Test #4 Flashcards
(262 cards)
social psychology
The scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another.
difference between social psychology and sociology
- Most sociologists study groups, and how things like social class, social structure, and social institutions influence society.
- Social psychology studies the individual within the group.
- Social psychologists rely more heavily upon manipulating a factor to see what effect it has on behaviour. They conduct experiments. (situational)
- The goal of social psychology is to identify universal properties of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence regardless of social class or culture
personality psychology
- The focus is on individual differences. The aspects of one’s personality that make them different from others.
the fundamental attribution error
- Ignoring situational factors when explaining another’s behaviour. (eg. someone bumps you and you assume they are just rude and you don’t think maybe something happened at home → ignoring situational factors)
- Implications? Those who attribute poverty and unemployment to personal dispositions (“They’re just lazy and undeserving”) tend to lack sympathy toward such people. Those who make situation attributions (“If we were to live with the same overcrowding, poor education, and discrimination, would we be any better off?”) tend to adopt political positions that offer more direct support for the poor.
Looking at situational factors = more sympathetic
dispositional attribution
- explain the cause of the behaviour as something that is inherent to the person (something about them personally) (eg. they bumped me cause they are rude)
situational attribution
explanation of behaviour that has something to do with a situation or the context (eg. that person bumped me because they were distracted by something and didnt see me)
self serving bias
We take credit for success (dispositional attribution) yet blame others or the situation for failure (situational attribution). Why? (we see ourselves favourbly)
- Do well on test: “I’m very gifted”
- Do poorly on test: “That test was unfair, my roomates made it hard to study”
actor/observer effect
- When we act, we are aware of situational influences on us. When we see others act, we are less aware of situation influences affecting them. We are less likely to commit the fundamental attribution error if we have been in the same situation ourselves, perhaps because taking a walk in others’ shoes helps us grasp what they must contend with.
- You are more sympathetic for someone when you have experienced the same thing as them → when you understand their situation
- Japanese and Chinese people seem to do so less. Unlike those in Western society, they may be more likely to view behaviours within a context, and see others’ behaviour as a mix of both dispositional and situational influence.
social comparison theory
- We seek to evaluate our abilities and beliefs by comparing them with those of others
- Upward social comparison - we compare ourselves with people who seem superior to us
- Downward social comparison - we compare ourselves with people who seem inferior to us
conformity
A change in behaviour or belief associated with real or imagined group pressure. Would you do the same thing without the group present?
compliance
Conform to request, but privately disagree.
obedience
Complying with an explicit command.
acceptance
Conformity that involves both acting and believing in accord with social pressure.
Asch’s Study of Group Pressure
- experimenter asks you and the others to indicate which of three comparison lines is identical in length to a standard line.
- On the third set of lines, the first participant selects what is quite clearly the wrong line.
- Then the next 4 subjects choose the same wrong line
- In a control group, when alone, 99% answered correctly. Yet Asch’s participants went along with the incorrect majority about 37% (75% at least once) of the time!!
- Similarly high levels of conformity were observed when Asch’s study was repeated thirty years later and in recent studies involving cognitive tasks.
- 25% of participants never yielded to group pressure.
Berns replication
- Berns placed subjects in an fMRI scanner and showed them two figures. They asked them to decide whether the figures were the same or different by mentally rotating the figures. The researchers led subjects to believe that 4 others were making the same judgments along with them. In fact, these judgments were preprogrammed into a computer.
- On some trials, the other “participants” gave correct answers. On others, they gave incorrect answers. Like Asch, high levels of conformity were found: Participants went along with others’ wrong answers 41% of the time
- Their conforming behavior was associated with activity in the amygdala, which triggers anxiety in response to danger cues. This finding suggests that conformity may come with an anxiety price tag.
predicting conformity
- Group Size: 3 to 5 elicits more conformity than 1 or 2. Beyond five yields diminishing returns. Two groups of three elicit more conformity than one group of six, and three groups of two elicit even more
- Unanimity: If one person agrees with you, you don’t waver.
- Cohesion: Cohesive group members don’t like disagreeing.
- Those with low self-esteem are more likely to conform
- Asian cultures are more collectivist than American cultures and more likely to conform.
- If you responded first, and then were given a chance to change your mind after the rest of the group disagreed with your (correct) judgment. Most people won’t change their answer.
deindividuation
- Tendency of people to engage in uncharacteristic behaviour when they are stripped of their usual identity
- The loss of self- awareness and self-restraint in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity. This can lead to impulsive and deviant acts.
- flaming - sending insulting messages to others
- Although crowds sometimes engage in irrational, even violent, behaviour, research suggests crowds are not necessarily more aggressive than individuals.
Diener - Halloween Candy Experiment (deindividuation)
- Had experimenters observe 1352 children trick or treating in each of 27 homes in the city. Each experimenter told the children to “take one of the candies” and then left the room.
- Compared to solo children - those in groups were more than twice as likely to take the extra candy.
- Children were more likely to transgress by taking extra halloween candy when in a group, when anonymous, and especially when deindividuated by the combination of group immersion and anonymity
- In a recent study, participants were more likely to cheat in a dim room than in a fully lit room. Oddly enough, they even were more likely to behave selfishly - helping themselves to more than their fair share of money - when asked to wear sunglasses, even though they were no less anonymous than when not wearing sunglasses. Apparently, even the mere illusion of anonymity can foster deindividuation.
stanford prison blues (zimbardo)
- Role: a set of norms that define how people in a given social position ought to behave.
- zimabrdo wondered whether conditions in prisons stemmed from peoples’ personalities, or from the roles they’re required to adopt
- What if ordinary people played the roles of prisoner and guard? Would they assume the identities assigned to them?
- He randomly assigned 24 male undergrads, to be either prisoners or guards
- Zimbardo transformed the basement of the Stanford psychology department into a simulated prison, complete with jail cells. To add to the realism, actual Palo Alto police officers arrested the would-be prisoners at their homes and transported them to the simulated prison.
- Prisoners and guards were forced to dress in clothes befitting their assigned roles. Zimbardo (the prison superintendent) instructed guards to refer to prisoners only by numbers, not by names
- The Results: The first day passed without incident. But then the guards began to treat prisoners cruelly and subject them to harsh punishments like humiliating push-ups, singing, stripping naked, and cleaning filthy toilets with their bare hands.
- By day two, the guards began using fire extinguishers on prisoners and forcing them to simulate sodomy. Soon, many prisoners became depressed, hopeless, and angry.
- At day six, Zimbardo ended the study 8 days early. The prisoners were relieved, yet some guards were disappointed. Perhaps Zimbardo was right. Prisoners and guards who lost their individuality, adopted their assigned roles even more easily than imagined.
- Yet…Zimbardo’s study wasn’t carefully controlled: In many respects, it was more of a demonstration than an experiment. His prisoners and guards may have experienced demand characteristics to behave in accord with their assigned roles. Moreover, at least one attempt to replicate the Stanford prison study was unsuccessful, suggesting that the effects of deindividuation may not be inevitable.
Miligram’s Study
- Milgram’s experiments on what happens when the demands of authority clash with the demands of conscience (interested in the influence of authority figures on obedience)
- Milgram’s original experiment involved randomly assigning participants to partake in a study of learning and memory. One person was assigned the role of “teacher” while the other was assigned the role of “learner” (a confederate in another room).
- In teaching the “learner” a list of words, the teacher is required to shock the learner after each mistake (the shocks never really reached the learner).
- Many of the actual participants experienced considerable distress during the procedure, and some were understandably troubled by the fact that they delivered what they believed to be extremely painful—even potentially fatal—electric shocks to an innocent person
Miligram’s Study: Results
- 65% of the sample (40 men) went clear to 450 volts.
- Even after the “learner” mentioned his “heart condition” in a follow-up study with 40 new men, and the experimenter’s reassurance that “although the shocks may be painful, they cause no permanent tissue damage”, 63% fully obeyed
- Many “teachers” trembled, bit their lips. Some burst into fits of nervous laughter. Yet few appeared to be sadistic. And most still continued on.
- The Milgram study was replicated in 2009 by stopping the research after the participant shocked the learner up to 150 volts. The researchers chose the 150-volt mark because 79% of participants who shocked past 150 volts continued to the maximum shock value. The researchers found that the rates of compliance were only slightly lower than in the original Milgram study!
- women exhibited the same level of obedience (65% to 450v). Milgram found no consistent sex differences; this finding has held up in later studies using his paradigm.
- Women were slightly more compliant and less concerned
- The overall rates of obedience among Americans don’t differ significantly from those of non-Americans, including:
bystander apathy
when other people are around, people don’t care
psychological paralysis
bystanders in emergencies typically want to intervene, but often find themselves frozen, seemingly helpless to help.
bystander effect
- Occurs when the presence of others inhibits helping.
- Participants’ responses to an emergency are strongly influenced by the size of the group
- In one study, almost all participants who thought that only they knew about a staged emergency (seizure victim in another room) left the room to try to get help.
- In the larger groups, participants were less likely and slower to intervene. A full 38% of the participants in a six-person group never left the room at all
- Bottom line – If you need help in an emergency, you may be better off if there is only one witness to your plight than if there are several.