characteristic is important to us we will
have a word for it
□ Collected an exhaustive list of personality
descriptors - about 18 000 terms
® First to try and operationalise and
measure these traits
® These words could be used to rate
personality
□ Problem: very unwieldy - so many terms
○ What is the number and nature of basic trait domains required to describe the structure of personality?
§ Used factor analysis:
□ A statistical method that reduces many
correlated variables to much fewer composite
variables or factors
□ Developed by Spearman and Thurstone - to explore the structure of mental abilities
□ Catell reduced Allport and Odbert’s list to using this technique to the ‘16 factor solution’ ○ Toward taxonomy
§ Describing the structure of a personality
§ Organising the universe of trait descriptors\
○ Problems with Cattell’s 16 traits:
§ Subjectivity
□ Different people reach a different reduced set of Allport and Odbert’s descriptors
§ Poor replicability
□ Many people failed to obtain his same 16 traits
§ Redundancy
□ Correlations among many of the 16 factors were very high - they might not be distinct
○ Consistencies emerged
§ Most replicable factor structures suggested there were 3-6 traits rather than 16
§ Very similar traits appeared in the taxonomies
§ The ‘Five Factor Model’ seemed to interface best with the various solutions
What are the Big Five?
§ Openness to experience § Conscientiousness § Extraversion § Agreeableness § Neuroticism
Of the big five, which are the interpersonal traits?
○ Extraversion
§ Sociable, bold, assertive
§ Doesn’t capture whether someone is cooperative, nice, helpful
○ Agreeableness
§ Kind, other-oriented (interested in the concerns of others), empathetic
○ Openness
§ More tolerant of outgroups,
§ Less socially conservative
-(mainly extraversion and agreeableness though)
Of the Big Five, which capture emotional tendencies?
-All ○ Extraversion § High energy, and positive affect ○ Neuroticism § Feelings of worry and negative mood ○ Openness § Epistemic emotions - experienced in the context of learning/gaining info § Feelings of interest, awe, curiosity ○ Agreeableness § Feelings of sympathy and empathy (more likely to cry in movies) ○ Conscientiousness § Feelings of guilt and obligation
Of the Big Five, which have cognitive tendencies?
○ Conscientiousness
§ Planful, sustained attention, attention to detail
○ Neuroticism
§ Ruminates, perceives things in a more negative lens, more rigid and compulsive thinking
○ Openness
§ Artistic, creative, intellectually curious, inquisitive, introspective, imaginative
§ About how we think, perceive, and engage with information
What are the measurements of personality?
Self-report surveys, checklist, questionnaires
Describe reliability
§ Do they perform consistently, relatively free from error?
§ General model of reliability:
□ Observed score = true score + measurement error
□ The more reliable, the smaller the measurement error
Describe validity
§ Do trait questionnaires measure what they are intended to?
How can reliability be estimated?
○ Test-retest reliability
§ Correlation between T1 score and T2 score
§ Reliability in terms of temporal stability
§ Rationale
□ Reliability is a repeatable measure - should be
able to verify the score
§ Caveat
□ Not applicable to all psychological
phenomena
® Eg states vs traits - states aren’t constant,
but traits are
® States aren’t well assessed using test-
restest reliability
® Personality traits can be assessed with
this better
○ Split-half reliability
§ Correlation between score from one half of the scale and another half
§ Internal consistency - assessing reliability in terms of consistency within the survey
§ Eg, extraverts should respond similarly to two items measuring extraversion
○ Cronbach’s alpha
§ Average of all split-halves
§ Internal consistency
§ Number between -1 and 1: 1=completely reliable
(not possible)
§ Most widely reported measure of reliability
§ Scales where alpha < 0.6 are not considered reliable
What are the types of validity?
○ Face validity
§ Does the questionnaire seem valid at face value?
§ Not very useful - subjective
○ Content validity
§ Is the relevant content being sampled among the items?
□ Usually performed by expert judges
○ Criterion-related validity
§ Does the measure show sensible correlation with other measures
§ Works in two ways
□ Concurrent validity
® Convergent validity
◊ Does it correlate significantly with related measures?
® Divergent validity
◊ Does it show weak or zero correlations with unrelated measures
□ Predictive validity
® Does it predict expected outcomes or behaviours?
○ Important caveats for validity
§ The Big Five were empirically derived (without a guiding theory)
□ The Big Five initially weren’t given labels, and there was no future plan to assess extraversion etc, ahead of identifying that they exist
§ Initially could not assess content, convergent, or discriminant validity
§ There is now a stronger emphasis on predictive validity
□ Eg consequential outcomes
§ Validity applies more for the new Big Five
What is the limitation of traits?
• Personality is more than traits
○ Can you get a complete picture of someone from purely their traits? No
○ Are people with the same scores on Big Five indistinguishable from one another? No
• Traits are a generic descriptor and relatively decontextualised
• But much of our personality is highly contextualised
Describe characteristic adaptations
○ A recognition that many constructs we study are not traits
○ One conceptualisation:
§ They are variables that tend to be about motivation, social-cognitive, and developmental adaptations contextualised in time, place, and/or social role
§ Time = stage of life
§ Place = specific situation (eg work, with friends)
§ Role = function or duty
○ Another conceptualisation
§ Relatively stable goals, interpretations, and strategies, specified in relation to an individual’s particular life circumstances
§ Goals = desired future states
§ Interpretations = appraised current states
□ Eg perceptions of one’s own abilities
§ Strategies = plans and actions to move between states
□ Eg study routines, degree choice
Describe life narratives
• The richest level of personality description
• Narrative identity
○ The internale, dynamic life story that an individual constructs to make sense of his or her life
• Shapes the unity and purpose of the self
• A ‘personal myth’
○ Constructed, not objective
How can we study life narratives?
○ Structured interview § 8 key life events § Significant people § The future script (where your life is going) § Stresses and problems § Personal ideology § Life theme ○ From interviews, analyse § Emotional tone □ Optimistic/pessimistic § Themes □ Defining preoccupations and concerns, typically about goals § Form/structure □ Stability vs change, slow vs rapid progress, inertia □ Coherence ○ Common life narrative elements § Prominent themes □ Agency and communion (interpersonal connection) § Redemption sequences □ When a story goes from worse to better § The growth story □ Personal development
What is correlation?
• Form of bivariate analysis
○ Relationship between two variables
○ Correlation quanitifies a linear relationship between two variables in terms of direction and degree
• Correlation can be pos or neg
• Associations can be linear or non-linear
• Perfect correlation: r=1 or -1
• Correlation of zero indicates no relationship between the variables
What is the difference between variability and covariability?
• Variability
○ How much a given variable varies from observation to observation
• Covariability
○ How much two variables vary together
Does correlation imply causality?
No
Explain regression towards the mean
○ With an imperfect correlation, an extreme score on one measure tends to be followed by a less extreme score on the other measure
§ Because:
□ Extreme scores are often due to chnace
□ If it’s due to chance it’s unlikely that the other value will also be extreme (eg people guessing a coin flip by chance and accidentally get it consistently right, they’re unlikely to get other chance things right)
How can we get around the issue of correlation not indicating causation?
• To get around the issue with correlation not implying causation, need to conduct an experiment and control for the variables
Describe the Spearman correlation coefficient
- Noted as rs
- Used when the data is ordinal (ranked)
- Also used when data is one-directional but not linear
- Need to convert data to ranks before calculating correlations
- Can linearise non-linear data
What is reliability?
• The consistency of a measure • Measured using cronbach's alpha ○ Requires at least 3 items or scales ○ Calculated by the average covariance of items pairs divided by the total variance ○ Ranges from 0 to 1 § 0 = 0 completely unreliable § 1 = 1 completely reliable ○ Value directly represents the proportion of reliable variance
What is the difference between correlation and regression?
○ Correlation is an association between two variables
○ Regression is predicting one variable from another
Explain regression
- If we know two variables are related we can use this to to make predictions about behaviour
- Unless correlation is perfect, then the prediction will not be exact
○ Used for observed scores
What are errors assumed to be?
○ Independent
○ Normally distributed (with a mean of zero)
○ Homoscedastic
- Equal error variance for levels of predicted y
What is the variance explained?
○ A regression should always report the varaince explained
○ It is how much of the variation in the outcome variable is explained by the predictor
○ When it is perfectly explained R2=1.00
Describe the ANOVA (F) test for regression
○ The F test tells us whether the variance explained is significantly different from zero
○ If the F test is not significant, the regression is worthless - predictor does not explain the outcome variable at all
What does the significance test for regression parameter b explain?
-whether there is a significant association between the predictor and the outcome variable, and the sign tells you whether it is a positive or negative association
○ Can estimate the amount that Y changes when X increases by 1
How can the slope of a regression model be standardised?
§ Convert X and Y into z scores and then do regression standardised regression coefficient (called beta in JASP)
○ Can get confidence intervals for regression coefficients
Describe regression diagnostics
○ We want the errors to be normally distributed
○ Residuals plot - homoscedasticity
§ Scatterplot of the residuals against predicited values to check for heteroscedasticity
□ Want there to be an equal balance of variance - homoscedasticity
What are the two sides of the self?
○ Self concept § Knowledge of the self § Mental representation of all of a person's knowledge about who he/she is and their attributes § Beliefs, thoughts, memories § Roles, relationships, groups ○ Self-esteem § How we feel about the self
How did William James define the self?
○ Defined self as entire set of beliefs, evaluations, perceptions that people have about themselves
○ The ‘me’ to the ‘I’: the object to the subject
What are the ways the self can be defined/conceptualised?
○ Content dimensions ○ Self-aspects ○ Self-organisation: schemas ○ All these frameworks are very static and do not indicate devleopment So, to account for this, can also use: • Narratives
What are content dimensions?
§ Big Two
□ Communion (warmth): social relationships (friendly, fair)
□ Agency (competence): goal attainment (ambitious, capable)
□ One defines the self’s self-oriented characteristics
□ The other dimention is other-oriented
□ Could be a third: morality
® People can attach more value to a moral self-value than a self-oriented
® Some people say morality is just a subset of the communion dimension
§ Big Five
What are self-aspects?
§ Summaries of a person’s beliefs about the self in specific domains, roles, or activities
§ Who you are in different contexts and with different people
§ Personal aspects (personal selves, personal idenitities, individual selves)
□ Features that distinguish you from others
□ Often traits (warm, extraverted)
§ Social aspects
□ Roles (relational)
® Features we possess in the virtue of the roles and relationships we have
® Boss, sister, friend
□ Group/social category memberships
® Features we possess because we are group members, that we share with others
® Woman, Australian
§ Domains: at work, aat home, with friends
□ Sometimes roles and groups overlap, someitmes not
Describe self-organisation: schemas
§ Self-schemas: the knowledge and structure that links, organises, and weights self-concept components
□ Provides summary of core, important characteristics that a person believes define him or her across situations
□ Important, core aspects likely to be accessible
□ Self-schemas guide interpretations of the environment and performance of behaviour
Describe narratives
○ The story of who I am
○ Internalised, evolving story of the self that binds, organises and provides meaning to self-component aspects across time
What are actual and possible selves?
○ Self in time
§ Past and future
§ Possible selves
○ Future selves can act as ‘self-guides’
§ Standards help us guide behaviour
§ Self Discrepancy Theory:
□ Ought self: who should I be?
□ Ideal self: who do I want to be?
§ Perceived discrepancies between our actual selves (who I am) and these self guides can drive behaviour
○ Promotion-focused
§ People who focus more on ideal selve - more concerned with succeeded than failing, take more risks
○ Prevention-focused
§ People who focus on ought selves
§ More cautious, concerned with not failing rather than succeeding
Describe cross-cultural differences with regards to conceptualisation of the self
○ How self-concept is shaped by culture
○ In East-Asian cultures, the self is more focused on the collective
§ Shaped more interdependece - self is part of group
○ In Western cultures, more individualist
§ Self is separate from group
What is the accessible self?
○ Working self-concept
§ The now self, guides acting, thinking, and feeling in the moment
○ Components of the social situation may make some aspects of the self more accessible
○ Fazio study:
§ Situational cues encourage activation of introversion vs extraversion-related self knowledge
§ Accessible self-knowledge impacted behaviour
What are the interpersonal processes of constructing the self?
○ Social comparison
○ Social feedback
Describe social comparison
§ Process of comparing oneself to others
§ Social comparison theory
□ Self-knowledge comes from comparing one’s own traits, abilities, attitudes, emotions to those of others
□ Especially when people are uncertain
□ Medvec et al. study: facial expressions and body language of medalist during Olympic ceremonies
® Gold medalists were happiest
® Contrary what one would expect, is silver medalist seems less happy than bronze
® Because they had to content being the lesser to the gold medalist (negative social comparison), whereas bronze medalist is happy that they beat everyone else (positive social comparison)
® Therefore, target is important
□ Social comparison can lead to assimilation or contrast (depending on target)
® If compare to an extreme target - contrasting away from target (evaluating yourself in extreme opposition to target)
◊ Contrast effect
® If we compare to a moderate target, assimilate towards target
□ Accurate self-concepts come from comparing yourself to similar others
Describe social feedback
§ Internalise our perceptions of how others see us
§ Other people act as mirrors into our own self-concepts
§ Our selves are shaped by how we think others see us
§ Miller study:
□ When children received a message signalling a perception (ie you’re very tidy), end up becoming more tidy compared to control group who receieved no message, and a group who was told ‘you should be tidy’
□ They are viewed by others as being tidy, which is internalised into self-concept, and manifests in behaviour
What are intrapersonal personal processes of constructing the self? (personal construction)
○ Introspection
○ Self-perception
Describe introspection
§ Looking inwards at the contents of consciousness (thoguhts and feelings)
§ Reasonable route to knowing what one is feeling or experiencing
§ Less reliable in informing us about why - the reasons we think, feel and act as we do
§ Can still be functional
□ When processing deeply, it can improve accuracy of self-knowledge
□ When introspection reveals that one meets one’s standards, positive feelings can result
□ Can increase consistency in behaviour - more likely to act in accordance with one’s values
Describe self-perception
§ People infer self-knowledge by observing their own behaviours
§ Most likely to occur when knowledge is weak or ambiguous and for behaviours that they have freely chosen
□ If people don’t have a good situational explanation, they infer a self-related explanation
§ Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett study
□ Children who were rewarded for doing certain things were less likely to repeat those things in the absence of reward, compared with children who received no reward, or whose reward was not linked ot the behaviour
□ Extrinsic motivation of the reward replaced the intrinsic motivation for the reward
□ Implication is that you should not reward people for doing things that they would already do
What does the self do?
• Helps regulate yourself
• Helps maintain and manage behaviour around others
• We construct and present ourselves not only in the service of mastery goals, but also in the service of belonging and self-enhancement
○ Our selves also help us fit in and feel good
• Main aim of the master goal is to achieve control and accuracy of our environment
How do we achieve accuracy of our environment?
§ Seek accurate slef-knowledge
§ One way of checking for accuracy is to seek confirmation of one’s self views
□ Self-verification: confirming what one believes about the self
□ People prefer relationship partners who agree with their own self-image, even if those views are negative
How do we achieve control of our environment?
§ People make upward social comparisons to motivate behaviour and seek rewards
§ Blanton study
□ Upwards comparisons can improve grades
§ This process can:
□ Provide info on how the task is done
□ Change expectations about what is possible to achieve
□ Increase motivation
§ Need to compare yourself to others whose success is attainable
Describe self-valuing and its effects in enhancing me and mine
○ Self-enhacement motive § Desire to maximise the positivity of one's self views § Define our self-concepts in ways that make us feel better about ourselves ○ Self-esteem § Trait self esteem □ Cross-situationally stable § State self-esteem □ Temporary, situation-specific
What are the self-enhancement motives?
○ Better than average effect
§ Most people see themselevs as above average
○ Self-enhancement may be different in different cultures
§ Higher self esteem in the US than in Japan
§ More tolerance of self-criticism in Japan than US
○ High self-esteem can help us cope with threats
§ Can act as a buffer and can help deal with stress
§ Although excessively high self-esteem can bleed into narcissm
□ Can then become unstable and easily damaged
How can the self be used for self-protection with threats?
○ Protecting ourselves from criticism
○ Self-defensive attributions
§ Explain negative behaviours as stemming from the situaiton
§ Claim positive behaviours as arising from the self
○ Self-affirmation
§ When one aspect/domain of the self Is under threat, people can protect themselves by affirming the importance of a different aspect/domain
○ Self-defensive social comparisons
§ Under the self is under threat, people make downwards social comparison
§ Making the self come out on top - someone is worse off
Describe how the self contributes to belonging
○ Just as the self is constructed via social processes, the self operates in a social matrix
○ Define and present ourselves in ways that make us fit in
§ Impression management, self-preservation to achieve belonging needs
○ Ingratiation: seeking acceptance of others
§ One way to achieve this is through presenting a likeable self
§ Does not work if it is too overt, or in too trivial situations
What are the strategies for self presentation?
§ Ingratiation (belonging): seek affection
§ Self promotion (mastery): seek respect
§ Intimidation (mastery): seek fear in others
§ Exemplification (mastery): seek emulation
§ Supplication (belonging): seek compassion
Describe first impressions
○ First impressions are based on multitude of rudimentary cues
○ Relatively accurate given the little information they are based on
○ Very impactful
○ Impressions of others consist of a liking component and an assessment of specific characteristics
○ Physical characteristics
§ Often first signal we perceive
§ Attractiveness
□ Beautiful is good
§ Height
□ Taller presidents are more likely to be voted in
□ Perceived to be greater, with more leadership and communication skills
§ Clothing
○ Social category characteristics (stereotype)
§ Gender, nationality…
○ Context - environment
§ We are reflected in the spaces we occupy
§ Gosling et al.
□ Observers were able to infer characterisitcs of targets by viewing their environmnets such as their office
○ Behaviours
§ Verbal and non-verbal
§ Intentional and unintentional (conspicuous consumption - the luxury goods might indicate status signal)
How do we construct first impressions?
○ These sense datas are integrated with our existing knowledge structures - attitudes, self-schemas, beliefs - in automatic first impressions
○ Our existing knowledge structures (esp that info accessible) give meaning to sense data
§ Accessible informaiton gets more weight in the interpretation of cues
○ Salient cues get more weight in impression
§ Product of context and person
Where does the accessibility of knowledge structures come from?
○ Concurrent activation
§ Depends on whether an association is related to a construct (eg stealing with dishonesty)
○ Frequent activation
§ Eg if you view yourself as an academic, and as a result this concept is frequently activated in self-percdeption, might judge others more readily by academic criteria than other domains
○ Recent activation
§ Higgins et al study
□ When primed people with words associated with adventure, they would view pictures of people doing risky things as more adventurous
□ When primed with words associated with risk-taking, they were more likely to see the person as reckless
What is cue salience?
○ Ability of cue to attract attention
§ Unpredictability - stand out from context
§ Eg if you saw a suited man with a pram in an office, the pram would stand out, so you would evaluate him as a caring father, whereas if you saw the same suited man with a pram in a playground, the suit would stand out, so you would consider him to be more stiff
How do we perceive and understand other people?
○ In social psych:
§ Focus on understanding how people explain other peoples’ behaviour
○ Make attributions:
§ Attributing behaviour to causes
§ Attribute behaviour to causes inside a person - internal, dispositional causes - or in the situation - external, situational causes
Describe the correspondent inference
○ Connecting behaviour with internal cause, then ascribe the trait to the individual
○ Used in first impressions
○ See behaviours as reflecting something about the person (rather than the situation)
○ Although some conditions warrant correspondent inferences
§ Free choice, unique effects, unexpectedness (eg socially undesirable)
○ People tend to form such inferences even in the absence of such conditions
§ I.e suffer from a correspondent bias
□ Tendency to draw correspondent inferences when the conditions do not warrant such conclusions
§ Fundamental attribution error (FAE)
What is the fundamental attribution error?
□ The tendency to overestimate the importance of personal or dispositional factors relative to environmental factors, and to underestimate the contribution of contextual factors
□ Tends to happen when judging people’s undesired behaviour
□ Jones & Harris study
® Had people evaluate the attitude of people who had written a pos or neg essay of Fidel Castro
® Told the participants that the writers were able to choose whether they wrote pos or neg
◊ Voted that the writers were for castro if they wrote positively, and against him if they wrote negatively
® However, even when told the writers were forced to take a particular side, the participants still assumed that the writers were for if they wrote pos and against if they wrote neg
® Demonstrates correspondence bias because people still draw those inferences even when it isn’t warranted
□ Miller study
FAE is more common in Western cultures
What are important in looking beyond first impressions?
○ Motivation to do so
○ Ability to do so
§ Time and conditions available to do so
• If these conditions are met, might be able to overcome initial automatic/biased inferences
Describe Gilbert et al.’s study looking at the role of available cognitive resources for deeper processing
○ Researchers had participannts watch a video of a woman without sound, but who showed nonverbal cues of anxiety
○ Textual cues on screen revealed the topic she was talking about
○ Some participants were told she was talking about sensitive topics
§ Explained the anxious behaviour - external attribution
○ Some were told that she was talking about inocuous topics (such as going on holiday)
§ Topic does not describe anxious behaviour - lead to internal attribution (she was an anxious person)
○ Another condition, people were told to also memorise the topic she was talking about
§ Higher cognitive load prevented them from making deliberate and deeper attributions about cause of anxious behaviour
§ Resulted in higher FAE
How do you reach a deeper level of processing beyond mere correspondence, according to Kelley?
§ Consensus
□ Does everyone else perform the same behaviour towards the same stimulus
§ Distinctiveness
□ Does the person perform the same behaviour towards other stimuli
§ Consistency
□ Does the person always perform this behaviour towards this stimuli?
○ Only when consensus and distintiveness are low and consistency is high - internal is attribution warranted
What is a critique of the attribution theories?
more to explaining behaviour than making internal and external attributions
§ Model developed by Malle
□ Distinguishes several causes of both intentional and unintentional behaviour
® Generating Factors:
◊ States or events that bring about other states or events
® Behaviour explanations
◊ Cite generating factors of behavioural events
® Reasons
◊ Agents’ mental states whose content they considered and in light of which they formed an intention to act
® Mere causes
◊ Generating factors of behavioural events that are not reasons
® Reason explanations
◊ Behaviour explanations that cite agents’ reasons for intentding to act or for acting intentionally
® Cause explanations
◊ Behaviour explanations that cite mere causes for an unintentional behavioural event
□ Provides the boundaries for which FAE is likely to occur
® More likely when evaluating someone’s negative behaviour or unexpected behaviour
How do we put all the information together to form a coherent impression of other people (forming global impressions)?
• Could be Simple addition or averaging
○ Adding all the positives and subtracting all th enegatives
○ But are all traits equal? Are some weighted more than others?
○ What determines importance
○ Negativity bias
§ Tendency to weight negative information as more important
○ But still is a positive bias
§ Overall people tend to form positive information around people
§ Need for connectedness
• Inter-trait relationships
○ Traits are viewed holistically - are not completely independent
○ Two traits might combine to mean more than individually
○ Eg intelligent + cold = sly
○ Intelligent + warm = wise
• Agency and communion
○ Traits we use to summarise others’ behaviours organise along two major dimensions
§ Communal (social)
§ Agentic (intellectual)
Can we be completely objective when forming impressions?
No, despite best intentions to be as objective as possible, often still fall prey to deeper needs and goals when trying to form impressions
• Mastery
○ People seek accurate impressions when they will be held accountable or when their own outcomes depend on the other person
• Belonging
○ People evaluate others differently depending on whether this evaluation threatens or strengthens their existing relationships
○ Belonging goals
§ Priming people with affiliation goals makes them more likely to infer positive traits from other peoples’ behaviour than when affiliation goal is not primed or when pos non-affiliation concepts are primed
§ As seen in Rim et al.
• Me and mine
○ People form positively biased impressions to make themselves feel good or when they want to see good outcomes
What is a group?
- 2 or more people who share common characteristics or goals that is socially meaningful to themselves and others
- Groups differ wiith regards to how much interaction and interdependence exists between members
What is interdependence?
• Interdepedence: the extent to which each group member’s thoughts, feelings and actions impact others
○ Task interdependence
§ Reliant on each other fro mastery of material rewards through performance of collective tasks
○ Social interdependence
§ Reliant on each other for feelings of connectedness, respect, and acceptance
○ Most groups have a combination of the kinds of interdependence, but most are skewed to one or another
What are the types of groups?
• Types of groups ○ Primacy/intimacy groups § Family, circle of close friends § Most concern for social interdependence □ But can solve problems together ○ Secondary/task groups § Work teams/committees § Most concern task interdependence □ But social interdependence can influence performance
What is Tuckman’s model of how groups are formed?
Group formation occurs in series of stages (typical, but not always the same for every group)
-Forming
□ Storming
Norming
□ Performing
□ Adjourning
§ Performance drops in Storming phase, after initial high in forming phase, but then steadily climbs back up to peak during performance phase
§ Not all stages need to occur and not in all the same order
§ May remain in the performing phase for a long time
§ Might fall back to prior phase as members leave/join
§ Was not developed to tell us about when a member enters a developed group, only about every member of the group going through the same process
Describe the forming stage of group formation
® Individuals come together to form the group
® Potential members come to learn the nature of their interdependence, group structure, group goals
® Clarity can only emerge when these things are sorted out
® This is often facilitated by a leader who can articulate what’s happening with the group
Describe the storming stage of group formation
® Once group has formed, there is a process of negotiation: determining the different group roles
® Can involve conflict
◊ Relationship (personality clash)
◊ Task conflict (different views on content, structure and goals of group)
◊ Process conflict (differing opinions on strategies and tactics
® Conflict can impact performance and commitment t group
◊ Relationship and process conflict can decrease later performance
◊ Task performance which is managed correctly can increase/improve performance in long run
Describe the norming stage of group formation
® If conflict decreases, norms emerge
® This stage is characterised by:
◊ Consensus
◊ Harmony
◊ Stability
◊ Commitment
◊ Cohesion
◊ Development to group-related social identity
® Disagreements are often resovled into consensual norms
® Members feel a sense of trust and liking
® Commitment to group is high
Describe the performing stage of group formation
® Members cooperate to solve problems, make decisions, produce outputs
® Characterised by
◊ Effective exchange of information between group members
◊ Productive resolution of disagreements
◊ Continued commitment to group goals
Describe the adjourning stage of group formation
® Dissolution of group
® Group has fulfilled purpose or was set to end at a particular time
® Often marked by a period of evaluating work, sharing feelings about group
® Can be stressful if commitment has made it important identity for members
What is group socialisation?
□ Cognitive, affective and behavioural changes that occur as individuals leave and join groups
Describe the Moreland and levine model of group socialisation
□ Mutual processes
® Investigation
◊ Potential member seeks information about group and vice versa
® Socialisation
◊ Group tries to mold the individual into becoming one of them - a ‘team player’, member acquires and internalises group knowledge, adopts norms, becomes committed, forms identity
® Maintenance
◊ Now a fully committed member, individual takes on a specific role within the group
□ Also not all stages need to be completed
Describe social facilitation
○ An increase in the likelihood of highly accessible responses, and decrease in likelihood of less accessible responses, due to presence of others
describe Triplett’s fishing line study as a demonstration of social facilitation
§ One of first experimental social psychological studies performed
§ Asked kids to wind a fishing line onto wheels
§ Two kids could do it at the same time
§ Found that kids performed faster and more efficiently in the presence of others than by themselves
§ Therefore showed that presence of others improved task performance
§ Questions were raised as to whether presence of others can make it worse sometimes
describe Moreland’s shoe study as a demonstration of social facilitation
§ Participants were asked to do familiar task: putting on and taking off shoes
§ And unfamiliar task: putting on and taking off a new item of clothing with some form of complication to it
§ Did both either alone, in the presence of others (who weren’t watching), and in the presence of others who were watching
§ Looked at performance time
§ People were faster doing familiar task than unfamiliar taks
§ When people were there, they performed faster when doing the familiar task
§ However, with unfamiliar task, they took longer when people were there and performed better by themselves
§ (Slower for condition whereby they were being watched than when the audience was not watching)
§ Explanation: presence of other people can increase arousal
□ Can increase evaluation apprehension: worrying about what others are perceiving you
□ Increase distraction
§ Increased arousal can lead to better performance for well-rehearsed, accessible responses (dominant responses), and worse for novel, complex, and inaccessible responses (nondominant responses)
What is social loafing?
○ Tendency to exert less effort on task when in a group than when alone
Describe the clapping study demonstrating social loafing
○ Latane, Williams, and Harkins study:
§ Got participants to clap/cheer as loudly as possible
§ Either asked to do this in a group or alone
§ Found that there was a decrease in individual loudness the more people who are present (peak being when alone, and decreasing as the group size increases)
How can we reduce social loafing?
§ Target the factors that relate to it: change the nature of the task
□ People loaf less when task is interesting/involving to them - more likely to perform regardless of whether people are there
§ Increase accountability
§ Reduce group size
§ Increase commitment to, or identification with the group
□ Cross cultural differences
□ People from collectivist cultures show less loafing than those from individualist cultures
What is de-individuation?
§ Psychological state in which group or social identity completely dominates personal or individual identity so that group norms become maximally salient
□ One acts as a prototypical group member
○ Caused by anonymity, wearing uniforms, being in a crowd of group members
§ By being just one among many similars
○ Increase accessibility of group norms
§ Decreases accessibility of personal standards
§ Can produce negative or positive behaviour
Explain the uniform study demonstrating de-individuation
○ Johnson & Downing study
§ Manipulated norms (positive/negative) and anonymity
§ Dressed as either nurse (pos) or KKK (neg) members
§ Some were given a mask, and others not
§ Asked to deliver shocks in a learning task
§ Found that people in KKK robes gave much stronger shocks than those in nurse outfit
§ Also found that participants wearing a mask, group norm was exacerbated
□ Nurse outfits wearing a mask were completely de-individuated and were much more cautious giving the shock than those not wearing masks (who were still cautious, but less so)
□ People in KKK outfits with masks gave much stronger masks when in masks
□ Emphasised the norms of the group norms when members were de-individuated
What is leadership?
○ A process whereby one or more group members are enabled by the group to influence and motivate others to help attain group goals
What is power?
○ The ability to provide or withhold rewards and punishments from others
• All leaders have power, not everyone in a powerful position are leaders
Who become leaders?
○ People who are prototypical of a leader
§ Assertive behaviour
§ Dominant body posture (height esp)
§ Frequent speech
§ Gender
§ Stereotypical masculine gender norms: more likely to view men as leaders than women
○ People who are prototypical of the group
§ Share characteristics with the group stereotype
§ Especially among high identifiers
○ Stereotypical leaders in terms of representatives of the group are judged less harshly when they make a mistake
What focuses can leaders have?
• Leaders can either be
○ Focused on achieving the task at hand (setting goals, providing structures, directing behaviour and correcting failure)
§ Serves mastery goal
○ Focused on people (building trust, increasing psychological safety, setting norms for cooperation, coaching members)
§ Serves connectedness goal
describe the study demonstrating the best leadership style
• Homan and Greer study: whether a considered leadership style (supporting people and team processes) was related to better team performance
○ Found that leaders with low consideration behaviour did not significnatly impact team performance
§ Considerate leadership did not predict general performance
○ Found that high consideration leadership did show to improve team performance esp among teams with high diversity
○ Homogenous groups (not diverse groups)
§ Level of consideration leadership has no impact on team performance
○ Heterogenous groups (diverse groups)
§ High consideration leadership results in better performance than low consideration leadership
Describe modern leadership
○ Started to recognise the importance of the third motivational drive (valuing me and mine) in defining leadership effectiveness
○ Emphasise members’ commitment to the group and its leader as well as promoting symbolic values and group identity as important components of effective leaderhsip
○ Tranformational leadership
§ Provides inspirational vision
§ Moral direction
§ Group dedication
§ Well-being and morale
§ Eg Obama
○ Identity leadership
§ There is no group without social identification
§ Leadership is management of social identity
§ Creating, representing, and advancing group identity
Why are social groups important?
• Social groups are important
○ Influence what we feel, think, do
• So important that they form one of the key bases of social perception
• Others’ group membership are used as the basis of social categorisation
○ The process of perceiving people as members of social groups/categories rather than individuals
○ Allows us to quickly draw inferences about other people
○ Manages limited cognitive resources by ascribing characteristics to people based on group membership
• Process can be automatic
○ Especially for certain features (age, gender, race)
What is self-categorisation?
○ Seeing oneself as a group member ○ Social identities are accessible ○ In extreme form: de-individuation ○ This is likely when § We experience direct reminders of group membership § In the presence of outgroup members □ In the presence of people who don't belong to our groups § In a minority
What are the consequences for self-categorisation?
○ Through self categorisation, you see yourself as one of ‘us’
○ Through social categorisation, you see the other as one of ‘them’
○ Us vs them structure
○ Structural consequence
§ Captured in Category differentiation model
□ When conditions are set for social and self categorisation, exacerbate differences between us and them
□ Also exacerbate similarities within each group
□ Increases intergroup differentiation
□ Increases outgroup homogeneity
® Leads to cross-race identification bias/other-race effect
® Eg ‘they all look the same’
® Platz and Hosch study
◊ Participants were texas convenience store clerks
◊ They were either Anglo-Americans, African-Americans, or Mexican-Americans
◊ Sent confederates into the stores who represented the three racial groups
◊ 2hrs after, researchers showed clerks a set of photos: one was a pic of the confederate who came in, and the other ones didn’t
◊ Found that people were better at identifying people of their own group (ie if the clerk was Mexican-American, they were better and getting it right with a Mexican-American confederate), than people of other racial groups
◊ Find it difficult to idenitfy people of the outgroup because of outgroup homogeneity
◊ See them all as alike
□ ‘Group-ness’ is amplified
○ Content-related consequence
§ Stereotypes
□ Cognitive representation that is formed by impressions and representations of a certain group
□ Associate a group with a range of characteristics
□ Different from prejudice
□ Stereotype = beliefs, prejudice = attitudes
§ Stereotype Content Model
□ Organised around competence and warmth
□ People’s stereotypes tend to form within one of four quadrants, which are the intersections of warmth and competence
