Final - Readings Flashcards

Question

Perceivers categorize others into social groups unintentionally upon seeing ----------------.

Answer 1

their faces!!

Answer 2

unconciously! Just like in obvious social categories, people categorize members of ambiguous groups with very little effort!! (categorization is no different when making snap judgements vs deliberate decisions)

Answer 3

65% People often underestimate their beliefs about their own accuracy → suggests that people are not conscious of the extent to which they categorize others. Ex. “gaydar” or ability to identify someone’s political leanings at a glance.

Answer 4

Participants tasked with identifying men’s race and judging their likeability of their faces The ratings of likeability diverged not only to the target’s race but also their sexual orientation (even though it was never mentioned).

Answer 5

1. People’s ability to learn the features that best indicate group membership 2. Various motivations support categorizations → ex. drive to learn valuable info, use cognitive resources efficiently, and simplify the world. 3. Individual experience interacting with members of a given category (more time to learn facial features relevant for distinguishing the group’s boundaries)

Answer 6

in group!! Ex. Black perceivers pay greater attention to features that vary more among Black individuals (ex. hairstyle), and White perceivers pay greater attention to features that vary more among White individuals (ex. iris color)

Answer 7

helps explain how categorization and experience interact to explain differences in memory for in-group vs. out-group faces. People first look at the facial features that differnciate categories, and only sometimes do people individuate others and pay attention to their specific features. We pay attention to people's features when they belong to our in group and also when that group membership is especially relevant (ex. gay men have a better memory for other gay men)

Answer 8

People with stronger need for structure and certainty tend to organize social information into categories with simpler internal structures. Also may be uncomfortable when there are no clear social categories.

Answer 9

People use the same facial features to stereotype and form prejudiced beliefs about others as they do to categorize them! Affects behavioural inferences like hiring decisons and court verdicts: Ex. because of pervasive stereotypes that construe African Americans as dangerous, judges and juries deliver more severe criminal sentences to individuals with more Afrocentric facial features

Answer 10

ESSENTIALISM Ex. an uncle observing his nephew smiling while doing math homework may infer that boys like math. People do more than make inferences about the group members’ attributes when this information reaches the category level (e.g., inferring that an unfamiliar boy also likes math), they also draw conclusions regarding how these traits came about (e.g., boys like math because they have a natural aptitude for numbers) *Thus, people often come to believe that an “essence” shared by all category members causes these properties*

Answer 11

Serves as the first line of defense against pathogens with mechanisms that detect the presence of pathogens in the immediate environment and we avoid. The system is overly sensitive to cues, which can cause aversive responses to things (including people) when there is actually no pathogen threat. System is also flexible → more strong avoidance responses happen when perceivers are (or perceive to be) more vulnerable to pathogen infection.

Answer 12

1. Detect cues from the presence of infectious pathogens in immediate environment 2. Trigger disease-relevant emotional and cognitive responses 3. Facilitate behavioural avoidance of pathogen infection

Answer 13

“Smoke detector principle” = smoke detectors are sensitive to anything that superficially resembles smoke from fire - prone to lots of false-positive errors (annoying, but not fatal) to “protect us” from false-negative errors (alarm not going off, could be fatal) **The behavioural immune system is oversensitive just like a smoke detector, by making lots of false-positive errors. **

Answer 14

Some individuals are especially vulnerable to pathogen infection and will pay more attention to cues, triggering more aversive responses.

Answer 15

There are functional benefits associated with detection and avoidance of things, there are also costs. The ratio of costs to benefits is a function of an **individual’s vulnerability to infection**: * When relatively invulnerable to infection, benefits from behavioral avoidance may be outweighed by its costs. * When highly vulnerable to infection, those costs may be outweighed by the benefits of behavioral avoidance. ^characterized by functional flexibility!

Answer 16

- Evoked from behaviours that violate normative expectations in areas associated with disease transmission (ex. Food preparation, personal hygiene, sexual interaction). - Disgust responses are based on basic principles of contagion (the role of physical contact in the spread of disease)

Answer 17

People are disgusted by things that pose a real risk of infection (ex. Dog feces), but also disgusted by things that pose no risk but resemble a risk of infection (ex. Chocolate fudge sculpted to look like dog feces). *disgust is also consistent with funtional flexibility (stronger disgust-eliciting cues when more vulnerable to infection)

Answer 18

EXTRAVERSION People who have a higher sensitivity to disgust experience the cost of engaging in less social interaction Study: pathogen salience caused participants to report lower levels of extraversion and engage in avoidance motor movements when presented with pictures of people.

Answer 19

PREJUDICES Because of the smoke-detector principle → prejudicial responses rise from perceiving people, who arent actually sick, but who are **characterized by some superficial anomaly in physical appearance.** Therefore, reason for more prejudice againt people with disabilities, obese people and the elderly, also contributes to ethnocentrism and xenophobia

Answer 20

the behavioural immune system due to functional flexibility being more vulnerable to sickness when pregnant causes prejudices against people who pose a risk of disease, which are usually people with different norms/look different (people from other cultures)

Answer 21

When pathogens were salient (more pronounced), Canadian participants were more inclined to spend government money to recruit immigrants from familiar places, to exclude those from foreign (and perceived to be more “diseasey”) places.

Answer 22

Individualistic values are associated with increased risk of pathogen infection as there is a tolerance for deviance from norms! Therefore, - Collectivistic value systems are especially likely to occur under ecological circumstances where there is high pathogen prevalence - Individualistic value systems are more likely to occur under ecological circumstances characterized by relatively lower pathogen prevalence.

Answer 23

Extraversion is associated with social benefits but also with disease-specific costs So... in countries characterized by relatively higher prevalence of pathogens, the population is likely to be characterized by lower levels of extraversion.

Answer 24

Openness to experience is associated with risk-taking and willingness to deviate from social norms, causes more opportunity for pathogen transmission. So... in countries characterized by relatively higher prevalence of pathogens, the population is likely to be characterized by relatively lower levels of openness

Answer 25

a model that explains the two dimentions that persist in social cognition when making sense of individuals/groups 1. perceived warmth (trustworthiness, friendliness) 2. perceived competence (capability, assertiveness)

Answer 26

warmth (who is friend or foe) competence (capable, agentic)

Answer 27

All-good in groups = high-high all-bad outgroups = low-low. Two additional intergroup stereotypes **(ambivalent quadrants)** where groups are warm and incompetent, or cold and competent.

Answer 28

The default of society is people that are both high in warmth and competence → people report pride and admiration for these groups. (usually people in US or Canadians)

Answer 29

The group stereotype for low competence and low warmth is the lowest in society → report disgust and contempt from these groups. Often Mexicans and Africans fit into this stereotype group

Answer 30

stereotypes that are high on one dimension and low on the other. Ex. warm but incompetent (irish, italians) or cold but competent (Asians, Jews, British, Germans)

Answer 31

Stereotypic warmth → based on a group’s perceived cooperativeness and competitiveness - Often measured as both economic interdependence (zero-sum resources) and symbolic values (shared vs. conflicting). Stereotypic competence → based on perceived status - Often measured by items like “How prestigious are the jobs generally held by….?” and “How economically successful have…been”

Answer 32

Surverys Comparisions (comparing SCM among countries) Labratory (irl lab encounters support SCM labels/categories of competence) Behavioural Approaches (ex. various biobehavioral data converge for the envy quadrant - rich people and business people).

Answer 33

the ambivalent quadrents (high competence, low warmth OR low competence, high warmth) Ex. United States, Latin America, South Africa

Answer 34

either all-good insiders (high warmth, high competence), or all-bad outsiders (low warmth, low competence) Ex. Scandinavia, Australia, much of Europe. Have a larger inclusive in-group (all-good) and one smaller cluster of out-groups (all-bad). Also affects peaceful countries as well → extreme conflict also creates a simple us/them dynamic

Answer 35

Ambivalence!

Answer 36

Show out-groups similar to Western ones → but the societal in-groups (citizens, members of one’s hometown) appear in the moderate middle, which is consistent with Asian cultural modesty norms. In-groups (perceived high warmth and competence) are not praised as much in Asia, but more expected as the norm!

Answer 37

envy quadrant (high competence, low warmth) (as demonstrated in behavioural approaches)

Answer 38

Homeless people and drug-addicted people (the low competence, low warmth contempt quadrant) fail to activate the brain’s medial prefrontal cortex (**that is implicated in social cognition**) Disgust ratings and insula activation also fit this quadrant. People at the bottom of the competence-status dimension are devalued as expendable, especially if also viewed as having low warmth

Answer 39

the "pity" quadrent (high warmth, low competence) This category did not use to occur --> century-old Italian Fascist magazines revealed this.

Answer 40

subgroups subtypes of men and women, ethnic subtypes, and LGBTQ+ subtypes Ex. the overarching category of Indigenous Peopls is spread across the SCM, with different dimensions arising for different people/groups.

Answer 41

**communion and agency** Communion = warmth and morality Agency = competence and assertiveness → they separately and together show the influence of communion (morality) in impressions of others and the importance of agency to self concept

Answer 42

compensation effect!! when one group is seen as high in one dimension (competence or warmth), the other group is stereotypically assumed to be high in the opposite dimension (warmth or competence). This comparison creates a balancing act and contributes to ambient stereotypes within the SCM (high on one, low on the other)

Answer 43

As women are stereotyped as warm but not competent, the compensation effect leads to the stereotype that men are competent but less warm, as men often are stereotyped as more authoritative and less emotionally expressive. This creates ambient stereotypes where women are expected to be more warm and not competent (pity quadrent), and men are expected to be more competent and less warm (envy quadrent).

Answer 44

Status readily translates into competence, as the SCM predicts. But a group’s beliefs do not translate directly into warmth but instead appear subjectively better or worse via the lens of **perceivers’ own beliefs.**

Answer 45

emotional prejudices Ex: A cooperative in-group’s outcome evokes pride, while a competitive out-group’s positive outcome provokes envy. Ex: An ally’s negative outcome evokes pity, whereas a competitor’s negative outcome provokes contempt. **These prejudiced emotions predict behaviour towards others better than stereotypes do!!**

Answer 46

Perceived social structural interdependence (cooperation-competition)

Answer 47

their status (prestige and power).

Answer 48

when individuals feel that they might be judged through the lens of a negative stereotype, they experience **reduced working memory** which hinders their ability to focus attention on goal-relevant tasks.

Answer 49

**People who care the most about doing well in the area that the task involves** (such as acedemics) Stereotype threat makes people who associate themselves strongly in an area question their self-perceptions: Ex. highly math-identified women and men completed a quick categorization task where they had to decide if they could see themselves in certain occupations → wanted to see how fast they responded to math careers, as those who said yes quickly likely have the strongest math self-concept. FINDING: Women became less confident in judgements when they were waiting to take a math test that **would be graded by a male.** (women felt uncertain about who they were and what they could do)

Answer 50

This evidence could be from: - their own behaviour (Am I making mistakes?) - internal experiences (Am I too anxious?) - other people's reactions (do they think I’m stupid?)

Answer 51

INTERNAL Feeling anxiety itself during performance can be readily interpreted as evidence of failure. Ex. women under stereotype threat were more likely to have their attention drawn toward anxiety-related stimuli than were women in a neutral condition (which lowered their working memory on a task).

Answer 52

Feeling anxiety during a test when confident is fine, but when anxiety is experienced with feelings of doubt, it causes a distraction. Example Finding → - Anxiety about an upcoming test predicted lower working memory, but only for those who were primed with thoughts of doubt. - When primed with thoughts of confidence, anxiety was unrelated to working memory. **Stereotype threat cues more self-doubt for minorities more than White people, but both groups still had performance deficits when doubt was primed.**

Answer 53

It can be broken when one's internal expereince is **reappraised** Ex. internal expereinces impacting performance can be limited if people are told that anxiety will not harm their performance --> helps to restore working memory GENERALLY: by reappraising emotions in general, the higher the sympathetic activation is going into the test, making people perform better.

Answer 54

a social behaviour that benefits other people or society as a whole (helping, donating, cooperating, volunteering, etc.).

Answer 55

**1. Prosocial behaviours** = any act designed to increase other’s well-being (cooperating with or sharing resources) **2. Prosocial preferences** = people’s preference for outcomes that benefit others or align with prosocial norms.

Answer 56

1. Behavioural signs of automaticity 2. Neural signatures of value 3. Early development

Answer 57

Prosociality It's widespead, nearly universal across cultures, and humans demonstrate prosociality greater than any other species.

Answer 58

Recent studies support an intuitive model of prosocial choices in the following ways: - People make prosocial decisions more quickly than selfish ones - Experimental manipulations known to reduce participant’s ability to exert control (ex. Time pressure, distraction), increase cooperative and prosocial behaviour. - Orienting people towards intuitive thinking and away from the exertion of reflective control increases cooperation. **All demonstrate that prosociality represents an intuitive, not effortfully controlled, form of decision-making.**

Answer 59

lateral prefrontal cortex & anterior cingulate cortex Prosocial choices FAIL to engage with these regions associated with control

Answer 60

One prototypical behaviour that does not require control is the pursuit of rewards like money or food → which produce activity in the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (associated with relatively intuitive reward seeking) Ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex are reliably engaged by a number of prosocial outcomes → suggests **that experience of reward may underlie prosocial preferences.** The same regions are activated when people make prosocial choices

Answer 61

Child development supports the intuitive model of prosocial behaviour as children produce fair choices before they are able to exert reflective control over their behavior. Prosocial behaviours occur even when behaviour is costly and children are not rewarded for doing so (providing rewards for prosociality can actually REDUCE helping behaviour)

Answer 62

it always is! People may intuitively tend towards selfishness and have to exert control to act prosocially (like the reflective model)

Answer 63

prosocial spending = spending money on other people People who prosocially spend more report more happiness, likely because it satisfies one or multiple core human needs (relatedness, comptetence, and autonomy)

Answer 64

People who spent the money on others reported happier moods over the course of the day than those who spent the money on themselves (the amount of money, $5 or $20, did not have an effect on this happiness) When the study was described to others they predicted people who spent the money on themselves would be happier → **suggests that people’s daily spending choices may be influenced by flawed intuitions about the relationship between money and happiness.**

Answer 65

Yes A study tested this in 136 countries. In 120 of them, there was a positive relationship between giving and happiness.

Answer 66

Participants told to spend money on a “goody bag”: - Half of the participants were told that they themselves would receive it (personal spending) - Other half were told that a sick child in a local hospital would receive it (prosocial spending). FINDING: participants in both countries reported a happier mood if they bought the goody bag for the sick child → **specifically notable as more than 20% of the South African sample reported not having enough money to buy food themselves.**

Answer 67

The emotional benefits of prosocial spending!

Answer 68

Self-determination theory = human well-being depends on the satisfaction of three basic needs: relatedness, competence, and autonomy. *Prosocial spending is most likely (over personal spending) to produce happiness under conditions that satisfy these 3 needs.

Answer 69

**1. Relatedness** Individuals experience the most happiness from prosocial spending when giving provides the opportunity to connect with others. **2. Competence** Prosocial spending is more likely to satisfy the need for competence if people can see how their generous actions made a difference. **3. Autonomy** The emotional benefits of prosocial spending are stronger when people have a choice about whether to give. (people happier when they gave money away, but only if they had a choice of how much to donate)

Answer 70

Relatedness (individuals feel the happiest from prosocial spending when giving provides the opportunity to connect with others) Ex. participants who received a $10 starbucks gift card were happier if they spent it on a friend over themselves, BUT only if they took the time to go with their friend.

Answer 71

Competence People are happier from prosocial spending if they feel like effective, competent helpers whose actions have made a real difference.

Answer 72

**Prosocial spending can increase physical strength** - Ex. participants who donated to charity had more hand strength **Not prosocially spending when there is an opportunity to can increase shame/stress:** - Ex. Gave students $10 and they could donate as much as they wanted to another student. The more money students gave away, the happier they were. BUT the more money students kept for themselves, the more shame they experienced (increasing their cortisol)

Answer 73

interventions using psychological mechanisms that are aimed to alter self-reinforcing processes over time and improve people’s outcomes in diverse circumstances in the future. Can have a large influence on social problems.

Answer 74

This intervention conveys that intelligence is not fixed but can expand with effort and help from others; it can help struggling students perform better in school for months after the intervention!

Answer 75

For years (if not for a lifetime) Example Study = a brief exercise, lasting an hour or less, can raise ethnic-minority students’ school achievement for as long as 3 years later.

Answer 76

perspective-taking and social-belonging interventions both generated the largest benefits

Answer 77

In this wise intervention, students learning that worries are common and improve with time takes the edge off of negative experiences. Minority students in the intervention condition no longer saw their daily experiences as if they had a global lack of belonging.

Answer 78

**1. A wise intervention will be effective only if the process it targets matters in the setting at hand.** Ex. if people with high self-esteem readily accept compliments, interventions that address self esteem will not improve their relationships **2. Wise interventions will be effective only if they change the targeted psychological process** (Interventions need to be adapted to make the message clear in the current setting.) **3. Wise interventions will affect long-term outcomes only if they alter critical recursive processes** Ex. brief value-affirmation interventions delivered early in the school year can prevent downward cycles of psychological threat among ethnic-minority adolescents for years, but if delivered after such cycles are established in the middle of the year, the same intervention is less effective.

Answer 79

1. civic behaviour 2. close relationships 3. education 4. health 5. intergroup relationships