Exam 1 Study Guide

Social Psychology
 Chapter 1

Introducing Social Psychology

Social Psychology
• Social psychology is defined as:
• A science that studies the influences of our situations,
with special attention to how we view and affect one
another (our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors in
social situations.)
• It is an environmental science in that it reveals how
the social environment influences behavior
Social Psychology
• Social psychology is the scientific study of:
1. Social Thinking
2. Social Influence
3. Social Relations
Social Thinking

• How people think about one another and make

sense of their world.
• How they decide what and who to believe, evaluate
other people’s motives, personalities, and abilities,
and reach conclusions about the causes of events.
Social Influence
• How people influence one another
• Asch’s studies of group pressure:
• In “three-lines perceptual judgment” experiment,
three quarters did conform and give the wrong
answer at least once.
• Even though the right answer was clear to them, they
gave the wrong answer because everyone else did.
Social Relations
• Bystander effect: The presence of other bystanders
greatly decreases likelihood of intervention
• Woman murdered with 38 witnesses and not one
called the cops
• When dropping something in the elevator, people
were helped 40% of the time when there was one
passenger but less than 20% of the time when there
were 6 passengers
Related Disciplines

• Disciplines Related to Social Psychology

• Personality Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Sociology
Personality Psychology
• A close cousin to social psychology
• Social psych focuses on how individuals react in social
situations (outward factors)
• Personality psych focuses on the effects of individual
traits & characteristics of their reactions (internal
factors)
Cognitive Psychology
• Studies how people perceive, think about, and
remember the aspects of the world
• Cognitive Social Psychologists focus on perceptions
and beliefs about other human beings as opposed to
memory for words or objects
Sociology
• Studies people in groups and societies
• Social psychologists would look at why people fall in
love and get married as whereas sociologists would
look at how government policy influences marriage
and divorce rates.
 Fundamental Principles

• Fundamental Principles of Social Psychology:

1. We construct our social reality
2. Our social intuitions are often powerful but sometimes
perilous
3. Social influences shape our behavior
4. Social behavior is biologically rooted
5. Personal attitudes and dispositions also shape behavior
(Cultural)
6. Social psychology’s principles are applicable in everyday
life
Is Social Psychology Common Sense?
• Some findings are “counter-intuitive” – Stanford Prison
Experiment – Guards followed orders rather than doing what
was right
• Some are pro-intuition (ex. We tend to like people who like
us)
• “Common sense” is easy to have in hindsight – students rated
dueling proverbs both as true (ex. “You can’t teach an old
dog new tricks” and “You’re never too old to learn”)
• This is why social psychologists must test intuitions by using
experiments to isolate the cause of behavior in social
situations
Research Methods

• Theories
• Testable theories can come from anywhere
• A theory is an integrated set of principles that explain
and predict observed events
• Ex. The theory of gravity predicts that your keys will
fall to the floor if you drop them
• Theories imply testable predictions called hypotheses
and use these predictions to give direction to
research
• A good theory is practical
Correlational Research
• Determines whether relationship exists between two or
more variables
• Ex. Taller grave markers were related to longer life
• Cannot determine causal relationship because:
• there may be a third factor
• The direction of the effect cannot be determined (which variable is
the cause and which is the effect?)
• Advantages:
• Gives ideas for experimental (causal) research
• Can study factors that cannot be manipulated
Experimental Research
• Purpose is to establish causal relationships
• Has a control group and an experimental group
• Control group gets no treatment
• Experimental group gets treatment
• Participants are randomly assigned
Surveys and Questionnaires
• A random sample is one in which everyone in the
population being studied has an equal chance of
inclusion
• Must have a representative sample
• If a random sample of the population is wanted, and
participants are selected from university class rosters,
that sample is not representative
Field Experiments
• Conducted in the real world
• Participants do not know they are involved in an
experiment
• Ex. Dropping a book in the elevator to see who helps
you pick it up with one person in the elevator as
opposed to with 6 people in the elevator
Ethics of Experimentation
• Sometimes deception is used because experimenters
want their participants to engage in real
psychological processes
• Ex. They force people to choose whether to give
electric shock to someone else
• Debriefing is required
• Fully explain the experiment to the participant
afterward
 Chapter 2

The Self in a Social World

The Self in a Social World
• There are constant interplays between our sense of
self and our social world
• Our ideas and feelings about ourselves affect how we
respond to others
• Others help shape our sense of self
• Example phenomena:
• Spotlight effect—we tend to think people pay
attention to us more than they really do
• Illusion of Transparency—we tend to believe our
concealed emotions can be easily read by others
Self Concept: Who Am I?
• Elements of self concept:
• Self schemas
• Self Reference Effect
• Possible selves
• Self-discrepancy theory
Self Schemas
• Schemas are mental templates by which we organize our
worlds and generalized knowledge about the physical and
social world; how to behave with different kinds of people
• Self-schemas are the specific beliefs by which you define
yourself
• They help us organize and guide the processing of self-relevant
information
• If being pretty is central to one of your self-schemas, you tend
to notice other’s beauty and recall and welcome info regarding
beauty
Self Reference Effect

• When info is relevant to our self-concept, we

process it quickly and remember it well
• We tend to remember things better if we somehow
relate them to ourselves
Possible Selves
• Motivational function of self knowledge
• Self-schemas that refer to the kinds of people we
hope or dread to be in the future
• Ex. Imagining yourself successful ten years from now
might motivate you to work toward that success
Self Discrepancy Theory
• Actual self is who we truly believe ourselves to be
• Ideal self refers to the selves we and others would like us to
be
• Ought self refers to the duties and external demands we feel
obligated to honor
• Violations of cultural and moral standards of the ideal self and
the ought self produce feelings of guilt and shame
 Development of the Social Self

• Influences of self concept:

• The roles we play
• Social identities we form
• Social comparisons we make with others
• Our successes and failures
• How others judge us
• The surrounding culture
Individualism vs. Collectivism
• Individualism gives priority to one’s own goals over group
goals
• Defines one’s identity in terms of personal, fixed attributes
which exist across situations and relationships.
• Expects one to be self-reliant.
• Collectivism gives priority to the goals of one’s groups
• Defines one’s identity with group they belong
• Places a value on interdependent self
• Self definition consists of fluid, context-specific attributes that
exist in relation to other people
Self Knowledge
• Research shows our confidence in self knowledge is
not well founded
• We dismiss some factors that matter and inflate
some that don’t
• Impact bias—we tend to overestimate the enduring
impact of emotion-causing events
• Immune neglect—we tend to neglect the speed and
strength of our “psychological immune system” which
enables emotional resilience after negative events
happen
Self-Esteem
• Refers to the overall evaluation you have of yourself;
your sense of self worth
• Tesser believes we tend to choose friends who we
outperform in domains relative to our self concept
but who are talented in domains that are not
• Types of self esteem include:
• Trait self esteem—confidence because of abilities or
characteristics
• State self esteem—changeable momentary feelings
about the self; rises and falls
 Processes of Self Esteem
• Top-Down view
• General self esteem which affects specific self
perceptions (having a high self esteem in general makes
you feel good about your looks, abilities, etc.)
• Bottom-Up view
• Self esteem is domain-specific and there are diverse
sources of self esteem
• Contingencies of Self Worth
• Self esteem is contingent on successes and failures in
domains in which a person has based his self worth
Self Esteem Maintenance
• We are motivated to engage in self evaluation so
that we can maintain our self esteem and see
ourselves in a favorable light
• We do this through two processes:
• Reflection: we flatter ourselves by association with
other’s accomplishments
• We bask in others victory especially when their success
in not in a domain relevant to our self concept
• Social Comparison: We notice when we do better
than someone else at something, especially when the
domain is relevant to our self concept
• This holds with families as well as friends
The Dark Side of Self Esteem
• Many murderers, bullies, and rapists tend to have
high self esteem
• When self esteem is threatened, those who have
high self esteem tend to be more aggressive
Self Serving Bias
• The tendency to perceive oneself favorably
• 5 types:
• Self serving attributions in explaining positive and
negative events
• Unrealistically positive views about the self
• Unrealistic optimism
• False consensus and uniqueness
• Exaggerated perceptions of control
Public Self
• The public self is concerned with self presentation
and impression management
• Self presentation refers to presenting to others who
we want them to think we are
• Impression management refers to how we attempt to
control the beliefs other people have of us
• We control these using:
• False modesty
• Self handicapping
• Self monitoring
 Chapter 3

Social Beliefs and Judgments

Social Beliefs
• Our social beliefs emerge as we:
• Perceive events through the filters of our own
assumptions
• Judge events informed by implicit rules that guide our
snap judgments
• Explain events by sometimes attributing them to the
situation or person
• Why study social judgment?
• By focusing on errors in judgment and decision
making, we can come to understand the way people
make judgments and learn to avoid mistakes
Priming
• Refers to activating particular associations in memory
• Experiment:
• Wearing headphones, you hear the sentence “We
stood by the bank” while either the word “money” or
“river” was simultaneously sent to your other ear. The
word primes your interpretation of the sentence; it
determines whether you interpret the sentence to
mean that they stood by the money bank or the river
bank.
Belief Perseverance
• Once a person rationalizes a belief, it is hard to
discredit it
• Experiment:
• One group led to believe risk prone person was a
successful firefighter and the other group cautious
person.
• They were then asked to write their explanations for
why this was.
• They were then given evidence that discredited their
belief
• They still continued to believe their own belief
**More compelling evidence is required to alter a belief
than to create it**
Constructing Memories
• Memories are not exact copies of experiences
• We can easily revise our memories to suit our
current knowledge
• Misinformation Effect:
• People incorporate misinformation into their
memories
• Misinformation may even be able to produce false
memories
• Ex. False memories of child sexual abuse
• People tend to underreport bad behavior and
overreport good behavior
Judging Our Social World
• Intuitive judgments are both powerful and perilous
• Perilous side:
1. Overconfidence phenomenon: tendency to
overestimate the accuracy of one’s belief
• Incompetence feeds overconfidence
• Confirmation bias—our minds pay more attention to info
which supports our beliefs and ignore disconfirming info
2. Heuristics: Mental shortcuts
• Intuitive mental operations that allow us to make a variety of
judgments quickly and efficiently
• Red/white marble experiment: most would choose pot with
more red marbles even thought the odds are greater for the
other pot
Perilous side of Intuitive Judgments
(continued)
3. Illusory thinking
• Illusory correlation
• Refers to our tendency to perceive random events as
correlated
• If a friend calls while you were thinking about them,
you remember that as a correlation as opposed to
just a coincidence
• Illusion of control
• Feeds the ideas that chance events are subject to our
influence
• Regression toward the average: extraordinary event
likely to be followed by a more ordinary event
• Shorter fathers tend to have somewhat taller sons and taller
father tend to have somewhat shorter sons
Characteristics of Heuristics
• Representativeness
• The process whereby judgments of likelihood are based on
assessments of similarity between individuals and group
prototypes
• Availability
• The process whereby judgments of frequency are based on the
ease with which pertinent instances are brought to mind
• Counterfactual thinking: “if only”
• Thoughts of what could have or should have happened if
something had been done differently
• Emotional Amplification: A person’s emotional reaction to an
event is amplified if it almost did not happen
Attributing Causality
• Assigning causes to people’s actions affects how we
judge them
• In prison experiment, were soldiers cruel or were
they merely powerless victims of the situation?
• Experiment: for spouse’s negative act
• Happy couples blamed the situation (she was late
because of heavy traffic) (situational)
• Unhappy couples blamed the person (she was late
because she doesn’t care about me) (dispositional)
Fritz Heider (1958)
• Attribution Theory Pioneer
• Attribution: linking a cause to an instance of
behavior—one’s own or that of other people
• When we observe someone acting intentionally
• we sometimes attribute his behavior to internal
causes (dispositional attribution)
• Sometimes to external causes (situational attribution)
• Also called Theory of Correspondent Inferences,
which specifies the conditions under which people
infer traits
Attribution Theory
• Three factors influence whether we attribute other’s
behaviors to internal or external causes:
• Distinctiveness: whether the behavior is unique to
one situation or occurs in all situations
• Does your friend like one math class or all math
classes? If one, it has High Distinctiveness.
• Consensus
• How many people would behave the same way
• If all students love the class, it has a High Consensus
• Consistency
• Whether next time the behavior would be the same
under the same circumstances
• Does your friend always rave about that math class or did it
only happen one day?
Situational vs. Dispositional Attribution
• Situational attribution is called for when consensus,
distinctiveness, and consistency are all high
• When her classmates like the class, she likes no other
math class, and she has been raving about it all semester,
there must be something special about that class
• Dispositional attribution is called for when consensus
and distinctiveness are low and consistency is high
• When few other students like the class, she likes all math
classes, and she has raved about the course all semester,
then her fondness for the course must reflect something
about her.
Fundamental Attribution Error (Ross,
1977)
• Tendency to mistakenly attribute a person’s behavior to
his disposition rather than the situation
• When explaining someone’s behavior:
• We often underestimate the impact of the situation &
• Overestimate the extent to which it reflects the
individual’s traits and attitudes
 Correspondence Bias (Jones, 1979)
• The tendency to draw an inference about a person that
“corresponds” to the behavior observed
• We often see behavior as corresponding to a
disposition
• Experiment: Though people were told that essay topics
(pro- or anti-Castro), those who read the pro-Castro
essays thought the author felt more favorable toward
Cuba than those who read the anti-Castro essay
• Implication: we often fail to see the inherent advantages
that some people enjoy and the inherent disadvantages
that others must overcome
 Why are these errors made?
• Dispositional inferences can be comforting
• Life’s twists and turns can be unsettling
• Just world hypothesis: belief that people get what they deserve and
deserve what they get
• View victims of rape and abuse as responsible
• We observe others from a different perspective than we observe
ourselves (Jones & Nisbit, 1971)
• Actor-Observer Difference:
• To observers, another person seems to cause what happens, whereas
• As actors, we attribute our behavior to the situation
• Camera perspective bias:
• When people viewed confession while camera focused on suspect, they
perceived it as genuine
• When camera focused on detective, confession was viewed as forced
Self Awareness
• Self awareness helps reduce making these errors
• Ex. Having participants perform an experiment in front
of a mirror, it helps them view themselves as observers;
they typically attribute their behavior more to internal
factors and less to the situation
 Chapter 4

Behavior and Attitudes

Behavior and Attitudes
• There is little consistency between attitudes and
behaviors
• Ex. Americans claim to think nutrition is important
yet calorie and fat consumption has increased
• 2 possibilities:
• Attitudes determine our behavior
• Behavior determines our attitudes
Attitudes
• Defined as favorable or unfavorable evaluative
reactions toward something or someone, often
rooted in beliefs, exhibited in feelings, and intended
behavior
• Three elements:
• Affect
• Cognition
• Behavior
• Ex. You may believe a particular ethnic group is
aggressive (cognition), then may feel dislike for such
people (affect), and therefore act toward them in a
discriminatory manner
Measuring Attitude
• Self-report measure
• Likert scales (eg.1= never, 7=always)
• Often fail to capture real attitude
• Likely to get strong positive responses (i.e. Social desirability or
demand characteristics)
• Accessibility of the attitude
• By assessing reaction time
• The faster the response, the stronger the feelings
• Physiological measures
• Facial muscle responses
• Galvanic skin response & pupil dilation in studies of ethnic
prejudice
• Wiring participants to a fake lie detector and telling them it’s
real
 When Does Behavior Affect Attitude?
• Role playing
• Participants told how to behave
• Ex. Prison simulation experiment (Zimbardo, 1971)
• Saying becomes believing
• People tend to adjust their messages to their listeners and,
having done so, to believe the altered message
• Foot in the door phenomenon
• More people likely to display large “drive safely” sign in their
yards after displaying a small one on their cars
• Lowball technique: after customer agrees to buy something
because of bargain price, price advantage is removed by
sneaky tactic and customer is forced to pay higher price
Why does our behavior affect our attitude?
• Self-justification: cognitive dissonance theory
(Festinger)
• We feel discomfort when thoughts are conflicting so we
change our attitude to match our behavior
1. Dissonance after decisions
• People tend to upgrade the chosen alternative and
downgrade the unchosen one to reduce dissonance
• Ex. People tend to have more confidence in their candidates
after they have voted than before
 Cognitive Dissonance Theory
(continued)
2. Insufficient (external) justification
• Induced compliance paradigm
• Experiment (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959): participants were asked to lie
for either $1 or $20. Those asked to lie for $1 tended to change their
belief to the lie because $1 did not justify lying for them. The ones given
$20 dollars did not change their attitudes because they believed their
behavior was justified (“anyone would have lied for $20”)
• Forbidden Toy paradigm experiment
• No child played with the toy right away
• Weeks later, those who had received a mild threat were less likely to
play with the toys
• Possible that they had internalized the behavior and changed their beliefs
to reduce dissonance whereas the severe threat was enough for the
other group to justify not playing
• Implication: allow children a free choice for their behavior; use smallest
incentives
 Self perception
• People observe their own behavior that occurs in a particular context
to draw inferences about their attitudes
• Neither dissonance nor attitude change is required
• Ex. “If I chose this, I must have liked it”
• Over-justification effect
• Tendency to devalue those activities we perform to get something else
(we conclude we don’t like an activity because we are getting something
for it)
• Experiment: condition one—children could only play with activity 2 after
they perform activity 1. condition 2—children could play with both freely
• Children in the former group tended to like activity 2 better whereas children
in the latter group enjoyed both activities equally
• Implication: Do not reward what already has intrinsic motivation