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Social Psych > Midterm 2 > Flashcards

Midterm 2 Flashcards

1
Q

What’s an emotion?

A
  • Defined as brief, specific, subjective responses to challenges or opportunities that are important to our goals
  • a complex reaction pattern to personally relevant events (physical and social challenges and opportunities)
  • Usually an emotion lasts only for seconds or minutes
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2
Q

How does emotion differ from moods and disorders?

A
  • In contrast to moods, emotions are shorter-lived and specific (i.e., directed towards specific people and events)
  • Moods and disorders span for longer periods and aren’t always specific to an event
  • Moods can last for hours and days
    -Emotional disorders, including depression and generalized anxiety, last for weeks, months, or years
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3
Q

What are the 3 components of emotions?

A
  • Experiential component
  • Behavioural component
  • Physiological component
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4
Q

What’s the experiential component of emotions?

A

It’s the subjective experience of fear

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5
Q

What’s the behavioural component of emotions?

A
  • Characteristic facial expression (e.g., raised upper eyelids, lips stretched horizontally)
  • Defensive behaviour or escape
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6
Q

What’s the physiological component of emotions?

A
  • Increasing blood pressure and
    heart rate
  • Increased respiratory rate
  • Increased sweating
  • Activation of sympathetic nervous system
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7
Q

What are the different functions of emotions?

A
  • They help us interpret our surrounding circumstances -> emotions prioritize which events to attend to in the environment, how to reason with or judge them
  • They prompt us to act -> emotions allow us to respond effectively to various situations and challenges that arise, especially when involving others
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8
Q

Describe the functional value of fear

A

Fear will shift the body’s physiology which enables us to escape danger fast and effectively:
- It increases vigilance to threat-related cues
- Focuses attention on identifying available resources & avenues of escape
- Shifts motivational state
- Sympathetic nervous system changes (e.g., increased heart rate, respiration) helps prepare for physical exertion
- It increases the intake of sensory information through the dramatic increase in facial features (opening the eyes more and enlarging nasal cavities)

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9
Q

Describe the functional value of anger

A

It allows and motivates us to act against injustice and restore justice

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10
Q

Describe the functional value of gratitude

A

It motivates us to reward others for their generosity

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11
Q

Describe the functional value of guilt

A

It motivates us to make amends with someone we might’ve or have hurt

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12
Q

What’s the James-Lange theory of emotion?

A
  • States that emotions are the result of perceiving bodily changes in response to some stimulus in the environment
  • Different emotions are associated with different patterns of bodily responses
  • However, bodily changes are not always enough to produce emotional experience
  • Stimulus -> Physiological Response -> Emotional Experience
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13
Q

What’s the Canon-Bard Theory of emotion?

A
  • States that bodily response and emotional experience occur at the same time following a stimulus
  • Unclear as to what different stimulus emotions are potentially reacting to
  • Stimulus -> Physiological Response & Emotional Experience
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14
Q

What was the James-Lange Theory prediction for the study of emotional experience in patients with spinal cord injuries?

A

That these patients wouldn’t experience emotions

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15
Q

What was the Canon-Bard Theory prediction for the study of emotional experience in patients with spinal cord injuries?

A

That these patients’ emotions wouldn’t be impaired -> maybe less intense

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16
Q

What’s the Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory of emotion?

A
  • States that physiological changes are crucial for emotional experience, but emotion involves cognitive judgments about the source of these changes, not just the perception of these changes
  • Emotional response is the result of an interpretative label applied to a bodily response
  • Stimulus -> Physiological Response -> Judgment -> Emotional Experience
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17
Q

What were the results of the Experimental Test of the Schachter-Singer Theory?

A
  • Participants were injected with epinephrine
  • Participants that had been exposed to the angry confederate reported emotionally experiencing anger
  • Participants that had been exposed to the euphoric confederate reported emotionally experiencing euphoria or happiness
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18
Q

What’s the Functionalist View of Emotions?

A
  • Emotions serve important functions
  • The multifaceted aspects of an emotional response provide a toolkit for solving problems
  • They help direct & prioritize attention, interpret events in the environment, move us to action, mobilize resources, & provide important social signaling functions
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19
Q

What was the view of enlightenment western thinkers about emotions?

A
  • They thought that emotions were useless and would get in the way of rational thinking
  • Emotion as a burden
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20
Q

What’s the Evolutionary Perspective on emotion?

A
  • Emotions are biologically-based, genetically-encoded adaptations that emerged in response to selection pressures, or threats to survival, faced by our evolutionary ancestors
  • Origins may be identified in functionally equivalent responses of other species
  • Darwin reasoned that humans have used the same 30–40 facial muscles to communicate similar emotions in our evolutionary past
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21
Q

Describe the functional value of shame

A
  • Key emotional response to threats to the “social self” (threats to social esteem, status, and acceptance) -> when we feel like others have reacted to us in a negative devaluation manner
  • Characteristic behavioural display: head down, slumped posture, averted gaze
  • Thought to serve as a social signal that functions as an appeasement strategy to reduce social conflict and help maintain social cohesion
  • Trigger submissive displays seen in our ancestral primates
  • Emit sickness behaviour -> social withdrawal, conservation of resources
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22
Q

What the cultural perspective on emotion?

A

Emotions are strongly influenced by values & socialization practices that differ across cultures

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23
Q

Describe the study by Ekman et Friesen (1969) on Cross-Cultural Research on Emotional Expression

A
  • They collected 3, 000 photographs of people portraying anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, & surprise
  • People in Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, & the US asked to pick from six emotion terms the one that best matched the emotion the person portrayed in the pictures
  • 70-90% accuracy rate (much higher than chance)
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24
Q

Describe the study by Ekman & Friesen (1971) on Cross-Cultural Research on Emotional Expression in Papua New Guinea

A
  • They studied isolated tribe “Fore” in Papua New Guinea living in preindustrial, hunter-gatherer-like conditions (no exposure to Western media)
  • Ekman told them an emotion-appropriate story for each of the six emotions
  • He then presented photos of 3 different expressions, along with a story that matched one of the expressions, and asked them to match the story to the appropriate expression
  • Ekman also videotaped the participants mimicking the emotions and then asked US participants to identify the emotions displayed
  • Participants were able to recognize Western emotions with above chance accuracy
  • Reverse true as well—Americans able to recognize emotions displayed by tribe members very well except for expression of fear
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25
Q

What’s a cross-specie similarity in emotional displays?

A
  • Chimps show threat displays similar to our own displays of anger
  • Darwin’s concept of the Principle of Serviceable Associated habits -> the observable signs of anger—furrowed brow and display of teeth, tightened posture and clenched fists, fierce growl—are vestiges of threat displays and attack behavior observed in our mammalian relatives
  • Primates also show the “silent bared-teeth display” when interacting in friendly fashion (similar to our smile)
  • Primates also show the “relaxed open-mouth” when playing and wrestling (similar to our laugh)
  • They also have similar sounds to convey emotion than us (shrieks, laugh, cries, growls)
  • Our expression of embarrassment also similar to expression of appeasement in primates
  • Expressions of pride among primates are also similar to humans
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26
Q

Do congenitally blind people express emotions differently?

A
  • Argued by Darwin
  • Congenitally blind people express emotions in the same way that sighted people do
  • If expressing emotions is something we have to be taught, then we would expect the congenitally blind to differ in their expressions of emotions
  • Tracy and Matsumoto (2008) studied sighted and blind Olympians as they won or lost olympic judo competitions showed same expressions when winning (expressing pride with smile, tilted back head, expanding chest, arms raised in the air) and when losing (lowered head and slumped shoulders in shame)
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27
Q

What are 3 specific ways that cultures differ in emotional expression?

A
  • Focal emotions
  • Ideal emotions (affect valuation theory)
  • Display rules
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28
Q

What are focal emotions?

A
  • Emotions that are particularly common within a culture and are experienced/expressed with greater frequency and intensity
  • Ex: shame and embarrassment are more focal in interdependent cultures & anger is more focal in cultures that value honour
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29
Q

Describe Tsai’s Affect valuation theory (2007)?

A
  • Emotions that promote important cultural ideals will be more valued and will be more focal
  • This could lead to variations in emotional behaviour across cultures
  • Ex: excitement is highly valued in the US because it encourages independent action and self-expression (independent culture)
  • Ex: calmness and contendness are highly valued among East Asian cultures because these emotions make it easier to get into harmonious relationships (interdependent)
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30
Q

What are display rules?

A
  • Culturally specific rules that govern how, when, and to whom people expression emotions
  • People can de-intensify their emotion expression and intensify their emotion expressions depending on the situation
  • People can also mask their negative emotions
  • People can neutralize their emotional expression (poker face)
  • People from interdependent cultures are more likely to suppress (de-intensify or neutralize) their positive emotional expressions than people from independent cultures -> they will temper their experience of positive emotions with negative ones
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31
Q

What’s affective forecasting?

A
  • Predicting what one’s emotional reactions to potential future events will be
  • We’re often mistaken in our affective forecasts—especially when it comes to predicting the intensity and duration of the emotions we will feel
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32
Q

Describe the study by Gilbert et al., 1998 on affective forecasting

A
  • They studied predictions of affective reactions to breakups
  • Ps asked if they had ever experienced the breakup of a close romantic relationship
  • “Leftovers”: participants who had experienced a breakup vs “Luckies”: Ps who had not experienced a breakup
  • Asked to predict how happy they would be 2 months after experiencing a breakup
  • Ps forecasted that a romantic breakup would make them less happy (predicted leftovers from luckies) than was actually true (actual leftovers)
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33
Q

What are some examples of affective forecasting errors?

A
  • Professors underestimated how happy they would be right after failing to get tenure
  • Also overestimated how happy they would be immediately after getting tenure
  • Athletes overestimated the intensity of their negative emotions on failing to reach their athletic goals
  • Winning the lottery does not actually make you happier
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34
Q

What are different biases that interfere with one’s ability to predict their future happiness?

A
  • Immune neglect
  • Focalism
  • Higher and lower-level construals
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35
Q

What’s the psychological immune system?

A
  • System of largely non-conscious cognitive processes that help us change our view of the world, so we can feel better about the world we find ourselves in
  • Helps us make peace with the world that we find ourselves in
  • These “immune-related” processes allow us to return to satisfying lives in the face of negative experiences.
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36
Q

What’s immune neglect?

A
  • Failure to take the effects of the psychological immune system into account when making our affective forecasts
  • We think happiness is something to be found, but it’s actually something we create ourselves
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37
Q

What’s the Hedonic treadmill (Lyubomirsky, 2010)

A
  • While good and bad events may temporarily affect happiness, people quickly adapt, returning to their baseline levels of happiness
  • When we attain positive outcomes, our happiness levels may temporarily increase—but so do our expectations
  • As our expectations go up, our happiness will decrease
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38
Q

What’s focalism?

A
  • The tendency to focus too much on the occurrence in question (the focal event—e.g., the breakup or the lottery win) and fail to consider other events that are likely to occur at the same time in our lives that will also affect our levels of happiness
  • Ex: after we have the career we’ve always wanted, other events—such as health problems, conflicts with our spouse, or difficulties with our children—will also influence our happiness
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39
Q

Describe the study by Wilson et al., 2000 on focalism

A
  • UVA students asked to predict how they would feel a few days after their school’s football team won or lost against UNC
  • “Nondescribers”: just make the prediction
  • “Describers”: also asked to describe events of a typical day
  • A few days later, report on their actual happiness -> participants both had much lower levels of happiness than predicted and describers had the most dramatic lower levels of happiness
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40
Q

What’s the Construal-Level Theory

A
  • Psychologically distant actions and events are thought about in abstract terms (higher-level construal)
  • Actions and events that are close at hand are thought about in concrete terms (lower-level construal)
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41
Q

What’s the consequence of making higher-level construals?

A

Because the actions and events are so far away, we think about them from an abstract point of view which leaves a lot of room for false interpretation (affective forecasting) of our levels of happiness in the future

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42
Q

What’s the consequence of making lower-level construals?

A

This could lead to focalism because we will be so focused on thinking about the closest event/the focal event in concrete terms that we will neglect thinking about other abstract/non-obvious things that could affect our happiness in the same concrete manner

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43
Q

What’s the peak-end rule?

A
  • The most intense positive or negative moments (the “peaks”) and the final moments (the “end”) of the experience are most heavily weighted in our recollections of experiences
  • Ex: teacher should ned a class on a good note
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44
Q

Describe the study by Fredrickson & Kahneman (1993) on the peak-end rule

A
  • They had participants watch a series of pleasurable film clips, such as a comedy routine or a puppy playing with a flower
  • While doing so, the participants rated the intensity of their second-by-second experience of pleasure by moving a dial back and forth
  • Then, after the film clips ended, they provided an overall assessment of how pleasurable it was to watch the clips
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45
Q

What are two factors that influence recollections of pleasure?

A
  • Peak-end rule
  • Duration neglect
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46
Q

What’s duration neglect?

A
  • Our memory of the overall pleasantness of an event is not strongly influenced by the length of the emotional experience
  • What matters most is quality of the experience at its peak and at the end
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47
Q

Describe the study by Kahneman et al., (1993) on duration neglect

A
  • Ps required to immerse one hand in cold water:
  • Short trial: 14°C for 60 sec
  • Long trial: 14°C for 60 sec AND THEN 15°C for additional 30 sec
  • Most chose to repeat second trial!
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48
Q

What are factors that have been found to contribute to happiness?

A
  • Relationships: strengthen your relationships and engagement in your community
  • Gratitude: practice gratitude
  • Generosity: give to others
  • Spending: prioritize experiences over material possessions
  • Money: money doesn’t contribute that much to happiness, important to have enough money to be comfortable
  • Cultivate experiences that can lead to awe
  • “Hack” the hedonic treadmill by varying these activities (variety is the spice of happiness!)
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49
Q

Describe the study by Boehm, Lyubomirsky, & Sheldon (2011) on gratitude

A
  • Participants were randomly assigned to either write about an experience in the past or write a letter of gratitude to someone close to them
  • After 1 month follow-up, participants who had written a letter of gratitude were happier than those in the control condition
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50
Q

Describe the study by Dunn, Aknin, & Norton (2008)

A
  • Participants had to rate how happy they were and then they were given either 5$ or 20$ and were told to spend it by the end of the day on themselves or someone else
  • Those who spent the money on someone else reported feeling more happiness by the end of the day than those that spent it on themselves
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51
Q

What’s persuasion?

A
  • Intentional effort to change other people’s attitudes in order to change their behaviour
  • Attempts at persuasion are ubiquitous in our lives (through advertisement, teachers, friends, partners, books, doctors)
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52
Q

What’s the elaboration likelihood model?

A
  • A model of persuasion maintaining that there are two different routes to persuasion—the central route and the peripheral route
  • Which route is taken depends on the motivation and ability to think about (elaborate on) the information being presented
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53
Q

Describe the Central Route to Persuasion

A
  • Followed when people think carefully & deliberately about the content of a persuasive message, attending to its logic and the strength of its arguments, as well as to related evidence
  • Attitudes will be influenced primarily by the strength or quality of the arguments
  • Ex: route that you would take when buying a car, to really evaluate different options
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54
Q

Describe the Peripheral Route to Persuasion

A
  • Followed when people primarily attend to peripheral cues— superficial, easy-to process features of a persuasive communication that are tangential (peripheral) to the persuasive information itself
  • Persuasion will depend # and length of arguments, expertise or attractiveness of the source of the message and consensus
  • Ex: cigarette ads that associate the product with images of beauty, pleasure or expertise (ads on billboards, on tv, media that consumers will take in in a quick period of time)
  • Peripheral route to persuasion relies on simple rule-of-thumb heuristics:
  • Trust the experts
  • Long messages are credible
  • Friends and experts can be trusted
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55
Q

What are the conditions that determine whether we will engage in central or peripheral processing in response to a persuasive message?

A
  • Motivation
  • Ability
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56
Q

Describe the motivation condition to engaging in either peripheral or central processing in response to a persuasive message

A
  • Relevance of the message to one’s goals & interests
  • Knowledge in domain
  • If high motivation -> more likely to go to central route
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57
Q

Describe the study by Petty et al. (1983) on the motivation factor of elaboration likelihood model

A
  • Study on “consumer attitudes”
  • As reward for participation, would be able to choose a product from among a few different brands
  • Group 1: razor blades
  • Group 2: toothpaste
  • Later saw an ad for an Edge razor
  • Two additional manipulations:
  • Argument quality (high vs. low)
  • Peripheral cues (famous vs. nonfamous endorser)
  • The high involvement (razors) group is being swayed by the strength of the argument
  • The low involvement group (toothpaste) is swayed by famous endorser (peripheral cue)
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58
Q

Describe the ability condition to engaging in either peripheral or central processing in response to a persuasive message

A
  • Even if a person is motivated to think carefully about a message, may be unable to do so because of distractions or demands on their attention
  • In this case, will take the peripheral route to persuasion
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59
Q

Describe the study by Petty et al. (1976) on the ability factor of elaboration likelihood model

A
  • Ps listened to message arguing that tuition at their university should be cut in half
  • Argument strength:
  • High (e.g., would make it easier for high school students
    to go to university)
  • Low (e.g., would increase class sizes)
  • Additional manipulation: mild or strong distraction
  • Red X being flashed on diff parts of the screen and being asked to keep track of arguments as well as the X flashing on the screen
  • For some participants it would flash every 5 seconds (highly distracting)
  • For participants where X wasn’t flashing as often, were able to focus on strength of arguments
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60
Q

The central and peripheral routes of the elaboration likelihood model relate to which systems of the Dual Process Model of Cognition?

A
  • Central route = Rational system
  • Peripheral route = Intuitive system
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61
Q

What should we do if we want long-lasting attitude change

A

Persuasion through the central route

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62
Q

How to know through which route persuasion will take place?

A
  • For persuasion to occur via the central route, we have to be both motivated and able to engage in more in-depth processing
  • If either motivation or ability (or both) is lacking, persuasion generally relies on peripheral cues
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63
Q

What are source characteristics?

A

Characteristics of the person who delivers a persuasive message, such as attractiveness, credibility, and certainty

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64
Q

What are different types of source characteristics?

A
  • Credibility
  • Certainty
  • Attractiveness
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65
Q

Describe credibility as a persuasive source characteristic

A
  • Perception that the communicator is both knowledgeable & trustworthy
  • Credible communicators are more persuasive
  • Participants more likely to agree with an argument when told it came from the New England Journal of Biology & Medicine than a supermarket aisle checkout magazine
  • The appearance of credibility can persuade via the peripheral route
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66
Q

What are ways to convey trustworthiness (credibility)?

A
  • One way is to “express an opinion” without making the audience aware that it is the target of a persuasion attempt
  • Ex: through the whisper campaign -> Idea in advertising where by getting people talking about something it creates buzz and makes it more likely (ex: fake amazon ads)
  • Another way is to argue against one’s own self-interest
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67
Q

Describe Walster & Festinger’s (1962) study on credibility where one “expresses an opinion” without making the audience aware that it is the target of a persuasion attempt

A
  • Ps overheard a conversation between two graduate students in adjoining room
  • Independent variable: are the grad students “aware” of the P’s presence?
  • Ps more likely to change attitudes in line with the grad students’ attitudes when believed that grad students were not aware of their presence
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68
Q

Describe Walster et al.’s (1966) study on credibility where one argues against one’s own self-interest

A
  • Participants read a statement by “Joe ‘The Shoulder’ Napolitano” or eminent New York prosecutor
  • Statement either for or against the prosecutor having more power
  • Source more credible when advocating reforms opposed to self-interest
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69
Q

What’s the sleeper effect?

A
  • Effect wherein people remember the message but forget the source; thus, the effect of credibility diminishes over time
  • Messages from unreliable sources exert little influence initially but over time have the potential to shift people’s attitudes
  • Particularly likely to happen when people learn about the credibility of the source after being exposed to the message
  • Recent studies show new form of sleeper effect whereby you get delayed persuasion by a credible source who is initially linked to a weak message but down the road is dissociated from it
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70
Q

Describe Hovland & Weiss’ (1951) study on the sleeper effect

A
  • Participants initially more likely to agree with high credibility source (medical journal) than low credibility source (popular magazine)
  • Four weeks later, they asked them about their attitude towards the message again
  • Participants showed an attitude change where they thought the low credibility source was more credible
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71
Q

Describe certainty as a persuasive source characteristic

A
  • Sources who express their views with certainty and confidence tend to be more persuasive
  • If your goal is to persuade someone, be sure to express lots of confidence
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72
Q

Provide 2 examples of studies on certainty as a source characteristic

A
  • Study by Wells et al. (1981) where it was found that jurors judge credibility of eyewitnesses based on the confidence they express when giving their testimony
  • Study by Price & Stone (2004) where it was found that people regard financial advisers who express high confidence in their stock forecasts as more knowledgeable than those who express less confidence, and the more confident advisers are accordingly chosen more often by clients
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73
Q

Describe attractiveness as a persuasive source characteristic

A
  • Attractive spokespeople are more persuasive, even for topics completely unrelated to attractiveness
  • Can serve as peripheral cue: attractive people are rated more favourably, and those favourable feelings become associated with the message
  • Effect can also take place via central route when it’s an argument for the validity of the message
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74
Q

What are message charcteristics?

A

Aspects, or content, of a persuasive message, including the quality of the evidence and the explicitness of its conclusions

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75
Q

What are different types of message characteristics?

A
  • Message quality
  • Message vividness
  • Fear
  • Culture
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76
Q

Describe message quality as a persuasive message characteristic

A
  • Strong messages:
  • Are comprehensible, straightforward, logical
  • Appeal to core values of audience
  • Have an explicit take-away message
  • Articulate the desirable consequences of taking the actions suggested by the message
  • High-quality messages are more persuasive in general, especially for people who are strong in motivation and ability
  • Message length:
    If audience takes the central route, message length can either increase or decrease persuasion:
  • Longer message can be more persuasive if contains more supporting arguments
  • But adding weak arguments or repeating arguments can backfire
  • Long messages can also drain audience’s cognitive resources
  • If peripheral route, longer messages tend to be more persuasive
  • Messages are more persuasive when sources argue against their own self-interestq
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77
Q

Describe message vividness as a persuasive message characteristic

A
  • When information is vivid—colorful,
    interesting, and memorable—it tends to be more effective
  • Ex: what had an impact on attitudes toward covid was usually when someone saw a close relative get very ill or die from it, rather than the many statistics
  • Can be shown through Identifiable Victim Effect
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78
Q

Describe Hamill, Wilson, & Nisbett’s (1980) on the vividness of a message in persuasion

A
  • Ps read an article vividly describing a welfare recipient abusing the system
  • After reading article, given additional statistics on welfare recipients showing that the woman was either typical or atypical
  • Ps exposed to vivid description reported less favourable attitudes toward welfare system compared to Ps who did not read description
  • Participants changed their attitudes more if they heard the vivid story—even when they also had the cold statistics which did little to alter their attitudes
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79
Q

What’s the Identifiable Victim Effect?

A
  • The tendency to be more moved by the vivid plight of a single individual than by a more abstract number of people
  • Seeing a victim in its vivd awful conditions or plight tends to persuade much more than a statistic
  • 3,600 refugees & migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean Sea in 2015 -> this statistic doesn’t have the same effect as seeing the picture of the young refugee who had drowned
  • Limitations: in cases where it’s possible to blame a victim for his or her plight, making the person identifiable can actually breed negative perceptions of the victim and decrease rather than increase aid
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80
Q

Describe fear as a persuasive message characteristic

A
  • Fear messages contain vivid information and can be very persuasive
  • They’re most effective when combined with instructions on how to avoid negative outcomes
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81
Q

Describe Leventhal et al.’s (1967) study on fear persuasive messages

A
  • Showed some participants graphic film of effects of lung cancer, gave others a pamphlet with instructions on how to quit smoking and for some participants they got them to watch the film and gave them the pamphlet
  • Participants who only viewed the scary film reduced their smoking more than those who just read the bland instructions (fear was persuasive)
  • Participants exposed to both the film and the pamphlet decreased their smoking the most
82
Q

Describe culture as a persuasive message characteristic

A
  • It can be important to tailor a message to fit the norms, values, and outlook of a particular cultural group
  • American ads emphasize individuality & benefits to the individual; ads in collectivist cultures like those of East Asia focus on benefits to the collective
  • Ads for upper class individuals focus on independent values whereas ads for lower class individuals focuses on interdependent values
  • Western societies have a promotion orientation and eastern societies have a prevention orientation and they each prefer appeals corresponding to their orientation (gain/loss of flossing) (Uskul, Sherman, & Fitzgibbon’s, 2009)
  • Ex: Dr. Pepper ad representing individualistic cultures (western cultures) because of “I am” statements
83
Q

What are audience characteristics?

A

Characteristics of those who receive a persuasive message

84
Q

What are different types of audience characteristics?

A
  • Need for cognition
  • Self-monitoring
  • Mood
  • Age
  • Knowledge
85
Q

Describe need for cognition as an audience characteristic

A
  • Drive to think deeply about judgments
  • People high in need for cognition are more persuaded by central route messages than by peripheral route messages
  • Especially likely to be swayed by message supported by strong arguments, & not to be swayed by message supported by weak arguments
86
Q

Describe self-monitoring as an audience characteristic

A
  • Tendency to monitor our behaviour to fit the current situation
  • Susceptible to messages conveying potential to project a desirable self-image
    Ex: willing to pay more for a bottle of Canadian Club whisky when it’s pitched as enhancing one’s status rather than when it’s pitched as a high-quality product (influenced by peripheral cues over central)
87
Q

Describe mood as an audience characteristic

A
  • One way to instill positive feelings toward the message is to deliver it when audience is in a good mood
  • Messages are processed more closely when they match the mood of the receiver (negative or positive) and increase the chances of attitude change from the audience
  • Inducing people to feel guilty can get them to be more likely to comply to the message as long as the message involves solutions to alleviate guilt
88
Q

Describe age as an audience characteristic

A
  • Younger people are more persuadable than older people
  • Older people may have strong and long-held attitudes that are resistant to change
  • Children may be most vulnerable to persuasion attempts
  • Ex: more easily persuaded in politics and by attorneys
89
Q

Describe knowledge as an audience characteristic

A
  • Attitudes based on more knowledge are more resistant to change
  • Having greater knowledge means we can offer more and better counterarguments to defend our attitude
90
Q

What’s agenda control?

A
  • Media of all types substantially contribute to shaping the information we think is broadly true and important…shaping our reality
  • Ex: the prominence given to certain issues in the news media—crime, traffic congestion, or economic downturns—is correlated with the public’s perception that these issues are important
  • Ex: heavy tv viewers construe social reality much like the reality they see on the screen. They tend to endorse more racially prejudiced attitudes, assume that women have more limited abilities than men, and overestimate the prevalence of violent crime
91
Q

What’s attitude inoculation?

A
  • Exposure to small attacks on people’s beliefs enables them to counteract a subsequent larger attack and thus resist persuasion
  • Particularly effective when people play active role in generating counterarguments
92
Q

Describe the study by McGuire (1961) on attitude inoculation

A
  • Attitude inoculation for challenges to cultural truisms (widely held beliefs generally accepted with questioning)
    Ex: “everyone should see a doctor at least once a year”
  • Half of Ps “inoculated” by exposure to weak arguments against truism (e.g., this would swamp medical facilities)
  • Several days later, all Ps presented with stronger arguments against truism
  • Ps who had previously been exposed to weak arguments were less persuaded by the stronger arguments
93
Q

What are ways that attentional biases and selective evaluation increase resistance to persuasion?

A
  • Selective Attention -> preexisting attitudes may resist change by guiding which information is attended to
  • Selective Evaluation -> we tend to evaluate information in biased ways to support our preexisting opinion
  • Because of these biases, we will be less persuaded and more focused on our own interests and evaluation patterns of information and how these are correct
94
Q

Describe the study by Kleinhesselink & Edwards (1975) on selective attention

A
  • Recruited students who either supported or opposed legalization of marijuana
  • Listened to message advocating for legalization
  • 7 strong arguments (appealing to pro-legalization Ps)
  • 7 weak arguments (appealing to anti-legalization Ps)
  • Constant low buzz in headphones; could press a button to eliminate the buzz for 5secs
  • Pro-legalization students pushed button more often during strong arguments; anti-legalization students pushed button more often during weak arguments
95
Q

How do previous ideological commitments increase resistance to persuasion?

A
  • Public commitments to certain attitudes make them resistant to change
  • Publicly discussing or announcing an opinion will make it resistant to change because we want to appear consistent
96
Q

What’s the thought polarizing hypothesis?

A

Hypothesis that more extended thought about a particular issue tends to produce a more extreme, entrenched attitude

97
Q

Why is group living important for survival?

A
  • Our capacity to form groups has helped us meet many of the challenges of survival and the reproduction of our genes
  • In groups we: provide care for vulnerable offspring, find protection from predators, enjoy increased efficiency in acquiring and sharing food, and bolster our defense against aggressors
98
Q

What’s a group?

A

a collection of individuals who have relations to one another that make them interdependent to some significant degree

99
Q

What’s social facilitation?

A
  • Original definition: the enhancing effect of co-actors on performance (Norman Triplett’s work and observations)
  • Updated definition: the effect, positive or negative, of the presence of others on performance
100
Q

What was Norman Triplett’s (1898) perspective on social facilitation?

A
  • Observed that cyclists recorded faster times when competing against others than when racing alone
  • Designed one of social psychology’s first studies to test the idea that presence of competitors improves (facilitates) performance
  • He then did another study where he asked children to wind fishing wheel as fast as possible
  • Children completed task either by themselves or alongside another child
  • Found faster times when the child was co-acting with another child
  • Also found that element of competition not necessary; mere presence of an
    audience produces social facilitation
  • Theory also applied to animals
101
Q

What was the first study that contradicted Triplett’s work?

A
  • Subsequent studies showed that the presence of others can sometimes impair (rather than facilitate) performance
  • Study by Floyd Allport (1920) where undergraduate students asked to come up with refutations of philosophical arguments provided poorer-quality refutations when working in the presence of others students (vs. alone)
  • The presence of others has also been shown to inhibit performance on arithmetic problems, memory tasks, and maze learning
102
Q

What’s Zajonc’s theory of social facilitation and what did he try to argue with it?

A

1) The presence of others increases
arousal
2) Arousal makes us more inclined to do what we’re already inclined to do (dominant response)
3) Performance will depend on what the dominant response is in a given situation
- Zajonc (1965) argued that the presence of others, indeed the mere presence of others, tends to facilitate performance on simple or well-learned tasks (dominant response), but it hinders performance on difficult or novel tasks

103
Q

What’s social loafing and how is it different from social facilitation?

A
  • Tendency to exert less effort when performing as part of a group than when performing as an individual
  • Different from social facilitation because with social facilitation, other people make you feel encouraged to complete an easy task whereas with social loafing you can’t be bothered to put in the effort and rely on others instead
104
Q

What’s evaluation apprehension?

A

A concern about looking bad in the eyes of others, about being evaluated

105
Q

What’s the difference between mere presence and evaluation apprehension with regards to arousal?

A

While mere presence states that people simply being there (even if blindfolded or back turned) has an arousal effect on individuals, evaluation apprehension states that it’s not just the presence of others that increases arousal but the concern of them judging you or looking bad in front of them

106
Q

What did Ringelmann’s Rope-Pulling Experiment (1913) show?

A

That the more people pulling on the rope, the less people felt the need to pull as hard or felt like they could get away with exerting little force (social loafing)

107
Q

What’s groupthink?

A
  • Faulty thinking by highly cohesive groups in which the critical scrutiny that should be devoted to the issues at hand is subverted by social pressures to reach consensus
  • Poor group decisions because striving for unanimity may override motivation to evaluate alternative courses of action and make an accurate judgment
  • Solidarity as “superglue”—holds the group together, but can cause group members’ thinking to get “stuck”
108
Q

What are the symptoms of groupthink?

A
  • Illusion of Invulnerability -> “everything is going to work out all right because we are a special group”
  • Belief in Inherent Morality of the Group -> members automatically assume the rightness of their cause
  • Self-censorship -> withholding information or opinions in group discussions (possibly to maintain harmony within group)
  • Self-Appointed Mindguards -> members of the group appoint themselves to protect a leader from assault by troublesome ideas that might threaten group complacency
109
Q

What Factors Make Groupthink More Likely?

A
  • High cohesiveness (necessary but not sufficient condition)
  • Homogeneity in group members’ social backgrounds & ideology
  • Directive leadership
  • Lack of procedures for information search & appraisal
  • Insularity of the group from external factors
  • High stress from external threats combined with low hope of finding a better solution than the leader’s
110
Q

How to prevent groupthink?

A
  • Group leaders should refrain from making their opinions known at first & periodically leave the group so group members can discuss their views without constraint
  • Bring in outside opinions
  • Assign people to play “devil’s advocate” -> to be given every incentive to name any and all weaknesses in the group’s proposed plan of action
111
Q

What’s group polarization?

A
  • The tendency for people to become more extreme in their positions after discussion with like-minded others
  • Research indicates that two causes work in concert to produce group polarization: one involves the persuasiveness of the information brought up during group discussion; the other involves people’s tendency to try to claim the “right” position among the various opinions within the group
112
Q

What’s the “Persuasive Arguments” explanation for group polarization?

A

Exposure to additional arguments in favour of one’s preexisting opinion strengthens that opinion

113
Q

What’s the “social comparison” explanation for group polarization?

A
  • We compare ourselves to others, with the drive to “outdo” others
  • If others express similar opinions, we may take a more extreme position to differentiate ourselves
114
Q

Describe the study by Burnstein et al. (1973) on the “Persuasive Arguments” explanation for group polarization

A
  • Participants read the arguments of other group members in private so that they are exposed to the arguments without knowing who in the group might have advanced them
  • Results showed that reading others’ arguments is indeed sufficient to produce group polarization
115
Q

Describe the study by Teger & Pruitt, 1967 on the “social comparison” explanation for group polarization

A
  • Participants were told only about others’ positions and not provided any arguments or reasons underlying those positions
  • This produced the group polarization effect
116
Q

What are personal characteristics that make people more likely to become leaders?

A
  • Expertise, knowledge, & technical skill (relevant to the goals of the group)
  • Social skills -> Getting people to work together and to share their opinions
  • Those who share resources with others more likely to rise to a leadership role (generosity)
  • Emotionally intelligent (read moods and needs of others)
117
Q

What’s power?

A
  • The ability to control one’s own outcomes and those of others; the freedom to act and be free of constraints
  • Related to status, authority & dominance
118
Q

What’s status?

A

Evaluation of social attributes that results in differences in respect & prominence

119
Q

What’s authority?

A

Power that derives from institutional roles or arrangements

120
Q

What’s dominance?

A

Behaviour that has acquisition of power as its aim

121
Q

What’s the Approach/Inhibition Theory of Power?

A
  • Suggests that we possess two behavioural systems that help us navigate our world:
  • The behavioural approach system -> moves us toward desired outcomes
  • Triggered by the presence of rewards & opportunities
  • The behavioural inhibition (or avoidance) system moves us away from threats
  • Triggered by punishment, threat, & uncertainty
  • Power influences balance of the tendencies to approach and inhibit (elevated power activates approach-related tendencies & lack of power is associated with increased inhibition)
  • Model predicts that power should make people behave in less constrained and at times more inappropriate ways (ex: more likely to stereotype others and engage in sexually problematic behaviours)
122
Q

What’s the spotlight effect?

A

The conviction that others are paying more attention to oneself than they actually are

123
Q

Describe the self-awareness theory

A

When people focus their attention on themselves, they engage in more self-evaluation and become more concerned about whether their current behaviour conforms to their standards and values

124
Q

What’s deindividuation?

A

A reduced sense of individual identity accompanied by diminished self-regulation that can come over people when they are in a large group

125
Q

What is deindividuation characterized by?

A
  • Decreased self-observation & self-evaluation * Decreased concern with social evaluation
126
Q

What are behaviours consequent of deindividuation?

A
  • Impulsivity
  • Irrationality
  • Emotionality
  • Antisocial behaviour
127
Q

What are the antecedent conditions of deindividuation?

A
  • Energizing effect of others
  • Sensory overload
  • Diffusion of responsibility (“everyone is doing it”)
  • Anonymity
128
Q

What are attitudes?

A

An evaluation of an object (e.g., a specific person, a category of people, a type of food, a political cause) along a positive or negative dimension

129
Q

What are the 3 components of attitudes?

A

The ABC’s of attitudes:
- Affect (how we feel -> how much we like/dislike)
- Behaviour (what we do -> approach/avoid)
- Cognition (what we think -> thoughts reinforcing feelings)

130
Q

How do we measure attitudes?

A
  • Can just ask people about their attitudes (self-report -> survey questions)
  • Likert scale: numerical scale comprising a set of possible answers with labeled anchors on either end (e.g., 1 = strongly agree, 7 = strongly disagree)
  • To measure accessibility of an attitude can use:
    Response latency: the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, such as an attitude question (shorter latency = greater accessibility) -> shows strong attitudes toward things
  • To evaluate attitude centrality, researchers measure a variety of attitudes within a domain and calculate how strongly each one is linked to the others
  • Implicit measures allow researchers to examine implicit, or nonconscious, attitudes of participants (free of self-presentation biases)
131
Q

Why Are Attitudes Often Poor Predictors of Behaviour?

A
  • Attitudes may conflict with other influences on behaviour
  • Social norms, other conflicting attitudes, and situational factors may also influence behaviour
  • Introspection may cause a rift between your expressed attitude and subsequent behaviour which is particularly true when the basis of an attitude is affective (emotional)
  • In these cases, cognitive (thoughtful) analysis of your reasons for the attitude may yield misleading cognitive reasons
  • General attitudes may not match specific targets
  • Attitudes are more accurate predictors of behaviour when specific attitudes toward a specific behavior are measured
132
Q

What’s Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory?

A
  • Postulates that inconsistencies among a person’s thoughts, sentiments, and actions cause an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency
  • The more difficult the choice = more inconsistent elements = more dissonance
  • Dissonance aroused by the inconsistency of accepting the negatives of one choice + rejecting the positives of the rejected alternative
133
Q

What’s post-decision dissonance?

A

Reevaluation of alternatives in the direction of favouring the chosen or disfavouring the rejected alternative

134
Q

What’s spreading of alternatives for cognitive dissonance?

A
  • Decision dissonance typically is resolved by emphasizing the positives and minimizing the negatives of the selected choice
  • Also resolved by emphasizing the negatives of the unselected choices and minimizing the positives
135
Q

Describe the study by Knox & Inkster (1968) that demonstrated post-decision dissonance

A

Bettors at the racetrack who were interviewed right before they placed their bets gave their horses, on average, a “fair” chance of winning; those interviewed after they had placed their bets gave their horses, on average, a “good” chance to win

136
Q

Describe the study by Brehm (1956) that demonstrated spreading of alternatives for cognitive dissonance

A
  • Ps randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions:
  • 1st group asked to choose between two consumer items (e.g., watch, portable radio) that they liked a lot (difficult decision)
  • 2nd group of Ps asked to choose between an item they liked a lot and an item they didn’t like (easy decision)
  • 3rd group just received a gift item (control condition)
  • Asked to rate the items again after making their decisions
  • The 1st group of participants demonstrated the highest amounts of cognitive dissonance between the chosen and unchosen object
137
Q

What’s effort justification for cognitive dissonance?

A
  • Tendency to reduce dissonance by justifying the time, effort, or money devoted to something that turned out to be unpleasant or disappointing
  • Greater effort expended leads to more dissonance and more attempts to rationalize behaviour
  • The “Ikea effect” -> value things more if we made them ourselves
  • Ex: joining a frat after horrible initiation rituals and being even more loyal to the group after such hazing
138
Q

Describe the study by Aronson & Mills (1959) on effort justification for cognitive dissonance

A
  • College women volunteering to participate in group discussions on the psychology of sex
  • Randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions:
  • Control condition (not required to do anything before joining group)
  • Mild initiation condition (required to read out loud some words related to sex but not obscene in nature– e.g., ”prostitute”, “virgin”)
  • Severe initiation condition (required to read obscene words, vivid descriptions of sexual activity)
  • Ps then got a “sneak peek” of the discussion group they had just joined—a discussion of “secondary sex behavior in the lower animals” designed to be as “dull and banal as possible”
  • When asked to rate quality of discussion, participants in the most severe initiation condition rated the discussion the highest which reduced their dissonance
139
Q

How do car dealers take advantage of cognitive dissonance to sway potential customers?

A
  • Get customer to spend a lot of time on the lot (paperwork, test drives, etc.)
  • Need to justify the effort
140
Q

What’s induced compliance for cognitive dissonance?

A

Subtly compelling people to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their beliefs, attitudes, or values (induced/forced compliance) will elicit dissonance, and therefore a change in their original views

141
Q

Describe the study by Leon Festinger and Merrill Carlsmith (1959) on induced compliance for cognitive dissonance

A
  • Participants were induced to lie about a boring experiment being interesting and getting payed either 1$ or 20$ to do so
  • Participants in the $1 condition later rated the monotonous tasks more favorably than those in the other conditions. Only the participants in the $1 condition rated the activities above the neutral point
  • Their way of rationalizing lying for just 1$
142
Q

Under what conditions is cognitive dissonance most likely to emerge?

A
  • Free choice -> choosing to engage in a behaviour that is inconsistent
    with beliefs will cause dissonance
  • Insufficient justification -> dissonance may occur when the reason for a behaviour is weak or unclear
  • Negative consequences -> freely chosen inconsistent behaviors may not cause dissonance if there was no negative consequence of the behaviour
  • Foreseeability -> Dissonance may not occur if the negative consequence was not something that could be foreseen
143
Q

How does self-affirmation relate to cognitive dissonance?

A
  • Cognitive dissonance results from challenges or threats to people’s sense of themselves as rational, moral, and competent
  • Self-affirmation relates to boosting our self-esteem and identity by focusing on
    important aspects of the self
  • Self-affirmation can reduce dissonance
144
Q

How does culture relate to cognitive dissonance?

A
  • Cognitive dissonance may be universal across cultures but may be aroused by different situations:
  • Euro-Canadians’ (individualistic cultures) cognitive dissonance may result from threats to how they see themselves
  • Asian-Canadians’ (collectivist cultures) cognitive dissonance may occur from threats to how people believe they are seen by others
145
Q

What’s self-perception theory?

A

People come to know their own attitudes by looking at their behaviour and the context in which it occurred, and inferring what their attitudes must be

146
Q

How do self-perception theory and cognitive dissonance relate to each other?

A
  • Cognitive dissonance theory argues that people change attitudes to fit their behavior because inconsistencies are mentally unpleasant
  • Self-perception argues that people didn’t change their attitudes; instead, they inferred their attitudes from their behavior in the situation
  • Cognitive dissonance may occur when behaviour doesn’t fit a preexisting attitude, and the attitude is important to the self-concept
  • Self-perception may occur when attitudes are weak or ambiguous
147
Q

What’s the overjustification effect?

A
  • Occurs when an extrinsic reward ends up reducing the intrinsic motivation to perform an action
  • Extrinsic rewards can increase frequency of a behaviour, but can also undermine the intrinsic motivation to engage in the behaviour
  • Behaviour will cease once the extrinsic reward is removed
  • But rewards can be helpful when intrinsic motivation is lacking
  • Rewards & praise for achievement can boost intrinsic motivation
148
Q

What’s social influence?

A

The many ways people affect one another, including changes in attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and behaviour resulting from the comments, actions, or even the mere presence of others

149
Q

What’s conformity?

A
  • Acting differently due to the influence of others
  • Changing one’s behaviours or beliefs in response to some real (or imagined) pressure from others
  • Conformity can preclude us from challenging erroneous and even harmful group norms
  • Implicit pressure: buying tighter jeans to fit with the trends
  • Explicit pressure: peer pressure to drink or smoke cigarettes
150
Q

What’s compliance?

A

Responding favourably to an explicit request by another person

151
Q

What’s obedience?

A

Occurs when a more powerful person, an authority figure, issues a demand, to which the less powerful person submits

152
Q

What’s automatic mimicry?

A
  • Automatic conformity
  • Tendency to mindlessly imitate other people’s behavior and movements
  • Caused by ideomotor action -> phenomenon whereby merely thinking about a behavior makes performing it more likely
  • Mimicry may facilitate empathy—our ability to understand and share feelings of another person
  • Mimicry may build social rapport and lead to pleasant social interactions
  • People like individuals who mimic them better than those who don’t
  • People who are mimicked engage in more prosocial behavior afterward
  • Mimicry is stronger for people with a drive to affiliate with others
153
Q

What’s normative social influence?

A
  • The influence of other people that comes from the desire to avoid their disapproval and other social sanctions (ridicule, barbs, ostracism)
  • Comes from our deeply-held need to form and maintain social connections, and to be well-regarded by others
  • Normative social influence leads to public compliance but not necessarily private acceptance
  • People may publicly agree with the group opinion in order to avoid social disapproval but privately believe something different
154
Q

Describe the study by Asch (1956) on normative social influence

A
  • 8 male students were gathered together to perform a simple perceptual task: determining which of three lines was the same length as a target line
  • On the third trial one participant found that his private judgment was at odds with the expressed opinions of everyone else in the group
  • He was the only true participant in the experiment; the seven others were confederates instructed by Asch to respond incorrectly
  • 3/4 of the participants conformed to the group’s incorrect answer at least once. Overall, participants conformed on a third of the critical trials
  • The primary reason people conformed was to avoid standing out negatively in the eyes of the group
155
Q

What’s informational social influence?

A
  • The influence of other people that results from taking their comments or actions as a source of information about what is correct, proper, or effective
  • In an ambiguous situation, other people can serve as frame of reference
  • Informational social influence is more likely when:
    ○ the situation is ambiguous or difficult
    ○ we feel low in knowledge or competence about the topic
  • Other people shape how we see the stimuli or issues before us, leading to internalization—the private acceptance of a proposition, orientation, or ideology
  • Adopting the group’s perspective
  • Effects of informational influence can be long-lasting
156
Q

Describe Sherif’s Autokinetic Illusion Study (1936) on informational social influence

A
  • People had to stare at an auto-kinetic illusion and estimate how much the white dot moved overtime
  • Sherif argued that everyone’s individual judgments quickly fused into a group norm, and that norm influenced how far participants reported seeing the light move
157
Q

What are the key factors that affect conformity?

A
  • Group Size -> conformity rates increase as group size increases (true for informational and normative social influence)
  • Group unanimity -> more conformity when group is unanimous.
  • Anonymity -> anonymity eliminates normative social influence and therefore should substantially reduce conformity
  • Expertise and Status -> High status (more normative influence) or expert group members (more informational) have more social influence
  • Culture ->
    Interdependent vs. independent cultures…interdependent cultures = higher rates of conformity)
    Tight vs. loose cultures…tight = conform
  • Gender -> Girls socialized to value interdependence (conformity). Boys socialized to value independence
158
Q

What’s a communal relationship?

A
  • The individuals feel a special responsibility for one another and often expect their relationship to be long term
  • Based on a sense of “oneness” and a family-like sharing of common identity
  • Individuals give and receive according to the principle of need, according to which person in the relationship has the most pressing need at any given time
  • Kinds of relationships that are the social fabric of communal life in small villages
  • Ex: relationships of family and close friends
159
Q

What’s an exchange relationship?

A
  • Trade-based and often short term
  • Individuals feel no special responsibility for one another’s well-being
  • Giving and receiving are governed by concerns about equity (you get what you put into the relationship) and reciprocity (what you receive is about equal to what you give)
  • Ex: relationships are interactions with salespeople and bureaucrats or with workers and supervisors in a business
160
Q

How does proximity influence relationship formation?

A

You are more likely to meet, get to know, and form a friendship or romantic relationship with someone who lives near you or sits next to you in class or at the office

161
Q

What’s functional distance?

A
  • Degree to which architectural design encourages or inhibits social interaction
  • More likely to like someone who you have more chances of engaging with due to functional distance
162
Q

What’s the mere exposure effect?

A
  • The idea that repeated exposure to a novel stimulus, such as an object or a person, leads to greater liking of that stimulus
  • Seeing the same person over and over in your lecture hall and feel more warm toward them despite having never talked to them
163
Q

What are the sources of Mere Exposure Effect?

A
  • Perceptual fluency explanation
  • Classical conditioning
164
Q

What’s the perceptual fluency explanation of the mere exposure effect?

A
  • Easier to process information about familiar stimuli (greater fluency)
  • Pleasant feelings associated with more fluent processing
165
Q

What’s the classical conditioning explanation of the mere exposure effect?

A
  • Encounters with unknown stimuli put us on our guard
  • Repeated exposure to a stimulus without any negative consequence signals that the stimulus is safe and nonthreatening
  • The comfortable feeling of safety associated with the stimulus after multiple exposures renders it more pleasant
166
Q

What’s the liking gap?

A

An illusion where people underestimate how much their conversation partners like them

167
Q

What are possible explanations for the liking gap?

A
  • Overly focused on mistakes
  • Higher standards for self than others (because we have more access to our thoughts and personal information)
  • Overestimate how much their feelings are on display in social interactions
168
Q

What’s the signal amplification bias and why does it happen?

A
  • Tendency to perceive that one’s overtures communicate more romantic interest to potential partners than they actually do
  • Driven by fears of rejection -> the stronger the fear of rejection the more vulnerable someone will be to the signal amplification bias
169
Q

What’s self-disclosure and what’s its role in relationships?

A
  • The act of revealing personal, intimate information about the self
  • Fosters feelings of liking, connection, & trust in both targets and receivers
  • When you disclose personal information to someone, you like them better and they like you better
  • Gives the partner opportunity to demonstrate responsiveness
    (making the speaker feel heard, understood, & cared for)
  • Sharing information about the self with another recruits some of the same neural and neurochemical mechanisms involved in processing basic rewards like tasty food
  • Self-disclosure most effective when it’s reciprocal
170
Q

How does similarity influence relationship formation?

A
171
Q

What are the social benefits of physical attractiveness?

A
  • Enjoy more popularity as friends and potential romantic partners
  • Earn higher salaries
  • Have work evaluated more favourably
  • More likely to receive help in an emergency
  • Receive lighter sentences in court
172
Q

What’s the halo effect?

A
  • Tendency to assume that physically attractive people possess other positive qualities
  • “What is beautiful is good”
  • Physical attractiveness is associated with culturally valued traits:
  • Attractive people in individualistic cultures are more likely to be seen as dominant
  • Attractive people in collectivist cultures are more likely to be seen as empathetic and caring
173
Q

How do self-fulfilling prophecies work with attractiveness?

A

People will be nicer and warmer with more attractive people which will lead them to get the same response back and feed their self-fulfilling prophecy that attractive people are nicer and warmer

174
Q

What are the effects of facial averageness on attractiveness?

A
  • Faces that are “average” are seen as more attractive
  • Tend to perceive a composite image of many faces “averaged” together as more attractive than the individual faces of which the composite is comprised
  • By averaging faces together, the flaws in the initial faces have sort of been cancelled out
  • Evolutionary explanation
  • Perceptual fluency explanation: average (“prototypical”) and more symmetrical faces are easier to process, and ease of processing is associated with feelings of pleasantnes
175
Q

What are the effects of facial symmetry on attractiveness?

A
  • Bilateral (two- sided) symmetry contributes to attractiveness
  • True of other species as well
  • Evolutionary explanation
  • Perceptual fluency explanation: average (“prototypical”) and more symmetrical faces are easier to process, and ease of processing is associated with feelings of pleasantness
176
Q

What are the evolutionary theories on the appeal of facial averageness and
facial symmetry?

A
  • Indicators of reproductive fitness (capacity to pass on one’s genes to next generation)
  • Pronounced asymmetry may be indicative of issues during prenatal development (e.g., injuries in utero, infectious disease experienced by the mother)
  • Declining health in macaques and humans associated with declines in facial symmetry
177
Q

What are evolutionary perspectives on gender differences in mate preference?

A
  • Men and women seek different characteristics in potential mates because of the large asymmetry in the minimal parental investment of men and women
  • For males, the minimal parental investment required to produce offspring is sperm = minimal time investment, minimal biological cost
  • Males invest minimally so less selective about mating
  • Males may prefer females who are younger and more physically attractive because those are cues of greater fertility (ability to bear offspring)
  • For females, the minimal parental investment is much greater:
  • Eggs are biologically more costly than sperm, as they contain the actual biology machinery required to sustain the developing embryo
  • Pregnancy, producing a placenta, lactation, and an extended period of infertility following childbirth
  • Females invest more, so they should be more selective than males
  • Since females must invest more, they may select mates based on their ability to provide resources to potential offspring
  • In humans, women may view such characteristics as social status, wealth, intelligence, ability, and ambition as attractive
178
Q

What are the general gender differences in mate preference?

A
  • Commonalities: kindness, emotional maturity, dependability, sense of humour
  • Differences: men value physical attractiveness more, whereas women value status, resources, & ambition more
179
Q

What are cultural perspectives on gender differences in mate preference?

A
  • Different preferences for potential mates may be due to social factors
  • Across cultures women may find status and resources attractive in men because women have less access to status and resources
  • In cultures where there is greater gender equality, women place less importance on a man’s status and resources
  • However, gender equality does not affect importance placed on female attractiveness
180
Q

Why do ideal mate preferences may not always predict actual mate
preferences?

A
  • But amount of match/mismatch no longer associated with romantic interest after live interaction
  • Someone that’s good on paper, might not actually be good for us irl
  • Affective forecasting: not always good at predicting how we will feel about a
    certain outcome
  • Construal-level theory: Psychologically distant events are thought about in abstract terms (higher-level construal) VS events that are close at hand are thought about in concrete terms (lower-level construal)
181
Q

Describe the impact of Harlow’s research on understanding of love and
attachment

A
  • Our early attachments with our parents and other caregivers shape our relationships for the rest of our lives
  • Point of departure for study of love: the affectionate bond of a child for its mother
  • Separated infant macaque monkeys from their mothers shortly after birth
  • Noted strong attachment the laboratory-raised infants developed to the soft cloth pads used to cover the floor of their cages
  • Cloth mother and wire mother placed in different cubicles attached to infant’s cage
  • The monkeys prefer to spend time with the soft, warm cloth mother even if cloth mother doesn’t provide lactating
  • Faced with novel, fear-producing situations, infants prefer to cling to the cloth, but not the wire, surrogate mother
  • Use her as a “secure base” for exploration
  • Monkeys raised by wire surrogates—or without a mother at all—exhibit high levels of terror and distress in unfamiliar situations and exhibit severe social issues later in life + can act aggressively to peers
  • As adolescents, they were highly fearful, couldn’t interact normally with their peers, and engaged in inappropriate sexual behaviors—for example, attacking potential mates or failing to display typical sexual positions during copulation
182
Q

What’s Bowlby’s attachment theory?

A
  • Observations of orphaned children
  • Warm, intimate, and continuing relationship with the mother (or another caregiver) is essential for healthy child development
  • Took evolutionary perspective: Infants (who are very vulnerable) cannot survive without caregiver to protect them from harm—some mechanism must be in place to keep infants close to caregivers (cute infant smiles and strong feelings of parental love and protection)
  • Argued that the attachment system comes online when distance is created between the baby and the caregiver
  • This gives rise to behaviours such as crying which lead to closing the distance between the baby and the caregiver
  • Posits the existence of a universal, evolved bio-behavioural system (attachment system) that motivates maintenance of proximity to caregivers (“attachment figures”) in infancy/childhood, thus promoting survival
  • Motivates us to keep close to caregivers
  • Develop internal working models of the self depending on how secure our caregivers were
183
Q

Describe Ainsworth’s strange situation and the three patterns of attachment she observed

A
  • Ainsworth devised laboratory paradigm for studying attachment dynamics as described by Bowlby
  • Infants brought into unfamiliar (“strange”) laboratory environment
  • Experiment divided into series of “episodes”: Separations and reunions with the mother
  • As predicted by attachment theory, infants generally exhibit distress when mother leaves the room
  • Also observed emergence of three different kinds of behavioural patterns infants display upon the mother’s return, which could be reliably linked to differences in prior maternal care
  • Secure pattern of attachment
  • Two types of insecure patterns of attachment: Anxious/ambivalent & Avoidant
184
Q

What are the antecedents of each attachment pattern described by Ainsworth?

A

Secure pattern of attachment:
* Thought to derive from history of positive interactions with a responsive caregiver
* Bids for proximity and reassurance are sensitively and consistently attended to

Insecure attachment: thought to stem from deficits in caregiving
Anxious/ambivalent:
* Caregiver is inconsistent
* Leads to hyperactivation of the attachment system (if I ramp
up my bids for proximity, maybe caregiver will respond)

Avoidant:
* Caregiver is rejecting, discourages closeness
* Leads to deactivation of the attachment system (if I don’t come off as too needy, maybe the caregiver won’t reject me)

185
Q

Describe Ainsworth’s observation of the secure pattern

A
  • Distressed by mother’s departure
  • Seeks contact with the mother upon her return; readily soothed and reassured by her presence
  • Uses mother as a secure base to explore
186
Q

Describe Ainsworth’s observation of the anxious/ambivalent pattern

A
  • The “clingy” baby
  • Highly distressed by mother’s departure
  • Continues to cry and exhibit distress even when contact is restored
  • Ambivalence toward the mother
  • No interest in exploration, not able to use mother as a secure base
187
Q

Describe Ainsworth’s observation of the avoidant pattern

A
  • The “sullen” baby
  • May cry when mother leaves the room
  • Appears indifferent to the mother upon her return
  • May play with toys but does not actively involve the mother as securely attached babies do
188
Q

What are internal working models related to attachment?

A
  • In the course of their attachment interactions, individuals are thought to develop schemas or internal working models of themselves and their attachment figures
  • Guide subsequent interactions with attachment figures as well as other people:
  • Model of self: Am I loveable?
  • Model of the other: Can others be relied on?
  • Securely attached have both positive models of the self and of others
  • Anxiously attached individuals: have negative models of self
  • Avoidant attached individuals: have negative models of others
189
Q

What are the two attachment dimensions as they have been assessed in adults?

A
  • In adults, it’s argued that the traits are better conceptualized on a continuum between anxiety and avoidance
  • Anxiety dimension: refers to the amount of fear a person feels about rejection and abandonment within close relationships
  • Avoidance dimension: refers to whether a person is comfortable with intimacy and dependence in primary adult relationships or finds them aversive to a degree
190
Q

What does the secure attachment type look like for adults?

A
  • Have learned close others can be relied on for support
  • Comfortable seeking support when distressed
  • Can draw on mental representations of close others for support during times of distress
  • Believe that distress is manageable
  • Appraise events as less stressful & and appraise self as capable
    of dealing with the situation
  • Willing to acknowledge distress
  • More willing to confront novel & threatening situations
  • More effective at providing support to relationship partners
  • Have more stable & satisfying relationships than insecurely attached individuals
191
Q

What does the anxious attachment type look like for adults?

A
  • Have an intense need to feel close and accepted but hold serious doubts about their ability to sustain their partner’s love and loyalty
  • Hypervigilant for signs of relationship threat & interpret ambiguous cues as threatening to the relationship
  • They will cope by ruminating and catastrophizing
  • Greater proneness to experience negative emotion, inability to detach themselves from psychological pain
  • Attempts to minimize distance from attachment figure
  • Elicit support through clinging and controlling behaviour
192
Q

What does the avoidant attachment type look like for adults?

A
  • Uncomfortable with closeness, self- disclosure, being vulnerable
  • Seek independence & self-reliance
  • Research suggests that distancing from others & suppression of negative affect is a reaction to rejection fears
  • Defences can break down under conditions of high cognitive load or prolonged strain
193
Q

What’s the self-expansion model?

A

1) People have a fundamental desire to expand—to increase their self-efficacy
* Accumulate resources, perspectives, & identities that facilitate goal achievement
2) Close relationships provide one way of achieving this
* Include the other person as part of ourselves and including their knowledge, perspectives, resources

194
Q

How does the self-expansion model influence positive affect and relationship satisfaction?

A
  • The experience of self-expansion is a potent source of pleasure and excitement early on in the relationship
  • Predicts satisfaction with the relationship
  • When the “honeymoon” period is over -> self-expansion begins to slow, but self-expansion motive remains
  • Couples who did exciting, self- expanding activities together reported greater relationship satisfaction after 10 weeks compared to couples who engaged in pleasant (but not exciting) activities
  • Increase in relationship satisfaction and feelings of passionate love
195
Q

What’s the investment model of commitment?

A
  • Relationship stability is determined by commitment: the intent to persist in the relationship
  • Three factors contribute to commitment level:
  • Satisfaction level
  • Quality of alternatives
  • Investment size
196
Q

What are relationship-maintenance behaviours?

A

1) Willingness to accommodate (respond in a constructive manner) rather than retaliate when partner behaves badly
2) Willingness to make sacrifices when one’s preferences are at odds with the partner’s preferences
3) Derogation of attractive alternatives
* Particularly when threat to the relationship is high

197
Q

What are relationship-enhancing cognitions?

A
  • Motivated reasoning in committed relationships: processing information to support staying in the relationship
  • Positive illusions about relationship and partner
  • See more positives in own relationships vs. relationships of
    others
  • Idealize partners
  • Faults into virtues (‘he’s not moody, he’s deep”)
  • Linked to greater relationship satisfaction
  • Self-fulfilling prophecy
198
Q

What are the 4 most harmful behaviours in relationships?

A

1) Criticism: personal attack on the partner
2) Contempt: decay of admiration for the partner, looking down on the partner (e.g. insults & name-calling, hostile humour, mockery, sneering, eye-rolling, disgust expressions) + identified as one of the worst indicators
3) Defensiveness: denying responsibility & making excuses for one’s actions, cross-complaining
4) Stonewalling: withdrawing and disengaging from meaningful conversation with the partner; removing oneself from the conversation, not responding or offering monosyllabic responses

199
Q

How do happy and unhappy couples differ in the kinds of attributions
they make for partner behaviour?

A
  • Dissatisfied, distressed couples make attributions that cast their partner and their relationship in a negative light; they attribute rewarding, positive events in their relationships to unstable causes that are specific, unintended, and selfish
  • Ex: might interpret an unexpected gift of flowers as the result of a whim, particular to that day, and anticipate the gift to be followed by some selfish request from their partners
  • Happier couples, on the other hand, tend to attribute the same positive events to stable causes that are general, intended, and selfless
  • Ex: might attribute a gift of flowers to her partner’s enduring kindness
  • Similarly, happier partners attribute negative events—the forgotten anniversary or sarcastic comment—to specific and unintended causes, whereas distressed partners attribute the same kinds of negative events to stable and global causes and see their partners as blameworthy and selfish
200
Q

What are predictors of relationship dissatisfaction and dissolution?

A
  • anger
  • criticism
  • defensiveness
  • stonewalling
  • contempt
  • sadness
  • fear

Social Psych (3 decks)

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