exam 4 Flashcards
social psych & Kurt Lewin
- Humans are fundamentally social creatures – complex communication has contributed to evolutionary success
- Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) – behaviour is a function of the person and the social environment; not a vacuum
synchrony
social norms
social roles
- experiment
Synchrony – when 2 individuals’ speech, language, and physiological activity become similar during social interaction
a. Mimicry – copying the behaviours, emotional displays, and facial expressions of others
- Usually unconscious
- Serves as a ‘social glue’; helps coordinate behaviour in social settings
Social norms – guidelines for how to behave in social contexts; usually ‘unwritten’, implicit, or implied
a. Followed due to social pressures; to obtain social approval
b. To avoid ostracism – ignored or excluded from social contact; powerful form of social pressure; could result from not following norms
- Leads to – anger, sad, low self-esteem, self-confidence, violence (more extreme)
Social roles – guidelines that apply to specific positions within the group (ex. parent, child, student, professor)
a. Ex. Stanford prison experiment – people were picked randomly as prisoners and guards, heavily influenced their behaviour
- Represents how roles taken on influence our outward behaviour and sense of self
groupwork effects
- Social loafing – a member of the group puts in less effort into working on a task than others
a. Relevant to any type of task (ex. physical, cognitive, creative), or group type
b. Factors that encourage loafing
- Low efficacy beliefs – ‘I don’t know where/how to start, the task is too hard’
- Believing one’s contribution isn’t important – ‘my input doesn’t matter, why contribute’
- Not caring about outcome – ‘I don’t identify with this group; this isn’t important to me’
- Feeling like other’s aren’t trying either – ‘they aren’t trying, why should I’ - Social facilitation – a group members performance is affected the presence of others; better or worse; usually making you try harder (ex. Cyclists riding faster when racing against each other; ants digging more when working with other ants)
a. Presence of others – may impair performance when the task is hard or skill level is low
- Creates emotional arousal – occupies our attention; more of a distraction for novices than it is for experts
b. Skill level – determines performance
- If you’re really good – excitement of being watched; can improve performance
- If you’re not good – harder to filter out distraction or use it in a positive way - Conformity – change in behaviour to fit in with a group; can be unintentional; similar in some ways to mimicry
a. Solomon Asch conformity studies (1950s) – participants answer questions based on confederates’ answers to a task (standard lines and comparison lines)
b. Reasons for conforming
- Normative influence – social pressure to adopt a group’s perspective in order to be accepted by the group; ‘public compliance’
- Informational influence – genuine interest in the information provided by the group; ‘private acceptance’
c. Personal and situational factors:
Less likely to conform:
- Only one other person is in the vicinity
- Only strangers in the room
- Extremely clear and simple tasks
- There is one other nonconformist in the group
- Responses are anonymous – this is why it’s important in research
More likely to conform:
- Larger group in the vicinity
- There are friends, families, and acquaintances
- The task is unclear/ambiguous
- Others conform first
- Responses are made public - Groupthink – decision making problem in which group members avoid arguments and strive for agreement
a. Doesn’t always make good decisions
- May minimize/ignore potential problems or risks
- May settle on the ‘easy’ solution too quickly, without considering other/better options
- May lead to overconfidence, and less time considering consequences of a decision, learning from mistakes
b. Usually occurs when there is a strong leader in the group who is unwilling to accept ideas of other group members, or when all group members have very similar ideals
Obedience to authority and Stanley Milgrim
- People will obey authority figures – certain factors mediate this relationship such as others objecting
- Obedience, authority, compliance – all topics of interest following WWII
Stanley Milgram obedience studies (1963, 1974) – tested the effects of authority figure; learner gets connected to shocks, teacher shocks leaner when they forgot a word; each time they got it wrong, shock increases; ‘learner’ wasn’t actually getting shocked; tested to see how long ‘teacher’ would shock learner when told to do so
- Large amount of cases – teacher continued to shock learner to the point where learner stopped responding; continued to shock even after
- Variations
a. Lowered obedience by 30% - physical distance to authority & subject:
o Experimenter gave orders from another room
o Teacher and learner were in the same room
o Required teacher to physically shock learner
b. 3 teachers (2 confederates) vs one ‘experimenter’ – when confederates decided to stop, the participant agreed 90% of the time
o Most effective
o You’re more likely to disobey authority when others are disobeying authority with you
The bystander effect
- explanations
- kitty genovese
- study
(bystander apathy) – an individual is less likely to help when there are other people present, who are also not helping
Explanations
a. Normative influences – socially mediated and influenced
- What happens if I try to get help and embarrass myself by doing the wrong thing?
b. Informational influences – you’re not understanding the situation because other people aren’t doing anything either; trust that other people know things that you don’t
- What if others know something I don’t? am I overreacting?
c. Diffusion of responsibility – reduced personal responsibility that a person feels when more people are present in a situation
- If you’re the only one – you are the only one who can help
Ex. kitty Genovese (1964) – woman was stabbed outside of apartment building; screaming; a large number of residents reported hearing cries for help but it took a long time for anyone to call the police
Latane & Darley (1968) – participants engaged in conversation with 1, 2, or 3 others (actually confederates) via intercom; during the conversation one of the confederates reported having a seizure
The more confederates involved in the conversation, the longer it took the participant to react
a. 1 on 1 – participant got help right away
b. 3 – participant took longer to get help
Not always the case – ex. carnival ride starts to tip & crowd runs to hold so it wouldn’t fall
Altruism
- evolutionary
- ants
helping others in need without receiving or expecting reward for doing so
Evolution – seems counterintuitive to natural/sexual selection competition
o Kin selection – strategy that favours reproductive success of a relative; if you put yourself in danger but are saving a relative, some percentage of your genes are still being passed on
Ex. Hamilton’s rule (depends on how genetically related they are), green beard gene, etc.
Ex. ants – large portion of colony are not related to the queen but go out of their way to die for the queen
Is there such a thing as truly altruistic behaviour – is everything we do for others, on some level, because we will get something out of it in some form
social cognition
combines influence of social context and cognition (thought process)
dual processing models
models of behaviour that account for both explicit and implicit processes
o Explicit – conscious thought; deliberate, effortful, relatively slow, under intentional control
o Implicit – unconscious thought; intuitive, automatic, effortless, very fast, operate mostly outside of intentional control; lower level processing
Can lead to bias and stereotypes
o The 2 major processes interact with each other – our implicit processes influence how we explicitly explore situations
schemas & implicit bias
- heuristics
organized clusters of knowledge, beliefs, and expectations; quick intuitive implicit thoughts and unconscious processes
- Related to certain relationships – will be faster if mapped closer together; causes quick associations/biases
Heuristics – ‘best guess’ problem solving strategies based on prior experiences; assumptions
o Economically viable – allows quicker processing; can be very beneficial
o Aren’t always the best answer – closer associations are often stereotypes
(people were quicker able to make stereotypical connections than unbiased ones)
person perception
- evolutionary
- counteracting
- self-fulfilling prophesies
process by which individuals categorize and form judgements about other people; can occur very quickly, unconsciously (ex first impressions)
Thin slices of behaviour (small samples)
o We generalize to larger things – ex. judgements about sexual orientation, political affiliation
o We make snap, often accurate, assumptions about a person
Evolutionary – can make quick judgements in dangerous situations
o Today – still useful; can also get us in trouble because we are filling in portions of our schema; HERE
Explicitly examining our automatic thought processes can help counteract this
Self-fulfilling prophesies – a first impression or expectations affects one’s behaviour -> then affects other persons behaviour -> leading to confirmation of original impression, expectations
o Harmful stereotypes made about you will influence behaviour towards you, which in turn influences your behaviour (ex. ‘women are bad at math’; don’t go into STEM)
o HERE
self concept
- related to
We tend to view the world and other people in it from the perspective of our own ‘self concept’
The way I am -> the way people should be (I think therefore I am)
- Related to child development – aren’t able to view from others perspective
- If this is the way I see the world – why would other people not see it the same way
- ‘us’ vs ‘them’
biases from self concept
False consensus effect – tendency to project one’s self concept onto the social world (I feel this way, so everyone else probably does or should too)
Naïve realism – assumptions that our perceptions of reality are accurate, and we see things the way they are
Self-serving biases – biased ways of processing self-relevant information to enhance our positive self-evaluation
- Ex. taking credit for success, blaming other people, circumstances, or bad luck for our failures
- Better than average effect – we assume we are above average at skills/qualities that are important to us
internal vs external attributions
-FAE - fundamental attribution error
Internal attributions – dispositional attributions; explaining behaviour of another person in terms of innate quality; default when we talk about others
- Ex. that person made an error because they’re a bad driver
External attributions – situational attributions; explaining the behaviour of another person as the result of the situations
- Ex. that person may have been distracted or were tired
Fundamental attribution error (FAE) – tendency to over-emphasize internal (dispositional) attributions and under-emphasize external (situational) when explaining other people’s behaviour
- Individualistic cultures (ex. Canada, USA) more likely to make this error
HERE
ingroups and outgroups
Ingroups – groups someone feels positively toward and identifies with (ex. family, home team, coworkers)
- Ingroup bias – extension of a positive bias toward the self to include one’s ingroups; motivation to view ingroups as superior to outgroups
Outgroups – ‘other’ groups someone doesn’t identify with; or dis-identifies with
Even when grouped based on seemingly meaningless, random criteria – people demonstrate preference for ingroup and demonstrate prejudice and discrimination towards outgroups
improving intergroup relationships
Evidence suggest people’s implicit networks can be ‘reprogrammed’ with practice – helps avoid stereotypes
- Ex. training to replace internal/dispositional attributions with external/situational attributions
Contact hypothesis – social contact between members of different groups is extremely important to overcoming prejudice; can’t use thin slices of behaviour
Especially true if:
• Contact occurs in settings with equal status and power
• Meeting involves cooperating on tasks or pursuing common goals
stereotypes
discrimination
prejudice
- association tests & brain region
Stereotypes – a cognitive structure (ex. schema) that guides how we process info about our social world; set of beliefs about the characteristics of a specific social group
o Can be positive or neg (pos can still be harmful – not an accurate information source)
Based on our stereotypes we have
o Prejudice – emotionally charged response toward outgroup members; includes holding neg attitudes and making critical judgements of other groups
o Discrimination – behaviour that disadvantages members of a certain social group
o Racism, classism, sexism
Measuring prejudice – concepts linked within a schema/are categorized together will illicit faster response times
a. Implicit association tests (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998) – measures how fast people can respond to images or words flashed on a computer screen
- Reaction time scores correlate with activation in the amygdala (emotion processing, fear response)
- Ex. reaction times are faster when grouping positive words and white people together and Black people with neg words that vice versa
4 common approaches to changing peoples behaviour
o Technological – making desired behaviours easier to accomplish, undesired behaviours more difficult; advances in technology help make things easier
o Legal – creating policies and laws to encourage positive behaviours, discourage negative behaviours
o Economic – providing financial incentives and penalties (ex. taxes, pricing)
o Social – raising awareness, education, illustration of pos and neg outcomes and related behaviours
elaboration likelihood model
Dual process model (explicit & implicit) of persuasion that predicts whether factual info or other types of info will be the most influential
Dependant on how interested audience is and how much time they have to consider it
o Rational explicit thinking – when an audience is motivated/has interest in topic & has time to make a decision
o Implicit, less rational – when an audience is not interested and has to make a quick decision
Central route to persuasion – focuses on facts, logics, and content of the message
o Audience needs both motivation and time to listen and think rationally about the message
Peripheral route to persuasion – focuses on the features of the issue/presentation that are not factual; fanciness that brings people in if they lack interest; style vs substance of argument
o Helps you get your ‘foot in the door’ – then bring facts
Ex. grabbing attention with batman ad about milk
Ex. attractiveness of the person who delivers the message; number of arguments that are made
Construal level theory
information affects us differently depending on our psychological distance from the information
Messages that are made to feel more personally relevant/closer are more successful motivator
o Ex. geographic distance, temporal distance (time), social distance, degree of specificity, certainty
We will be more interested in things that are relevant to us – ‘happening to people like you in your neighbourhood’
Identifiable victim effect
People are more powerfully moved to action by the story of a single, suffering person that information about a whole group of people (stats)
Dual processing model
o Experiential system – operates implicitly, quickly, and intuitively predominantly emotional (emotional story from individual)
Ex. intuition and feelings
o Analytic system – operates explicitly, slower and more methodical, uses logic to understand reality (stats)
Ex. understanding
Ex. Mahala in India – girls were unable to go to school for years before her; she brought attention and caring to issue
Attitude Inoculation
strategy for strengthening attitudes and making them more resistant to change
Give 2 argument
o First – audience is exposed to a weak argument against the message then
o Second – audience is exposed to a strong response in favour of the message
Similar to how a flu shot protects from the flu by introducing a weakened version of the virus, allowing the immune system to develop antibodies to protect against the real, stronger virus
Ex. convincing teens not to do drugs
o First – feels fun and cool; pressures
o Second – unhealthy and addictive
Tips for successfully communicating a message when using central vs peripheral route
Central route – make sure the message is being presented, clearly, in a manner accessible to all people
o People don’t like what they don’t understand – confusion, cognitively challenging topics can promote feelings of insecurity, frustration, and apathy in the listener
o Ex. the curse of knowledge – when you know a lot, you assume other people do as well
Peripheral route – use experts or authority figures, high status individuals; use likeable communicators (ex. attractiveness)
o Social validation – ‘other people are listening to this message, so should you’; new York times #1 bestsellers, billboard 100 charts, petitions; If 5000 people like it, 5000 people can’t be wrong
Sales based on reciprocity and consistency
both are natural behaviours and influences that can be used for persuasion
Reciprocity – strong social norm to repay others:
‘door in the face technique’
a. Asking for something relatively big
• Ex. would you like to buy 10 vacuums – no, slam the door
b. Then asking for something relatively small – usually the goal from the beginning
• Ex. one vacuum for a trial period – ‘catching them before they close the door’
c. You’ve made a request, respecting their answer, then making a ‘sacrifice’ by downgrading their own desires, you must repay their sacrifice
• Ex. The least you can do is buy their one vacuum; salesman usually comes in trying to sell only one vacuum
Consistency – hard to say no after saying yes
‘foot in the door technique’
a. Making a simple request – following up with larger requests
b. Ex. Since they’ve already said yes to signing the petition – obviously feel strongly, donate an hour of time to volunteer – asks you to start volunteering more
• Can utilize the door in the face – initially asking 4 days a week, then going down to 1 day a week
cognitive dissonance
Humans need to be psychologically consistent
Cognitive dissonance – inner tension, discomfort felt when we hold inconsistent beliefs
Motivates us to reduce this tension – we make decisions and find information that helps ease cognitive dissonance
- Confirmation bias – only searching for evidence that will confirm one’s beliefs
- Self-justification = justifying or excusing one’s behaviour
Can lead to extreme beliefs – once you make a decision on one side of the pyramid, you continually make decisions (more significant) that justify previous decisions you’ve made
smoking
- health risks
- media exposure & study
- efforts to prevent
one of the most widely used studied health behaviours; 19.9% of canadian adults smoke (2012)
Associated with o Lung, mouth, throat cancer o Heart disease o Pulmonary disease (ex. emphysema) o Life expectancy is 7-14 years shorter
Media exposure - Exposure to movies featuring smoking associated with smoking in adolescence – occurs even when controlled for confounding variables such as SES, personality, and parental or peer pressure
a. Priming effects – watching scenes that involve smoking increases the likelihood of smoking after viewing the scene
- Study – watching video of smoking; participants are more likely to take a smoke break if you’re a smoker
b. Increase in prevalence of smoking in movies from 1990-2007 – associated with increase in adolescent smoking rates
• Opposite pattern is observed as smoking in movies decreases – adolescents smoking rates decrease
c. Correlation doesn’t always suggest causation – relationship does still exist & creates big push to get smoking out of movies
Efforts to prevent
4 approaches to changing behaviour – technological, legal, economic, social
- Banning in public places – reduces the risk of second hand smoke exposure
- Increasing taxes on tobacco – raises funds for healthcare and anti-smoking campaigns
- Text/pictorial warnings of packaging
- Pictures are more effective – 40% Canadian smokers report the graphic warning motivated them to quit
- Construal level theory – the closer you bring an issue to someone, the more likely they are to take action; make it personal, current, and salient
obesity
- how many Canadians
- BMI
- health risks
Obesity – energy (food) intake exceeds energy expenditure; 24% of Canadian adults are obese (2011)
Body mass index (BMI) – stats used to estimate a healthy body weight given an individual’s height
a. BMI = weight / (height^2)
<18.5 = underweight
18.5-24.9 = healthy range
25-29 = overweight
>30 = obesity
b. Usually only useful when studying large sample sizes – different shapes and sizes; individuals could have higher BMIs for many reasons while still being healthy (ex. body builder)
Rates of obesity increasing earlier in life – early onset of associated health problems
Associated with o Cardiovascular disease o Diabetes o Osteoarthritis o Cancer
genetics and body weight
twin/family/adoption studies suggest genes account for 50-90% of the variation in body weight
Hundreds of specific genes contribute to body weight – influences body type, metabolism, and other physiological processes
- Ex. “fat mass and obesity related (FTO)” gene – associated with elevated food intake
set point theory
Set point – hypothesized mechanisms that serve to keep the body weight around a physiological programmed level; Initially controlled by genetic mechanisms
Set point shifts upwards/downwards with weight gain/loss – environmental factors influencing genetic set point
a. Physiological processes (ex metabolism) then work to maintain the new set point
• If set point goes up because of food intake – your metabolism has adjusted to new set point
• Can explain why significant weight loss can be hard – your body is trying to maintain set point while you’re trying to change it
causes of obesity
- The sedentary lifestyle – types of leisure activities can have significant influence on weight
a. Adults – hours watching TV positively correlated with obesity rates
• Not the case for hours spent on the computer – varying amounts of mental engagement/stimulation
b. Children – hours spent watching TV AND on video games/computer both positively correlated with obesity rates
Social factors – family influences
a. Children typically eat the type of food provided by parents
b. Certain families will restrict/limit certain types of food
c. Eating patterns developed in childhood are generally carried into adulthood
Obese individuals
a. Pay more attention to food cues
b. Double reward in brain during consumption and digestion – show greater activation in anticipation of food reward
c. Taste and taste processing is primed along with emotional anticipation
• Primary gustatory cortex – perception of taste
• Somatosensory cortex – processing of sensory info
• Anterior cingulate gyrus – emotion, attention and mood
d. Restrictive diets can actually increase a food’s reinforcing properties
psychological focus on motivations to change behaviour associated with weight loss
Psychology focuses on effective motivation to change behaviour – ex. eating healthy, exercise
Benefit of positive thinking – focusing on positive, self-defining values associated with weight loss and lower BMI
- Comparison group focussing on other values (not positive self-definitions) did not demonstrate these changes
Stress reduction – reduced caloric intake
- Allostasis – stress causes body to ‘prepare’ for future stresses
Mindfulness – intense focus on/awareness of one’s present state, senses and feelings; correlation with healthy eating habits
COVID & obesity
Online survey completed by UK adults during April-may 2020 – during lockdown
- Negative changes in eating and physical behaviour (ex. snacking more frequently)
- Barriers to weight mgmt. (ex. problems with motivation and control around food; no sports games; no gyms open)
Higher BMI associated with lower levels of physical activity and diet quality & higher levels of overeating – those who came into lockdown with higher BMI may have had more pronounced issues
Decline in mental health predictive of more overeating and lower physical activity
poverty SES high vs low
- social and health effects
Positive correlation between health and wealth
High SES
- Wealthy individuals experience better access to healthcare, greater sense of control over their environment
- Gym memberships, healthy food, after school sports, nutritionists, time to dedicate to exercise and healthy eating
Low SES
a. Loss of control associated with poverty, discrimination, and other social stressors
• Self determination theory – psychological wellbeing is influenced by degree of control over one’s behaviour
b. Higher rates of depression, anxiety and other health problem
• Greater risk of developing heart disease – combination of stress, low nutrition diets
SES and psych distress during covid
Low SES individuals more likely to
- Live in overcrowded accommodation, limited access to outdoor space
- Unable to work from home
- Experience unstable work conditions and incomes
- Limited access to healthcare
- Suffer from health conditions that are high Covid risk factors
Lower annual household income associated with higher psych stress during the pandemic
- Increased stress – same effects; allostasis,, overeating, etc.
SES increases prevalence of depressive symptoms during Covid crisis
- Must take into account financial stability
“were all in this together” – bullshit
- Covid has widened the gap even more
- Is not the ‘great equalizer’
discrimination
- effects
- covid
Discrimination – behaviours that disadvantage a particular group; social interactions, systemic and societal; effects certain groups of people
Prejudice and discrimination associated with
o Increased BP and HR
o Greater risk of unhealthy behaviours such as smoking and substance abuse
o Prolonged stress response, increased levels of stress hormones (ex. cortisol)
COVID
a. Marginalization and discrimination in the workforce makes certain groups more susceptible
Ex. service, travel, entertainment, retail industries – employ higher percentages of women, Black, Latinx, Native American
b. Survey of Chinese American uni students – higher perceived discrimination and anxiety during the pandemic
- Stronger link between perceived discrimination and anxiety during the pandemic (more strongly related during pandemic than before)
- Link is mediated by negative media exposure
social isolation effects
Family and social environment – we have a need to feel related to and feel close
Long term isolation can be as dangerous as smoking, obesity, high blood pressure – takes toll on mental and physical health
social resiliency
Social resilience – ability to keep positive relationships and to endure, recover from social isolation and life stressors
o People with higher social resilience – helps protect from negative health consequences associated with loneliness and social isolation
long term health benefits of marriage
married people – live longer and have better mental/physical health than non married adults
a. social support and combined resources
• may notice health issues you do not
• close, intimate relationships are good for wellbeing
b. also applies to other long term close relationships
non-married – higher rates of death due to heart disease, some forms of cancer, cirrhosis of the liver
- unmarried women 50% more likely
- unmarried men 250% more likely
marital/relationship problems – associated with higher rates of depression and physical illness
- Gottman lab – 4 horseman of divorce apocalypse
- It needs to be a healthy relationships for health benefits
