Applictaions Of Social Psych Flashcards
(15 cards)
Law applications: confessions
Trying to extract confession:
- how can police know if suspects are lying?
Use both verbal and nonverbal cues:
- eye contact
- pauses
- posture
- fidgeting
Law applications: confessions — polygraphs
Improving accuracy: Polygraph
- records physiological arousal
- via multiple channels such as: breathing, heart rate, sweat
Polygraphs:
- baseline level of arousal
- come-related questions
- control questions
Innocent = more aroused by control
Guilty = more aroused by crime-related
But….. truth-tellers can fault and liars can pass
Iacono (2008); commenting on polygraph study that had 100% accuracy
- flawed mythology: they relied on confessions to determine guilt
- if test failed, then same person interrogated the suspect- examiners knew test results, so could use these as leverage to extract confessions
Law applications: false confessions
- Compliance
- escape stressful situation
- confession gets them out of the situation
- disregard for future consequences
- focus on immediate reward
- when hungry, tired, stressed etc: when tired and have high cognitive load we take easy way out
- 2 types of false confessions - Internalisation
- come to believe they’re guilty of crime
- string social influence
- no clear memory of event
- presented with false evidnece
Accuracy of eyewitness: identification
- most lineup members = fillers
- fillers= ‘known innocents’
- every line-up has suspect
- not all suspects are guilty
Jury desison making
Extra-evidential info:
- defendant attractiveness
- defendant race
- display of emotion
Physically attractive defendant treated differently:
- juror more lenient towards attractive defendants (Ostrove 1975)
- but attractive defendants receive harsher punishment in cases of homicide
- facial traits used in juror desison-making differ depending on type of crime — especially if defendant used that trait to commit crime
- halo effect
Jury desison making: defendant characteristics
Defendant race:
Meta analysis: defendant race did not influence verdict
- but once convicted, black convicts receive harsher punishments for homicide
- white convicts received harsher punishment for fraud
Child sexual abuse cases (Bottoms, 2004):
- jurors assigned more guilt to defendants in cases involving victims/ perpetrators of same race compared to different races
-individuals with more Afrocentric features judged as more likely to behave aggressively to inmates
Defendant socio-economic status (SES):
- defendants with low SES received more guilty verdicts + harsher punishments
- lots of conflicting evidnece
Similarity principle:
- ppl prefer others who are similar to them
- mock jurors give fewer guilty verdicts when defendant resembles their background, ethnicity, beliefs
- jurors can reactive negatively if defendant simialry to them - shameful
Kerr (1995) varied race of defendant/ juror:
- if evidnece weak/ moderate, racially similar jurors = less likely to convict
- but boomerang effect»_space; simialry jurors sometimes harsher (black sheep effect) especially when evidence strong + in minority grouo
Group processes
Group polarisation:
Tendency for group discussions to produce more extreme group desisons that mean of members’ pre-discussed opinions
Been doing in mock jurors: (Kaplan, 1976)
- after discussion low guilt cases,, subjects= more extreme in judgements of innocence
Business applications- leadership
Defining leaders:
Someone who can more grouo of people towards common goal
Personality traits:
- leaders both not made - early explanation
- correlations between personality traits and effective leadership actually low
Best Redditor’s of effective leadership:
- extraversion
- openness to experience
Important in business leaders:
- cognitive ability
- inner drive
- leadership motivation
- expertise + creativity
- self-confidence
- flexibility
Personality V situational perspectives
Babyfaces V mature face
- babayfaced leads to more credibility- when crisis involves dishonesty people will be loge babyfaces manager over mature faced one
- but ppl prefer mature faced manager when its matter of nativity
Babayfaced useful when issue of dishonesty
Babyfaced undesirable when problem involves naivety
Transactional V transformational leadership
Prev perspectives don’t take into account relationship between leaders and followers
Transactional leadership
= leader who gains compliance + support from followers primarily through goal setting and use of rewards
Transformational leadership
= leader who inspires followers to transcend their own needs in interest of a common cause
Inspire group to adopt vision:
- charisma
- inspirational motivation
- intellectual stimulation
- individualised consideration
Endowment effect
= tendency for ppl to inflate value of objects, good or services they already own
Eg- willing to pay more for mug you already own, than simialry one you don’t own
Kahneman (1990):
- gave ppl objects
- offered them chance to sell or trade it
- demanded 2x as much money to sell item as buyers were willing to pay
Escalation effect
= tendency for ppl to persist in failing investment to avert loss= causes loss to mount
Due to:
- desire for completion
- loss aversion: ppl prefer to take risks when it comes to loss rather then gains
- protect self-esteem
Sunk cost principe
= economic rule of thumb that only future costs + benefits should be considered in making desisons
Suck cost bias= allowing your desisons to be biased by past investment of time, money and effort
- ppl presented with unhappy relationship scenario- needed to make choice leave/stay
- liklihood of staying higher when money, effort (but not time) prev invested
Health and well-being application: stress
= unpleasant state of arousal, which ppl perceive dead as of event as taking/ exceeding their ability to satisfy/ alter those demands
- Crisis + catastrophes
- affect ppl involves
- can also affect population
- war> PTSD - Major life events
- change can = stressful
- depends on person + how they interpret change - Daily hassles
- accumulation of microstressors can be worse than major life events
Burnout = prolonged responce to job stress: characterised by emotional exhaustion, feeling drained, lacking motivation
Buunk (2001):
- those in higher burnout respond with less potive affect to confrontation with well-preforming colleagues
Improving happiness
Focus on experiences, not possessions
Van Boven (2003):
- 2 surveys showed expeirceing made ppl happier than purchasing objects
- ppl experienced more positive feelings after thinking about purchasing an experience than object
Prosocial spending: Aknin (2013)
- across 136 counties, prosocial spending associated with greater happiness
Intimate relationships:
- stress linked to relationship difficulties
Healthy mindset:
- mind-sets about stres can be chnages with short, targeted interventions
