Exam 4 Flashcards
(100 cards)
Social psychology
The study of how people think/feel/behave in regard to others and how individual thought is affected by others
Attributions
How people explain the causes of behavior 2 types: -internal/dispositional/personal -external/situational (Fritz Heiders big insight)
Fundamental attribution error
Tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences on others behaviors
-also called correspondence bias
Ex. Someone driving crazy and you don’t know why
Self-serving bias
People tend to make internal attributions for positive outcomes and blame negative outcomes on external causes Why? -self-esteem -our efforts -extends to in-groups
Attitude
General evaluations people hold in regard to themselves, others, objects, events, or ideas
-often influenced by beliefs
-for choosing favorable/unfavorable
Ex. Whether you like the president
Petty and Cacioppo
Said people do not always process communications in the same way
- Central and peripheral route to persuasion
- motivation+ability = route u take
- attitudes affect actions
Foot in the door technique
Start with small request and work up to big request
-actions affect attitudes (also role playing)
Cognitive dissonance theory
Three basic ideas:
-people are motivated to be consistent in their attitudes and behaviors
-behaving inconsistent with attitude leads to tension (this is cognitive dissonance)
-we are motivated to reduce dissonance by changing attitude or behavior
Ex. Patty Hearst or Boring study
How to reduce dissonance
- Convince self that behavior is consistent with attitude
- Minimize the importance of the inconsistency
- Change behavior(hardest)
- Add in consonant cognitions or subtract dissonant cognitions
- Change attitude
Chamaeleon affect
People mimic without knowing
- people mimic people they like more
- social influence is automatic
Three types of social influence
Conformity, compliance, and obedience
Conformity
A change in behavior or attitude brought about by a desire to follow the police or standards of others
Ex. Asch’s line judgement
-increases with group size(4), unamity, friends
-increase w easy tasks +low importance
-decrease with hard task and high importance
Compliance
Yielding to a direct, explicit appeal meant to produce certain behavior or agreement to a particular point of view
Obedience
A change in behavior due to commands of others
-Milgram’s shock study
Informational social influence
Using information of others to understand ambiguous situations
- to be accurate
- leads to private acceptance
- reason we conform
Normative social influence
Conformity for social approval
- to avoid conflict
- Norms
- leads to public compliance
- reason we conform
- aschs study
Influences on obedience
- Immediacy of victim
- Immediacy of authority
- Foot in door
- Responsibility passed on
- Trust of test
- Rebellious model
(Gender and type of pleas did not help)
Social facilitation
An increase in performance when in the presence of others (easy task)
Social inhibition
A decrease in performance when in the presence of others
Deinduviduation
Losing ones sense of personal identity, which makes it easier to behave in ways inconsistent with ones normal values
Reasons:
-makes people feel less accountable
-distracts from self values
Idea: being in a group or crowd undermines constraints of social norms
Stereotypes
A generalization about a group where characteristics are assigned to all members regardless of actual variation
Prejudice
Attitude towards a group of people based solely on the people
Ex. Racism
-can bias behavior
Discrimination
Unjustified negative behavior toward a member of a group bc of their membership
Social roots of predjudice
Belief in just world
Realistic group conflict-conflict bc of scarce resources
Ingroup and outgroup- favoring own group
-can be explicit or implicit(automatic)
