Chapter 13 Flashcards
(42 cards)
Social psychology
-Study of how people influence, others, behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes
-Critical as humans are a highly social species we are predisposed to forming intimate personal networks of a particular size
-historically network size is about 150 people (Dunbar’s number)
Need to belong theory
-humans have a biologically based need for interpersonal connections
-isolation or the threat of isolation has been associated with increased risk for anxiety, abnormal, eating behavior, reduce intelligence, reduced test performance and other effects
Humans as social species
-social influences include obedience and conformity
-most social influence processes are adaptive, going along with others is useful (lining in groups because everyone else is waiting in a line)
-However, they can turn male adaptive when they are blind or unquestioning (following the group without thinking can be dangerous or harmful. (doing something risky just to fit in.
-each social influence should be evaluated critically
Social comparison theory
-theory that states we seek to evaluate our abilities and beliefs by comparing them with those of others
In upward social comparison: we compare ourselves with people who seem superior to us in someway
Ex: when a new member of the basketball team compared herself with the teams top superstars
In downward, social comparison, we compare cells with others who seem inferior to us in someway
Ex: when the same basketball player compares herself with her clumsy friends
-despite both comparisons, both of them can boost our self concepts when we engage in upward social comparison, we may feel better because we conclude that if he can achieve that, I bet I can too. when we engage and downwards, social comparison, we often feel feel superior to our peers who are less competent
Social contagion
-mass hysteria: contagious outbreak of irrational behaviour
Occurs when a situation is ambiguous and we’re more likely to engage in social comparison
Ex: UFO sightings
Urban legends or another example of social contagion : false stories repeated so many times that people believe them to be true
Fundamental attribution error
-attribution: refers to the process of assigning cause to behaviour
-When we look at others behavior, we: overestimate the impact of dispositional influences (traits like intelligence or a personality)
-underestimate the impact of situational influences (financial status, external pressure)
-when it comes to evaluating our own behavior, we do the opposite
Social facilitation
-doing better than others on tasks we find easy
Social disruption
-a worsening of performance in the presence of others
Fundamental attribution error causes
-maybe due to the fact, we are unaware of other situational factors and very aware of our own
-Also associated with cultural factors
-Japanese and Chinese are less likely to commit this error because they are more collectivist, prone to seeing others behaviour as a combination of dispositional and situational influences
Conformity
-tendency of people to alter their behaviour as a result of group pressure
- umanity increased conformity: when everyone else in the group agrees people are much more likely to conform, even if the group is clearly wrong
- Lower conformity, even if one person disagrees: if just one other person breaks away from the group, even if they’re still wrong conformity drops sharply
- Size of majority increased conformity to a point (5-6ppl) adding more people doesn’t significantly increase conformity
Deindividuation
-tendency to engage in non-tip of behavior, one strip of your usual identity
-Anonymity and lack of responsibility tend to promote the individual
-Become more vulnerable to social influence
-wearing masks and concealing identity features to deindividuation
Ex: more likely to cheat in a dimly lit room
Stanford prison study
-recruited, normal young men for a two week psychological study of prison life
-Randomly assigned them to be either a prisoner or a guard, prisoners were referred to by number and not name
-by the second day guard began to treat prisoners, cruelly, and conduct punishments, prisoners started a rebellion and guards became increasingly crazy
-D individual and role expectations lead participants to conform to their roles in a harmful way, the experiment showed how powerful situational factors can be in shaping human behaviour, pushing ordinary individuals to act in extreme and harmful ways
Criticism : application difficulties, selection, bias, experimental participation
Group think
-when a group of people focus too much on getting along and agreeing with each other so much so that they stop thinking critically or questioning the decision is being made, the group just wants to avoid conflict and keep things harmonious
-doesn’t always lead to bad decisions, but does routine may lead to overconfidence
“ obviously we all agree, we can’t possibly fail, oh you think you know better than the rest of us”
Prosocial behaviour and altruism
Alturism: helping others for unselfish reasons
-empathy affects our likelihood of helping
-Situational influences can impact helping:
-when you can’t escape the situation, like driving or running away
-Characteristics of the victim like helping someone with a cane versus helping a drunk person
-Our current mood
-Enlightenment affect
-learning about psychological research can change real world behaviour for the better
-learning about the bystander effect makes the effect less likely
Aggression
-behavior intended to harm either physically or verbally
-aggression has been linked to
-Frustration
-media influences
-Temperature
-aggressive cues
-interpersonal provocation: strike out aggressively against those who have provoked us by saying, insulting, threatening, or hitting us
-Arousal; when our autonomic nervous system is hyped up, we may mistakenly attribute this arousal to anger leading us to act aggressively
-alcohol and other drugs
Differences in aggression
-certain personality, traits, influence aggression (negativity, and impulsivity)
-Males tend to engage in more physical aggression, whereas females tend to engage in more relational aggression
-form of indirect aggression, prevalent in girls involving spreading boomers gossiping and using nonverbal put downs for the purpose of social manipulation
Attitude
-attitude: belief that includes an emotional component
-attitudes reflect how we feel about an issue or a person
-attitudes do strongly correlate with behaviour
-they are highly accessible (come to mind easily)
-they have been stable for a long time
Belief
-A belief is a conclusion regarding factual evidence
Attitude change
-cognitive dissonance: unpleasant state tension between two opposing thoughts
-because we dislike this tension, we are motivated to reduce or eliminated
-we can reduce the conflict between two cognitions by changing the first cognition, changing the second cognition, or introducing a third cognition that resolves the conflict
Self perception theory
-theory that we acquire our attitudes by observing our behaviours
-Saying you like the task when you really didn’t because you don’t want to appear inconsistent
Impression management theory
-Theory we don’t really change our attitude but report that we have changed them
Ex: don’t want to appear inconsistent so you tell the experiment you enjoy the task even though you didn’t
Roots to persuasion
-dual processes model says that there are two pathways to persuading others
- Central route: focuses on informational content
- Peripheral content: focusses on the surface aspects of the argument.
-more likely to take this route when we’re not motivated enough to weigh the information carefully and don’t have the ability to do so
Persuasion techniques
- Foot in the door: starts with a small request and move to a larger one (asking someone to volunteer for just one hour and then building it up to more)
- Door in the face technique: making an unreasonable large request before making a small request. We’re hoping to have granted. (asking for $100 to charity before asking for a small one like $10.)
-effective for getting people to agree to requests - Low technique starts with a low price and then adds on all the desirable options.
- But you are free technique: persuasive technique in which we convince someone to perform a favour for us by telling them they’re free not to do it
Characteristics of the persuader
We’re more likely to swallow a persuasive message if famous or attractive people deliver it
-more likely to believe it if someone credible is delivering it (doctors, pharmacists)
-more likely to believe it if it’s similar to us
