Inclusion and identity Flashcards
Who wrote a very famous review article in 1995 that argued that human beings need durable, positive, and emotionally engaging contacts with at least a few other people? What else did they say about this?
Baumeister and Leary
Though many people can enjoy short periods of solitude, long periods of isolation are typically highly aversive.
How is loneliness different from being alone? Can casual social contact ease loneliness?
Loneliness is an emotional state and is not the same thing as being alone.
Social loneliness is the emotional reaction to feeling cut off from one’s social network.
Casual social contact is not enough to lift this feeling.
When does emotional loneliness occur?
Emotional loneliness occurs when a particular long-term, intimate relationship (e.g. with a lover, close friend, or family member) has been disrupted.
What is ostracism?
It is common for groups to deliberately ignore and exclude some of their members, especially if those members have committed some sort of transgression.
What are the two ways that ostracism can be done?
This can be done both formally (e.g. excommunication) and informally (e.g. cliques that suddenly ghost one of their members).
What is the model that details stages of how a person reacts to being ostracized? Whose model is it? What are the three stages?
a model by Williams (the temporal need-threat model) in which this initial negative affect is followed by a period of appraisal and reflection, which can be used to craft strategies to get back into the group’s good graces.
If these strategies fail and ostracism persists, a long-term resignation stage sets in that includes alienation and depression.
What are two reactions to ostracism?
Fight-or-flight response – Outbursts of anger, blaming of others in the group, taking risks, and procrastinating may occur, which are usually unhelpful if the goal is to be accepted by the group.
Tend and befriend response – This is a more useful response in many cases, in which the individual seeks instead to help the group, live up to the group norms, and otherwise prove to the group that they are potentially valuable members.
People who choose this strategy become more sensitive to social cues, more willing to work hard for the group, and more likely to imitate those around them, maybe without awareness.
What negative effect can ostracism lead to? What evidence is there for this?
Sometimes ostracism can lead to outright aggression.
This has been demonstrated in laboratory studies, where aggression was measured by the amount of noise excluded people were willing to inflict on the group, but is also linked to school shootings, where the shooter is almost always socially isolated.
What does evolutionary psychology consider in relation to groups?
Evolutionary psychology looks at the costs and benefits of group living for our ancestors.
There were costs (e.g. competition with other group members for resources, faster spread of communicable diseases), but the benefits (e.g. protection from predators, group hunting, defense from other groups) were greater.
Given this imbalance of benefits over costs, it is not surprising that our ancestors appear to have evolved a powerful need to be members of groups.
What has been postulated by Mark Leary about psychological mechanisms related to groups? What model is this? What evidence supports this?
Given that maintaining one’s inclusion within a group was extremely important to survival and reproduction for our ancestors, it has been postulated by Mark Leary that we have psychological mechanisms that help us monitor our desirability for the group.
This claim is the sociometer model of self-esteem.
Experimental studies show that people who are deliberately excluded by a group experience a drop in self-esteem.
The release of oxytocin is associated with feelings of ____________.
belonging
Being excluded gives rise to psychological pain, and that psychological pain in turn seems to be associated with activation of which two brain areas also associated with physical pain?
the anterior insula (AI) and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC).
People who are sensitive to physical pain tend to also be sensitive to what type of pain? What can help relieve some of this sensitivity?
People who are sensitive to physical pain tend to also be sensitive to the pain of social rejection.
Pain relievers (acetaminophen, a.k.a. Tylenol) seem to make people less sensitive to social pain.
What is a dubious claim made by the textbook about collectivists and individualists?
It claims collectivists belong to organizations and social clubs and individualists do not. The articles I have read claim the opposite.
What are the most important factors in determining behaviour in a collectivistic culture?
social norms and roles play the primary role in determining behaviour
Internal goals, attitudes and beliefs are seldom important to decision-making
How is the interdependent self defined within a collectivistic culture?
The interdependent self is defined by relationships and social roles, not inner traits.
Exchange relationships involve exchanges of what? Which cultures tend to have more of these relationships?
favours, goods, services, esteem, etc.
People from individualist cultures tend to have more of these.
Is the norm of reciprocity considered individualist or collectivist?
considered a cross-cultural universal
What are the two relationship styles?
exchange relationships
communal relationships
Communal relationships involve what? What is often considered offensive within these relationships?
Communal relationships involve caring about the group and its members, and concern for reciprocity is often considered offensive.
These are more common in collectivist cultures.
(every culture has these. A marriage or close friendship in which the partners track each other’s contributions is pretty much guaranteed to end soon, even in an individualist culture)
What is the ultimatum game? What are the most common results in our culture?
a laboratory game in which one player is given some money (say $10) and asked to give some of it to the other player (who is normally a stranger).
The second player can then either accept or reject the offer. If they reject it, both players get nothing.
People who study economics will say the best strategy for the first player is to give $1. Since the second player has a choice between $1 and nothing, their best move is to accept.
This is not the way it usually goes. In our culture, the most common offer is $5, and grossly unfair offers are frequently rejected.
In small-scale societies, how much people give is correlated with individualism-collectivism.
Why is the ultimatum game interesting?
The ultimatum game is interesting because it often casts light on people’s intuitions about fairness.
What are the two different norms governing fairness? Which cultures more commonly display each one?
The equality norm states that everyone in the group should receive an equal share of whatever resource is being divided up.
This norm is more commonly used by collectivists.
The equity norm states that people should be rewarded based on what they have contributed: Those who have contributed more should also receive more.
This norm is more commonly used by individualists.
The equity norm encourages what in a group? What does the equality norm encourage?
Equity norm is better to encourage hard work ethic
Equality norm is better to encourage group harmony
