Social Psychology Flashcards
Attitudes
Relatively stable and enduring evaluations of the social world ranging from negative to positive. They are based on beliefs, emotions or past behaviours associated with the target object.
Heider’s Balance Theory
A particular cognitive consistency theory specifying that people prefer elements within a cognitive system to be internally consistent with one another (balanced). Balanced systems are assumed to be more stable and psychologically pleasant than imbalanced systems. These systems are sometimes referred to as P-O-X triads
Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
People have a fundamental motivation to maintain consistency among elements in their cognitive systems. When inconsistency occurs, they experience an unpleasant psychological state that motivates them to reduce the dissonance.
The discomfort felt when there is a gap between your attitudes and behaviours.
Two types of dissonant situations
Free-choice & forced-compliance dissonance
- when a person makes a choice between desirable alternatives
- when a person is forced to behave in a way inconsistent with their beliefs
Minimal justification effect
When behavior can be justified by means of external inducements, there is no need to change internal cognitions. However, when the external justification is minimal, you will reduce your dissonance by changing internal cognitions.
Kelley’s Attribution Theory - Three general principles of attribution
- the covariation principle
- the discounting principle
- the augmentation principle
Kelley’s factors when considering whether a behaviour is attributed as internal or external
- Consistency (same person-same behaviour-same stimuli-across time)
- Distinctiveness (same person-same behaviour-diff stimuli-across time)
- Consensus Information (same behaviour by other people-same stimuli-across time)
Self Attribution
By Jones & Nisbett
- we tend to see our behavior as being controlled more by the situation, while we see the behavior of others as caused more by internal forces
Social influence
Any change in an individual’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviors caused by other people, who may be actually present or whose presence is imagined, expected, or only implied.
Social facilitation
Studied first by Norman Triplett
- The improvement in an individual’s performance of a task that often occurs when others are present. Tends to occur with tasks that are uncomplicated or have been previously mastered through practice.
Imitation
Process of copying the behavior of another person, group, or object, intentionally or unintentionally. Basic form of learning for human skills, gestures, interests, attitudes, role behaviors, social customs, and verbal expressions. True imitation requires that an observer be able to take the perspective of the model.
Social conformity
The adjustment of one’s opinions, judgments, or actions so that they become more consistent with (a) the opinions, judgments, or actions of other people or (b) the normative standards of a social group or situation. Conformity includes temporary outward acquiescence (compliance) as well as more enduring private acceptance (conversion).
Asch’s conformity experiment
Line comparing experiment
- 3 rounds
- in control group, subject gave wrong answer < 1% of time
- in experiment group, gave wrong answer almost 37%
- 75% of subjects gave wrong at least once
Factors influencing conformity
- if opinion is made public
- if one can stay anonymous
- if the majority was unanimous or not
- group size: as it increased from 1 to 3 people, conformity increased. Further increase did not increase conformity.
- fatigued or not
- lower status than the agents
- desire for further interaction with agents
Norms
A standard or range of values that represent the typical performance of a group or of an individual (of a certain age, for example) against which comparisons can be made.
Obedience
Behavior in compliance with a direct command, often one issued by a person in a position of authority.
Milgram’s experiment on obedience
- electric shocks ranging from 15-450 volts
- 65% of subjects obeyed instruction till the end (even though they showed signs of stress)
Factors influencing obedience
- instruction provided by authority figure
- proximity of authority figure
- learner present in other room
- ability to assign responsibility to authority figure
- subject did not see others disobeying instruction
Foot-in-door effect Versus Door-in-face effect
FID: A minor initial request is presented immediately before a more substantial target request. Agreement to the initial request makes people more likely to agree to the target request than would have been the case if the latter had been presented on its own.
DIF: An extreme initial request is presented immediately before a more moderate target request. Rejection of the initial request makes people more likely to accept the target request than would have been the case if the latter had been presented on its own.
Overjustification Effect
A paradoxical effect in which rewarding (or offering to reward) a person for his or her performance can lead to lower, rather than higher, interest in the activity. It occurs when the introduction of an extrinsic reward weakens the strong intrinsic motivation that was the key to the person’s original high performance.
Bem’s self-perception theory
When one’s attitude about a certain object is weak, one tends to observe behaviour to attribute an attitude to it.
Persuasion
An active attempt by one person to change another person’s attitudes, beliefs, or emotions associated with some issue, person, concept, or object.
Factors influencing persuasion
- authority or expert
- talking faster
- two-sided approach
- subject is distracted
- messages aren’t designed to seem persuasive (soft selling)
- attractiveness
- messages that evoke strong emotion (esp. fear)
Elaboration Likelihood Model by Petty & Cacioppo
A theory about how attitudes are formed and changed; organizes the many different attitude change processes under a single conceptual umbrella
2 routes to persuasion: Systematic/Central route (high elaboration) vs Heuristic/Peripheral route processing (low elaboration)
Behaviours during cognitive dissonance
- change behaviour or attitude to be consistent
- find more info to explain inconsistent behaviour or attitude
- trivialization: inconsistent attitude or behaviour is not important
- self-affirmation
Belief perseverance
Tendency to maintain a belief even after the information that originally gave rise to it has been refuted or otherwise shown to be inaccurate.
Attraction
The interest in and liking of one individual by another, or the mutual interest and liking between two or more individuals. Interpersonal attraction may be based on shared experiences or characteristics, physical appearance, internal motivation (e.g., for affiliation), or some combination of these.
Factors affecting degree of attraction
- Proximity
- Attitude similarity
- Physical attractiveness
- Need complementarity
Festinger’s social comparison theory
The proposition that people evaluate their abilities and attitudes in relation to those of others in a process that plays a significant role in self-image and subjective well-being.
Social exchange theory
By Thibaut & Keley
- A theory envisioning social interactions as an exchange in which the participants seek to maximize their benefits (the rewards they receive minus the costs they incur) within the limits of what is regarded as fair or just.
Gain-Loss Principle
By Aronson & Linder
- An evaluation that changes has a great impact than an evaluation that remains constant
- Tendency to like someone more when their liking for us increases (compared to someone who constantly likes us)
Altruism
Prosocial behaviour in which the person’s intent is to benefit someone else at some cost to himself or herself.
Pluralistic ignorance
A scenario in which the majority of the members of a group privately believe against the norm, but they don’t do anything about it because they think they are the only one with that opinion.
Latané and Darley experiments for bystander intervention
- Pluralistic ignorance: smoke in the room
- Diffusion of responsibility: seizure reporting
Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment
- measuring effect of modelling
- children made to watch aggressive model and then left with model
- most copied model’s actions to the tee
Fundamental attribution error
- Tendency to associate the cause for other’s behaviours as dispositional, while our own behaviours as situational.
- Belief that our personalities are stable, with a changing environment.
Halo effect
Tendency to allow a general impression about a person influence other specific evaluations about them.
Primacy effect
Tendency for facts, impressions, or items that are presented first to be better learned or remembered than material presented later in the sequence
Belief in a just world
Tendency to believe that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people.
Increases likelihood of victim blaming.
Zajonc’s theory of group behaviour
Presence of other people increases arousal and enhances emission of dominant responses.
If a dominant response is required, performance will improve.
If weaker response is required, performance will suffer.
Eg: Expert vs beginner pianist at recital
Social loafing
The reduction of individual effort that occurs when people work in groups compared to when they work alone.
Zimbardo’s prison experiment
To test whether brutality in prisons was due to intrinsic or extrinsic characteristic.
- Experiment terminated after 6 days when police subjects began to brutally treat prisoner subjects
Deindividualization
Loss of self-awareness or personal identity
- occured in the Zimbardo experiment where college students were overwhelmed by roles
Groupthink
Tendency of decision-making groups to strive for consensus without considering discordant information.
