Quiz 9 Review Flashcards
Social Psychology
- the study of how people influence thoughts, behaviors, and attitudes
- Humans are highly social
Attitudes
- fundamental attribution error (FAE)
- cognitive dissonance
Attribution:
- Process by which we assign causes to behavior
- (as humans we are prone to trying to explain why something occurs)
FAE:
- tendency to overestimate dispositional influences on others’ behavior
and underestimate situational influences on others behavior
Jones and harris (1967):
The castro study
-Debators: students were randomly assigned to defend pro- or anti- Castro positions in a debate
- REGARDLESS of their actual feelings
- Raters: subjects were asked to rate how actually pro- Castro they thought the debators were
- Raters thought pro- castro debators were actually pro- castro, DESPITE knowing topics were assigned
attributes behavior to internal rather than external causes
- When reasoning about ourselves, we do the opposite!
-Overestimate situational factors
- Underestimate dispositional factors
Cognitive dissonance theory
- unpleasant feeling of tension or unrest that results from conflicting thoughts or beliefs
- Humans dont like to feel this way. So, we use clever strategies for getting around it
dissonance reduction strategies
(all involved changing our minds after an action)
-Avoid dissonant information
-Firm up beleifs to justify an action (preference reports)
-Generate a new belief to reconcile the conflict (seekers cult)
-Change a beleif to justify an action (insufficient-justification effect)
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959):
- Participants completed extremely boring task
- Were paid to lie about experiment to next subject (either $1 or $20)
- Then they were asked to rate the study’s enjoyableness
- People offered $1 to lie rated the experiment as more enjoyable
(insufficient justification)
Social Influence
- When the presence of others influences our behaviors
- Conformity
o Asch’s conformity experiment - Bystander Non-intervention
Conformity
- tendency to alter behavior as a result of group pressure
o Face the rear video: confederates all face away from the elevator door and the candid subject will eventually turn away as well due to conformity
Why do we conform?
Two general reasons:
- Information influence: Others might know better
- Normative influence: we want to fit in
Asch Experiments
- Tested whether people conform and why
- Subjects seated in a group of 6-8 people
- Asked to perform a simple visual perception task
- BUT – all other people are confederates (actors)
- Confederates were instructed to give the wrong answer
- Actual subject seated second-to-last
Results: (asch)
- 75% of subjects conformed at least once
o Some on all, some only 1 or 2 trials - On average, subjects conformed about 40% of the time
But why did subjects conform?
- In another version, subjects were asked to write down their answers, instead of saying them out loud
o Much less conformity in written answers
o Suggests NORMATIVE influence is responsible
Factors that influenced conformity:
Unanimity: if another person gave the correct answer, conformity dropped
* Differences in wrong answer: if others differed from the majority, conformity dropped
* Group size: a larger group resulted in greater conformity, up to ~5-6 people.
