Social Psychology 1 Flashcards
(25 cards)
What is social psychology?
The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another.
Deception
Hiding information from participants is commonly used in social psychology so that participants’ behaviour and responses are not influenced
Factors that can shape behaviour and thought:
Actions of others
Characteristics of others
Cognitive processes
Environmental variables
Cultural context
Biological factors
What are the two key areas social cognition research is focused on?
Understanding mechanisms through which people make inferences about others- e.g. mental shortcuts
Identifying the impact these mechanisms have on the types of judgements we make about others
Heuristics
mental shortcuts that simplify complex problem solving into simpler rule-based decisions
The representativeness heuristic
The tendency for people to conduct a quick comparison between the similarity of a person and their mental representation of different classifications.
Ignores base-rate information, leading to bias
The availability heuristic
Refers to the tendency to judge the likelihood of something happening based on how readily an instance of it comes to mind
e.g. common perception that travelling on a commercial airplane is more dangerous than travelling by car
The Mere Exposure Effect
People tend to like things more, the more they are exposed to them.
James Cutting (2006)- experiment with impressionist paintings and intro to psych class
The Halo Effect
When you interpret a person’s behaviour in light of one particular characteristic (most often their attractiveness
The Halo Effect Experiment
Talamas, Mavor and Perrett (2016)-
posted pictures of 100 college students on Amazon Turk asking for ratings of attractiveness, and predictions of intelligence, conscientiousness and academic performance.
They found strong correlations between
Attractiveness and perceived intelligence
Attractiveness and perceived academic performance
Attractiveness and perceived conscientiousness
The Spotlight Effect
The systematic overestimation of how much attention other people pay to you, your appearance or your behaviour
Gillovich et al (2000)- asked participants to wear t shirts with embarrassing pictures and estimate how many others noticed their t shirt
Participants estimated twice as many noticed
Positive Illusions
People tend to have inflated views on themselves and their futures.
People’s unrealistic positivity also extend to judging their traits.
People’s impressions of themselves typically correlate with how others perceive them, but also tend to rate themselves more positively than do others.
The Self-Serving Bias
Because we essentially see ourselves as good, the good things that happen are often interpreted as just and the bad things are often seen as inescapable misfortune.
The Lake Wobegon Effect
A systematic bias where people will say there are doing better than average
Possible reasons:
You normally get imbalanced feedback, where you are more likely to be told when you are doing well when you are doing poorly.
People focus on just one area that they believe themselves to be better and then generalise from there
You are motivated and feel good about yourself.
Thin Slice Theory
People tend to make judgements about others based on ‘thin slices’ of information.
Ambady and Rosenthal (1993) asked “How long do you need to look at a lecturer to work out how popular of a lecturer he/she is?
Social Attribution
Making educated guesses about the efforts or motives of others
Self-Presentation Theory
Assumes that for strategic reasons we express attitudes that made us appear consistent
To avoid seeming inconsistent, we express attitudes that match our actions, and we may automatically pretend these attitudes are genuine.
Self-Perception Theory
Our actions reveal our true attitudes to us
When uncertain about our feelings our beliefs, we look to our behaviour, just like other people do when they are trying to figure out our attitudes
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
We experience discomfort, or dissonance, when our thoughts, beliefs or behaviours are inconsistent with each other
Festinger (1957) argued that to reduce this unpleasant sensation, we often adjust our thinking so we can justify our actions to ourselves
Conducted a study and got two groups of students to do a task and paid one $20 and the other $1.
$20- experienced the boring task and concluded they were being compensated for the monotony
$1- concluded it was much more fun
Confirmation bias
People don’t like getting information that don’t align with their beliefs or values, so they seek out information that confirms what they believe.
Conformity
The tendency for us to think and act like other people around us
Humans have a natural tendency to imitate others
Asch’s Experiments
Investigated the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could lead a person to conform
Asch (1951)- participants carried out a line judgement task to which there was an obvious right answer.
Participant always gave their answer last. The other five actors purposely gave the wrong answer
25% remained independent of group influence
75% conformed at least once
33% went along with the group the majority of the time
What predicts conformity?
Group size: the more people the more conformity
Unanimity: when one person disagrees it deflates the social power
Cohesion: opinions from people outside the group we identify with matter less than someone within our group
Prior commitment: A commitment to a behaviour or belief means that the person will often stick with that rather than conform
Obedience
Milgram’s Obedience studies:
At 150 volts, the learner protested
After 300 volts, the learner refused to answer
After 330 volts, the teacher heard silence
If the max of 450 volts was reached, the teacher was told to keep pressing that level for future incorrect answers
26 out of 40 men progressed to 450 volts. Those who stopped often did it at 150 volts
Almost all men expressed concern.
