1. Intro and research methods a. What does the study of consumer behavior encompass?

When marketers try to influence consumers, what are the three types of responses they can influence? Give an example of each. What does it mean that marketing must involve some reciprocal influence? Who besides marketing managers might want to understand consumer behavior? i. The study of consumer behavior encompasses the totality of consumers thoughts, feelings, and decisions about the consumption, acquisition, and disposition of goods, services, activities, and ideas. ii. Marketers can influence cognitions (thoughts), affect (feelings), and (observable) behaviors. iii. Cognitions- product related knowledge, beliefs, opinions, intentions; Affect- product related emotions; Behaviors- product related decisions and actions. iv. v. Other people that want to understand consumer behavior include marketing managers, policy makers, ethics and consumer advocates, and consumers. b. Which academic disciplines can contribute perspectives to the study of consumer behavior? Whats a question that each might answer? i. Psychology- Why do people do what they do? How can we influence consumers to do what we want? ; Economics- How are people spending? Where should we allocated resources? ; Sociology- How do people relate to one another? ; History- What happened in the past? ; Cultural Anthropology- looks closely. How do specific cultures act? c. Distinguish between basic and applied research questions. Give an example of each. i. Applied research answers specific questions about a product, a store, a market, etc. It is conducted in house, by an external research firm or by watchdog agencies. Ex: Will anyone like it? Do they like the packaging? The taste? ; Basic research answers questions independent of specific products, etc. Is conducted at universities, by government agencies, in think tanks. Can hopefully be applied t many products, consumers, and situations. Ex: What affects your perception of taste? What makes a spokesperson credible? How can attitudes be changed? How to peer groups exert influence? d. What is descriptive research? What are its benefits and drawbacks? What is an example of using observation to answer a research question? What are advantages and disadvantages to using observation? How might a focus

group improve things? What are disadvantages of a focus group? What are some advantages and disadvantages of surveys and interviews? i. Descriptive research is basic market research meant to observe and record behavior through case studies, surveys, or observation. ii. Some drawbacks of descriptive research could occur if you observe a weird sample, if you dont watch the right things, or worse, if you watch only what you want (confirmation bias). Benefits include that you get the data as well as how they came to their conclusion (observations), and the subject is observed in a completely natural setting. iii. Ex: Watching shoppers in stores to discover how shop. iv. The advantages to using observation are that people dont know or are used to you watching, its unbiased, and most truthful. The disadvantages are that you could not get a good sample, its labor intensive, if the subject knows they might change their behavior, and its not structured so you might not get what you need. v. Focus groups are more in depth, they might bring up things you didnt think of, they are more cost effective (but still expensive), theres a social aspect (can be good or bad), and gender differences (???).The biggest disadvantages are that introspection cannot always tell us why (behavior doesnt reflect reasons) and memory is error-prone (subtle changes in question wording can influence reporting behaviors). vi. Focus groups are extremely expensive and time consuming. Sometimes one person can dominate the conversation and therefore can influence everyone elses opinions. vii. The advantages of surveys and interviews are that they are more candid, you get a wider sample, theyre the least labor intensive, and relatively inexpensive. The disadvantages are that you get a low response rate, bias (older, richer ppl), they dont allow flexibility, and they cant get very deep. The biggest disadvantages are that introspection cannot always tell us why (behavior doesnt reflect reasons) and memory is error-prone (subtle changes in question wording can influence reporting behaviors). e. We need to be especially cautious when relying on surveys, interviews, and focus groups. First we might not be able to count on introspection (peoples reports of what they like to do.) Second, we might not be able to count on people giving accurate reports of their behaviors. Be sure you understand what those statements mean, and give a research example that supports each statement. i. Introspection ex: shoppers were shown 4 identical pairs of socks displayed left to right. They preferred the stocking on the right 4x as much as the stocking on the left. NO ONE believed their preferences were driven by position of the socks. Experimenters could manipulate

choices, but people werent able to report WHY they made the choices they did. ii. Memory ex: Subtle changes in wording can influence reporting behaviors. How many products have you tried? 1, 5, 10? ; How many products have your tried? 1, 2, 3? ; Average goes down when the scale goes down. f. What is correlational research? What is an example of a correlational research finding? What are benefits and drawbacks to correlational research? What is the third variable problem? Reverse causation? i. Correlational researchs basic purpose is to detect naturally occurring relationships; To see how well one variable predicts another. Done by computing statistical relations ships, in surveys, etc ii. A company with a fluctuating ad budget looks at the relationship between ad dollars and sales. They discover there is a positive correlation between the two. Correlation is not causation. iii. The main problem is that it doesnt specify cause and effect. iv. It may be that an unknown variable C is independently causing the changes in Variable A and B. Ex: We know that watching violence on TV and aggression in kids is correlated. But what causes what? Is bad parents a variable C? v. Cause and effect are reversed. Ex: Tallness is correlated with basketball, therefore if you play basketball you will be tall. g. What are the hallmarks of an experiment? What are the benefits and drawbacks of experimental research? Give an example of an experiment, and identify the independent and the dependent variable. How do random assignment and manipulation of the independent variable allow you to infer causation in an experiment? Describe what it means to randomly assign people to groups, but also describe why this process allows you to infer causation. i. It is an experiment when one or more factors are manipulated, random assignment is used, and there is a control group. ii. The drawbacks are that theyre expensive and sometimes it isnt possible ethically or practically. iii. Ex: you want to know whether commercials make people enjoy TV shoes less. Therefore some shows will have commercials and some will not, the commercials (or not) are the independent variable. Youll want to measure enjoyment of the TV shows they watch therefore enjoyment is the dependent variable. iv. Random assignment means that the two groups should not have differed systematically at the start. It also means that only your independent variable was different between groups. Random

assignment and manipulation of the IV mean that you can infer that the IV causes a change in the DV. v. Randomly assignment means that the groups were decided completely randomly with no input from the researcher (conscious or not). It allows you to infer causation because the random assignment makes it so your groups are equivalent at the beginning and if their opinions differ it is because of the IV, not because of the actual people. h. What are some ethical concerns you might have while doing research? What should you watch out for when you are interpreting research? i. You need to protect the participants and obtain consent, but how much should you tell them ahead of time? Mere-measurement effect, innocuous questions may themselves influence behavior. ii. You should watch out for the temptation to resist research results, they may class with your intuition. Most results are general trendsnot every person every time! Its important to be critical of research, dont believe every result you read, look for leading questions, good experiment design and random assignment. i. What is the confirmation bias? What are two possible causes of confirmation bias? i. When evaluating evidences or seeking information regarding a hypothesis, people are often biased toward information regarding the presence of the feature in the question. We are more sensitive to the presence (vs. absence) of features and objects, the occurrence (vs. non-occurrence) of events. ii. The causes are positive-test strategy (When we look for the presence of cases that confirm the hypothesis e.g. when trying to determined if someone is an extrovert, look for evidence of extraversion) and Biased conclusions (which are especially likely when stimuli are complex such that cases exist to fit the hypothesis, regardless of whether the hypothesis is true e.g. horoscopes, palm reading).

2. Exposure and attention a. What is exposure? What are some methods you can use to expose people to a product? What is the mere-exposure effect? Give an example of a study that demonstrates this effect. Give an example of a study that demonstrates that mere-exposure applies to people as well as things. Give an example that demonstrates how mere-exposure can be self-fulfilling. i. Exposure is the process by which the consumer comes into contact with the stimulus. Physical contact, seeing it, hearing about it, stimulus could be the actual product, etc.

ii. Product placement (ex: ET Reeses Pieces), obvious ads, unique ads, strange formats (advergaming), strange locations, disguised ads (as editorial content), product trial (free samples), and in store point of purchase displays. iii. Mere-exposure is the idea that you like something the more you are exposed to it. Ex: the more a letter appears in the alphabet the more people like it, ex: a or e vs. x or z iv. If you are primed with a picture of a certain confederate, you are much more likely to agree with them then the other confederate. Graph in notes v. Mice who are raised on Mozart spend more time on the side of the cage playing Mozart then the one playing Schoenberg. Graph in notes. vi. People prefer the true print of their lovers, but the mirror image of themselves because it is what they see everyday. Graph in notes. b. What is selective attention? Why must attention, necessarily, be selective? What might be going on while we are attending to one stimulus? i. Selective attention is the idea that we can only pay attention to one thing at a time and attention is limited so we must be selective, we select one input and tune out the rest. ii. Attention must be selective because it is limited and we experience a lot of things at one time. iii. c. What is a shadowing task? What do the results from shadowing tasks say about the stimuli that will (and will not) involuntarily capture our attention? What do they say about what happens when we dont attend to something? i. A shadowing task occurs when a subject hears one message in their right ear and another in their left ear at the same time. The subject is forced to attend to one message by shadowing or repeating the message from one ear. Then the subject is quizzed on what they heard in the unattended channel to see what happened to that info. ii. Some specific things get through, they know general properties (music, a tone, a man, a woman, etc) and about a third of the people will hear names that are mentioned and words that are important to them. If a sentence starts in the attended ear, and then finishes in the unattended ear, people may inadvertently switch the ear that theyre shadowing. iii. Not much gets through. Only 4 of 30 people noticed when the unattended channel switched from English to gibberish and when they repeat a 7-word list 35 times recollection of those words later is just chance. People seeming select one stimulus and tune out the others. At some level though they must be monitoring the unattended stimuli so that they know when to switch focus.

d. What role does motivation (an individual factor) play in attention? What is the cocktail party effect? Distinguish between perceptual vigilance and perceptual defense, and give an example of each. i. Motivation causes us to control what we attend to. Other times our attention is involuntarily drawn by things that are personally relevant, we may also without awareness stay away from things that are troubling. ii. The cocktail party effect is the idea that we are able to tune into one person even when there is a whole room of noise, but if we hear our name we can turn our attention to that. iii. Perceptual vigilance is the idea what we are always looking things that are relevant to us. Ex: If you are really thirsty you will see the cold drink sign before you friend who isnt as thirsty. Perceptual defense occurs when an individual is trying to protect themselves from something unpleasant or threatening ex: smokers dont pay attention to warnings. e. What is the relationship between attention and arousal (an individual factor)? i. Arousal is our general degree of alertness. It affects how many cognitive resources can be devoted to stimulus (affects ability to attend) ex: Super Bowl Ads, if you are too bored or too stressed you wont pay as much attention to them. f. What can be done to the stimulus itself (e.g., an ad) to increase its likelihood of capturing attention? (That is, what are source factors that make something attention getting?) What is adaptation, and how you can combat it? i. You can make if unexpected or new in some way. Ex; Orkin cockroach commercial. You can improve its position, ex: near the front of the magazine on the right side or on the back cover. You can make it more vivid, larger. ii. Once people get used to something they stop paying attention to it. What was once novel and attention getting may no longer be. Adaptation leads to inattention. Advertisers need to keep ad campaigns current and fresh (but still maintain consistent brand image) Ex: Energizer bunny 3. Perception and comprehension a. What is the difference between sensation and perception?

i. Sensation is the immediate response of our sensory receptors to basic stimuli such as light, color, sound, scent, touch, taste, the physical process of your brain. Perception is the process by which sensations are selected and organized, what we add to raw sensations so that we can be interpreted, perception is psychological, its active and relative. b. What is the absolute threshold? How would you use the ascending and descending methods of limits to find someones absolute threshold? i. The lowest intensity of a stimulus that can be perceived via a sensory channel. ii. Using ascending you would start with a low value of a stimulus and increase until the person can hear it. Using descending you would start with a very high value of a stimulus and decrease until the person doesnt hear anything. You can hear lighter sounds from the ascending direction. c. How did research on the effects of subliminal perception get its start? What are the limits on its effects? Describe a study that shows how motivation is necessary for it to influence behavior. Describe a study that shows how subliminal priming can influence our perception of brands. i. In 1957 James Vicary repeatedly flashed a frame-long image that read either Drink Coke or eat popcorn during a movie. He claimed popcorn sales increased 58% and soda sales increased 18%.. He later admitted that the amount of data he had collected was so small as to be useless ii. It works a little but its hard to make it subliminal for everyone because everyone has a different threshold. You may make it too weak or strong, have to get people to attend to the location, have to put it at just the right distance. iii. Participants were thirsty when they came in, they were exposed to subliminal thirst primes or neutral primes, then they read about two sports drinks (Super Quencher, the most thirst quenching drink and Power Pro the best electrolyte balancing drink). They were asked to rate them and take as many coupons for either/both drinks. Thirst prime participants chose more coupons for Super-Quencher then neutral prime participants. iv. Participants were brought into the lab and given salty treats that made them thirsty or given no treat. Then they were subliminally primed with words Lipton Ice, which is a brand of iced tea. After the priming they were given the option of two drinks, Lipton Ice or a bottled water. They were more likely to chose Lipton Ice if they were primed with it.

d. What are the Gestalt organizing principles of perception? Give examples of each. How do these principles illustrate that perception is active? What is nave realism? i. When we see an item we evaluate it as a whole thing, not as a collection of its tiny parts. Perception of the whole is different from (and more important than) perception of the parts. Closure, Proximity, Similarity, Figure-Ground, Illusions.

ii.

closure

Proximity

Similarity

Figure Ground

Illusions iii. They illustrate that perception is active because we dont just see what is right in front of us, we complete pictures and iv. Nave realism is the concept that we believe we see the world as it is. Perception is an active, constructive process. We use prior information, as well as current expectations, goals and desires when interpreting incoming information. e. What is perceptual confirmation? Give an example of a product that was affected more by perceptions than by reality. Describe a study that demonstrates how our perception and our physical bodies interact. Describe a study that shows how expectations can influence perception. i. The tendency to see things in line with ones expectations. We interpret ambiguous information as supporting our stereotypes. ii. Coors banquet beer versus original draft iii. Softball players were asked to estimate the size of a softball by choosing one of 8 circles. They were also asked to report their stats. The better players chose a larger circle to represent the ball. iv. Participants were given either vodka & tonic or only tonic and told it was either vodka & tonic or only tonic. Heart rate increased not for those who drank only tonic, but instead for those who thought they only drank tonic.

f. How are categorization and schemas linked to each other? What happens if something is mis-categorized? i. Categorization evokes the schema of the category. A schema is a set of associations linked to a concept or category. It is important that people categorize your product so that the right schema is evoked. ii. People will infer the wrong things about your product. Ex: Maalox Whip Antacid g. We often need to make inferences to successfully navigate our conversations and interactions. Why? What are some ways in which marketers exploit our tendencies to draw such inferences? i. Inferences are necessary in order to be successful at communication. They make it easier to evaluate new targets, and decide whether we are satisfied/unsatisfied with the new target. 4. Memory a. What are the three basic types of memory processes? What are the types of memories that can be stored? i. Encoding, storage, and retrieval ii. Episodic (an event ex: graduation), procedural (how to do something), or semantic (knowledge, things you know). b. What is sensory memory? What is it like, and what is it used for? i. holding cells hold information from the sensory registers until it can be processed further. Sensory memory helps bridge gaps during blinks. ii. It is used to bring continuity to the world. It is fleeting. c. How might information be encoded in short-term memory? What must be done to maintain that information in STM? What, in general, is the capacity of STM, and how can that capacity be increased through chunking? i. It might be encoded acoustically, visually and other ways such as kinesthetically. ii. Rehearsal. iii. Thought to be 7 +/- 2. Chunking groups large info into smaller chunks turning it into 7 meaningful units, rather then 7 letters or numbers. d. What is the serial position curve? Draw one, indicating the primacy and recency effects. How does the serial position curve illustrate the operation of both short-term and long-term memory?

i. The serial position curve is how long term memory and short term memory interact. Recency vs. Primacy. ii.

iii. It illustrates how short term memory works well to recall recent words and long term memory works well to recall the first words (primacy). e. What are the seven sins of memory? i. 1. The sin of transience 2. The sin of absent-mindedness 3. The sin of blocking 4. The sin of misattribution 5. The sin of suggestibility 6. The sin of bias 7. The sin of persistence f. How is long-term memory organized? How do we best get information into long-term memory? Give an example of how priming, through spreading activation, can make certain knowledge more accessible than before. i. Associative network, things are associated with other things like a web. ii. Elaborative rehearsal/elaborative encoding, helps us create cues for remembering. Take info and elaborate on it. iii. The more associations a node has, the better its chance of getting activated. g. What is encoding specificity, and how does it relate to the idea of context dependence in memory? Give an example that demonstrates context dependence. i. The best cues for retrieval are the ones that were there at encoding. Encoding is how you commit something to memory. The idea of context dependence is the idea that you can retrieve things from memory based on context clues. It is easier to retrieve something if you are experiencing the same cues and context that were there when you encoded it.

ii. It you learn wet you recall more words when wet (underwater). If you learn dry you recall more words when youre dry. Cues can be very broad. Memory can be helped by similarities between the encoding and retrieval environments. h. What are two kinds of absent mindedness? How does divided attention lead to absent mindedness? What are two kinds of memory failures that lead to absent mindedness? What cues are helpful to overcome it? i. Info that never gets encoded properly. Info that is available in memory but is overlooked at the time we need to retrieve it. ii. Divided attention is often at fault for failures of retrospective memory. It prevents us from transferring info fully to LTM, or creating the right cues. It interferes with recollection (specific details of event) but not familiarity (remembering that an event happened) iii. Failures of retrospective memory and failures of prospective memory iv. Event-based cues are more likely to succeed for failures of prospective memory. i. What is retroactive interference?...proactive interference?...part-list cueing? i. Retroactive interference- learning new info interferes with the memory of the old ii. Proactive interference- Old knowledge interferes with ability to learn something new iii. Part-list cueing- Learn a list, recall for part of the list is cued, the partial retrieval can block recall of the rest of the list. Why are names so easily forgotten? What is the tip of the tongue effect? What underlies it? i. Name retrieval comes after visual and conceptual memory, which can interfere with the name. Theyre also tenuously linked to a name. Also, partly due to there being only one name per person, so you cant fall back on a synonym. ii. Word is on the tip of your tongue most common for infrequent words. The wrong word gets in the way, ugly sisters. iii. Lack of use weakens connections between lexical and phonological aspects of words.

j.

k. What are Deese lists? How do schemas lead to misattribution? i. Lists of words that are all associated with a word that isnt on the list. You recall things there that werent actually there. (Ex: list in class about sleep)

ii. Schemas can be activated at encoding and misapplied, similar to miscategorization. Leads to schema-consistent recall. l. What would someone mean by saying that memory is constructive? Give an example that shows that memory is constructive. What is an example of how bias shapes memory? i. ii. iii. People remember women were more emotional than men last month. People are more likely to remember Black-sounding names correspond to criminals than White-sounding names.

m. What are three reasons why memories persist? What are the two processes underlying ironic memory persistence? Also, dont think of a white bear! i. Continual reminding cues too common or too strong, and suppression backfires. ii. Automatic target search- automatically looks for the unwanted (tobe-suppressed) thought all during the suppression period, and if it finds the target it alerts the controlled distracter search to focus on something else. Controlled distracter search- operated when the person implements the plan to think of something else. But when cognitive resources are scarce or stretched to the limit (for instance, under cognitive load, as when you are asked to remember a number for later recall), this distracter search may fail. 5. Attitudes a. What is an attitude? What are its components? Give an example of each component. i. A favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction to something exhibited in ones beliefs, feelings, or intended behavior. ii. Affect- emotional reaction, feeling. Behavior- actions and intentions. Cognition- your thoughts on the object. iii. AffectBehaviorCognitionb. Distinguish between the standard (high-involvement) hierarchy of attitude formation and the low-involvement hierarchy. How do the experiential and behavior-based hierarchies differ from the low- and high-involvement hierarchies? i. Standard (high-involvement) hierarchy = 1. Cognitions -> 2. Affect associated with cognition -> 3. Behavior. Low-involvement hierarchy

= 1. Limited cofnitions -> 2. Behavior -> 3. Affect (more cognitions may then be added). ii. Experiential hierarchy = 1. Affect -> 2. Behavior -> 3. Cognitions (selectively formed or emphasized to justify behavior) (feeling first). Behavior-based hierarchy = 1. Behavior -> 2. Affect -> 3. Cognitions (Forced to do behavior, ex: family function) c. What are the different functions an attitude could serve? Why might someone say that almost all attitudes serve the knowledge function? Why might it help to know the function that an attitude serves? i. Utilitarian function- utilitarian attitudes tell you which objects bring pleasure, pain, benefits, disadvantages, etc. Ego-defensive functionthese attitudes steer you towards objects that protect your self-view and especially away from ones that threaten it. Value-expressive function- these attitudes tell you which objects express your central values or your self-concept. Knowledge function- most basic. These attitudes are formed to help organize our understanding of the world, guiding how we attend to, store, and retrieve information. ii. Because the knowledge function is the most basic one that tells you what to do. iii. d. What is an automatic attitude? How do congruent and incongruent movements help demonstrate that they exist? How does the IAT measure automatic attitudes? i. Our attitude (positive or negative) toward a stimulus is activated immediately upon encountering that stimulus, regardless of attitude strength. ii. People are faster to classify in the congruent condition when the response matches the valence of the word. We are faster when identifying congruent words then incongruent, demonstrating that we have some sort of automatic reaction. iii. The Implicit Association Test measures the relative positivity or negativity of one group or concept over another. (i.e. black and white, young and old, math and literature) e. Why is bad stronger than good? i. Negative attitudes are stronger then equivalent positive attitudes. We react physiologically faster to negative stimuli. Losses feel worse then equivalent gains feel good. You can easily contaminate something good, never uncontaminated something negative, no matter how much good stud you add.

f. How strongly are implicit and explicit attitudes related to each other? Which attitudes predict which kinds of behavior? i. ii. g. What is some evidence that suggests that attitudes do not always predict behavior? What are some problems with how attitudes and behavior are measured that prevent attitudes from predicting behavior? What are other reasons why attitudes and behavior dont necessarily correspond? i. LaPiere (1934)- Even though hotel people said they wouldnt let the Chinese couple stay there when they inquired over the phone, when they actually showed up at the hotels all but 1 actually let them stay. ii. Level of specificity may differ, sometimes actual behavior cant be or is not measured. iii. Time passes-attitudes change, we are sensitive to norms, we may not have attitude to start with, when actually faced with something your attitude becomes more specific. 6. Cognitive dissonance and self-perception theory a. What is cognitive dissonance theory? What are the three steps in Festingers theory? i. Psychological conflict that results from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously. We have the motivational drive to reduce dissonance. ii. 1. Dissonance is an aversive motivational state, giving rise to pressures to reduce itself. 2. It is aroused when 2 (or more) cognitions are inconsistent. It is especially strong when one cognition is a belief, and the other concerns ones own behavior. 3. It is reduced, most importantly, by changing one or more cognitions so as to bring them into line; typically attitudes change to be consistent with behavior. b. Give an example of post-choice dissonance reduction. Give an example that demonstrates that post-choice dissonance reduction happens largely automatically rather than consciously. Give an example that demonstrates how universal the phenomenon is. i. Post-choice dissonance reduction= post-decisional dissonance reduction. When the items are close in rank, they like their choice a lot more after they choose it. ii. Dissonance at the race track. They like their horse more after they place their bet. This occurs bc now they have to justify betting the money. Similar thing at election polls.

iii. Monkeys were tested to see whether they showed equal preferences between red, green, and blue M&Ms. The monkeys who chose the green one the first time would chose it again the second time, showing that they wanted to make themselves feel better about picking it the first time. c. How does effort justification lead to dissonance reduction? How do lowintroductory prices lead to cognitive dissonance? i. Effort justification occurs after hazing, etc and the subjects must justify going through the effort of hazing so they decide to agree and reduce dissonance. ii. The low price people think the products arent worth it at the new high price while the high priced people like their product even more. If you pay less, youre less inclined to buy it at full price. d. Give an example of how induced compliance can lead to attitude change. How does the size of the reward/threat influence attitude change? Give an example that shows induced compliance can change your attitude not just toward a target object, but the world more generally. i. Students who were paid to lie to a confederate and say an objectively boring task was interesting claimed that the task was more enjoyable if they were paid just $1 than if they were paid $20 to tell the lie. ii. This occurs because its easier to see the task as more fun then themselves as a liar. $1 isnt enough compensation to justify completely lying, but $20 is. iii. Children were brought into the lab and presented with a set of toys, with one really attractive toy. The experimenter told them to play with any toy except the best one, and left them alone. The instructor was either mild or severe. 6 weeks later, a different experimenter came to school and let them play with any toy, including the best one. Severe warning- the toy must be awesome if they warned me so severely. Low threat- the toy probably wasnt that great. High threat kids played with the toy 14/7, low threat 6/15. e. Describe Bems self-perception theory. How is the two-factor theory of emotion relevant to self-perception? i. Self-perception works like social perception. Namely, people come to understand themselves and their attitudes the same way that they come to understand others-by observing behavior. Attitude change is not real change. It is dispassionate inference process. We dont know what we believe so we have to figure them out by looking at our behavior.

ii. Different emotions are distinguished not by their physiological reactions, but instead by the cognitive interpretation for the reactions. Physiological arousal is the same across emotions, but the strength of the arousal determines emotional intensity. The content of the emotion is determined by the casual attribution for the emotion. Physioloy + Cognition = Emotion. f. Give an example of misattribution of irrelevant arousal. Give an example of misattribution of relevant arousal. i. Males were approached by an attractive female experimenter after having crossed either a scary bridge or a non-scary control bridge. They were asked to complete the TAT, then were given her phone number in case they have any later questions about the study. ii. Participants were told they were being bombarded with subliminal noise, some told it would arouse them, some told it would relax them, some told it would have no effect. g. How can we reconcile cognitive dissonance theory and self-perception theory? Give an example of an experiment than can only be explained by cognitive dissonance theory. Give an example of an experiment that can only be explained by self-perception theory. i. ii. Participants were given a drug and told it would relax them, do nothing, or cause them to be more tense. They were either told to do something or asked as a favor. When asked for a favor all 3 emotions felt more positive toward the target issue, but the tense group felt the same either way. iii. 7. Persuasion a. Why doesnt a straightforward model of persuasion truly capture the phenomenon? Give an example of a study where an untrustworthy person can actually be quite persuasive. i. ii. When Joe the Shoulder Napolitano (a criminal) argues for more powerful, stricter courts it is against his own interests and therefore unexpected and persuasive. b. What are the two routes to persuasion, and how do they differ? How are they an example of a dual-process theory? i. Peripheral route- relatively fast, associative, based on simple heuristics, often automatic, requiring little cognitive capacity, often

unconscious. Basic level. When the target is not motivated or able to systematically process the message. Central route- relatively slow, rule-based, operating on high-effort, systematic reasoning, requiring cognitive capacity, often conscious when operating. Conscious of it, what you think about when you think about thinking. When the target is motivated and able to systematically process the message. ii. The success of various source and message cues depends on which route a target is taking. c. What are the two factors that determine which route a persuasive message will take? How does issue involvement interact with argument strength? How does mood interact with argument strength? When will a dislikeable source be persuasive? When will a celebrity endorser be especially persuasive? When might a large number of arguments actually be unpersuasive? i. Which route you take depends on motivation and ability. ii. A strong argument causes agreement on high and low, but it is much higher with high involvement. With a weak argument the agreement was negative with both levels of involvement, but more negative with high involvement. iii. If youre happy you see both strong and weak arguments about equally. If youre sad you see weak arguments a lot worse because you pick them apart. iv. A dislikeable source is more persuasive with high involvement, but is still somewhat persuasive with low involvement (though less so then likeable). v. Celebrities are especially persuasive when there is low personal involvement. vi. A large number of arguments are unpersuasive when there is high involvement and a weak argument. The more bad arguments there are, the less youre convinced. d. Attitudes formed via which route last longer?...Are more predictive of behavior? i. The central route, more processing, meaningful change in attitude. ii. 8. Compliance a. How does reciprocity influence compliance? What is the reciprocal concessions (door-in-the-face) paradigm? Describe two versions of the study that ruled out the perceptual contrast counter explanation. Describe a version of the study that ruled out that people just dont like to say no.

i. Feelings of guilt or feelings that you owe someone (reciprocity), make you more likely to comply. You feel better about yourself when you dont owe someone. Being nice is important to people. ii. Door in the face - Ask for a big favor, and when the target refuses, ask for a small favor instead. Ex: ask people to mentor a delinquent for 2 years, then ask them to take them to the zoo once. iii. Rule out the perceptual contrast explanation with exposure control and two-requester. Exposure control condition: Tell them about the big request, but dont ask it of them . They dont feel the need to concede to you because you never actually asked them to do the big thing. Two requester control condition: The big request is made by a different person. No concession because they dont feel guilty about saying no to you twice. iv. Equivalent requests control condition: the second request is no smaller than the first. Makes sure that people dont just hate saying no. b. What is the foot-in-the-door technique? How does it relate to self-perception theory? i. Foot in the door ask for something small, and gradually ask for bigger things. ii. Self perception theory - You want to become the type of person that does the good things you agree to. So when you agree to something small during foot-in-the-door you see yourself as someone who does things for other people, so when they ask for a bigger favor you agree. c. Give an example of how compliance can be increased via social modeling. i. Social modeling increases compliance. Ex: Cartwright (1949) examined the factors leading people to buy war bonds in the 1940s Buy a war bond vs. Buy an extra war bond. Suggests that others are already buying war bonds, and you should too d. Why are scarce items seen to be more valuable? What is reactance theory? What is an example of reactance theory? How does the but wait, theres more technique work? i. Scarce items are valuable because Valuable objects are rare, so the reverse must be true. When free choice is limited, we value the limited things more, even if we didnt value them much in the first place. ii. Reactance theory - People desire things they are told they cannot have because there must be a reason why they cant have it and it creates an artificial demand. iii.

iv. But wait, theres more - The initial price and object combination set a standard for a reasonable price. The additional products then make it seem like a great value. e. What are several moods that can increase compliance? How do they work? What is a channel factor? i. Guilt makes you more likely to help someone. Positive emotions increase compliance, and fear does sometimes. ii. Channel factors are aspects of the situation that make action particularly easy or likely (or vice versa). These can be very small changes like specific details about where/when/how to do something. f. Give an example of how uniforms can lead to mindless compliance. How does coincidence increase compliance? Give an example of a study that demonstrates when placebic reasons can be as useful as real ones. i. An experimenter walked down the street, dressed one of two ways: As a neatly dressed civilian. As a security guard. They ordered passersby to pick up a paper bag, or put a dime in a strangers parking meter, or move away from a bus stop (No standing!), and then left before they did so. People listened to the guard. ii. Coincidence increases compliance because more likely to comply with a request if they share a superficial trait like their names. iii. In an experiment where they asked people to help a stranger edit an essay, people were more likely to comply if they both had an uncommon fingerprint type (the placebic condition). 9. Conformity a. What is conformity? How did Sherifs study on the autokinetic effect demonstrate conformity? How did it demonstrate how norms are passed down? i. A change in behavior or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure. ii. Sherif found that participants responses influenced each ther, with different responses converging to a single estimate over several trials. iii. b. Describe Aschs study. What are three reasons why his paradigm was so effective? i. The were given a line, then 3 choices of lines, they were to pick the line that was closest to the length of the first line. Confederates would all pick the wrong length and less then 25% of the participants would

actually keep the right answer, even though it was obvious the confederates were wrong. ii. The public nature of judgments. The unanimity of the majority. The size of the group. c. What are two common reasons for conforming? i. Normative- in the service of avoiding disapproval, scorn, or ostracism that accompanies norm violations. Look to other peoples behavior, whats the normal thing to do? Ex: High School. Informational- in the service of learning what is right or appropriate in a situation. Go some place new, look to other people to see how to behave. d. What is behavioral mimicry? What seems to be its purpose? Describe a study that demonstrates how mimicry is used to repair a relationship. What is a real-life benefit of mimicry? i. A.k.a. the chameleon effect The tendency to unconsciously imitate the behaviors, gestures, and mannerisms of ones interaction partners. Ex: repeating someones accent back to them. ii. To establish a rapport. iii. Participants completed 2 interaction tasks, one on the computer and one in person. In the computer interaction, the confederate was either nice or mean to them. Participants who felt their 1st interaction was a failure were more likely to mimic. (If they were told their goal was to make friends, since they failed they mimic about twice as much.) iv. Waitresses get bigger tips when they mimic their customers by repeating the orders back in the exact same way. People generally like you more if you mimic them and they dont realize it. e. What is groupthink? What are several antecedents and symptoms of groupthink? What are ways to reduce it, based on these antecedents and symptoms? i. A kind of faulty thinking on the part of highly cohesive groups in which the critical scrutiny that should be devoted to the issues at hand is subverted by social pressures to reach consensus. Basically, people try to get along and more emphasis is put on agreeing with each other then actually thinking critically. ii. Antecedents- high cohesiveness, insulation of the group, lack of procedures for information search and appraisal, directive leadership, and high stress with little hope of finding a better solution than the leaders proposed one. Symptoms- illusions of vulnerability, collective rationalization, belief in inherent morality of group, stereotypes of outgroups, direct pressure on dissenters, self-censorship, and illusion of unamity.

iii. f. What is pluralistic ignorance? Why is it ironic? Describe an experimental example of pluralistic ignorance, and how it can be reduced. i. Happens when virtually every member of a group privately feels one way, yet believes that virtually everyone else privately feels another way. People mistakenly think theyre out of step with the rest of the group. Trigger: Discrepancy between peoples private feelings and public acts. Results in conformity from almost everyone. ii. Ironic because people end up conforming to a norm that almost no one is happy with! iii. Ex: College drinking (Prentice & Miller, 1993). Men and women think that they are much less comfortable with drinking than their peers. This discrepancy leads to conformity. Peer sessions about pluralistic ignorance make people realize that others dont like drinking that much, so they start drinking less. g. How does pluralistic ignorance lead to diffusion of responsibility? i. Diffusion of responsibility - When no one reacts, everyone assumes everything is ok. No one takes responsibility because they think that if others havent reacted, then they shouldnt/dont need to either 10. Obedience a. Describe Milgrams experiment. Under which conditions do you get the most obedience? Under which conditions do you get the least obedience? i. Milgram experimenter had subjects shock someone in another room with a heart condition (it was a fake person) in escalating degrees of voltage, until they reached a deadly voltage and killed the person. ii. Having few choices, office was located at Yale, hearing no response from the person being shocked, telling them they could keep their money increased obedience. iii. Bridgeport (crappy) office, learner in the room, placee learners hand on the shock plate, second objecting experimenter. b. Why is the experiment an example of ineffective disobedience, rather than blind obedience? How does the slippery slope apply to this experiment? What is an example of this type of obedience in the real world? i. It was ineffective disobedience and not blind because the subjects were unhappy and distressed. People didnt want to participate but did anyway. ii. Slippery slope - Participants started at 15 volts and inched up. Very little difference between 100 and 115 volts. In such small steps that

its hard to tell where to stop. Easy to increase the voltage incrementally when you couldnt see the difference between one voltage and another. People start quitting after 285, when the learner stops responding. iii. 1930s Germany- Nuremburg laws started small (boycott) and progressed to citizenship laws, and worse-at what point do you protest? c. What are the two attributes that define power? What kind of power does the Milgram experiment demonstrate? i. Attributes of power: The ability to control ones own outcomes and those of others and the freedom to act. ii. We saw power in the form of authority in the Milgram experiment power that derives from institutionalized roles or arrangements d. How do respect and prominence affect status, and how does the teasing study demonstrate such differences? i. Status is a result of differences in respect and prominence. In the teasing study, people with high status were given nice nicknames by low status people. However high status people were more cruel with their nicknames of low status people. e. How does conspicuous consumption interact with status? What does this say about how difficult it might be to change consumer habits? i. Conspicuous consumption is often used to express status. Sadalla and Krull (1995) found that many behaviors that can help preserve the environment as well as save money are seen as low class and unattractive. Creates another barrier to responsible consumption. ii. It is difficult to change a consumers habit if it will effect their status.

8. a. Feelings of guilt or feelings that you owe someone (reciprocity), make you more likely to comply. You feel better about yourself when you dont owe someone. Being nice is important to people. Door in the face - Ask for a big favor, and when the target refuses, ask for a small favor instead. Ex: ask people to mentor a delinquent for 2 years, then ask them to take them to the zoo once. Rule out the perceptual contrast explanation with exposure control and two-requester. Exposure control condition: Tell them about the big request, but dont ask it of them . They dont feel the need to concede to you because you never actually asked them to do the big thing. Two requester control condition: The big request is made

by a different person. No concession because they dont feel guilty about saying no to you twice. Equivalent requests control condition: the second request is no smaller than the first. Makes sure that people dont just hate saying no. b. Foot in the door ask for something small, and gradually ask for bigger things. Self perception theory - You want to become the type of person that does the good things you agree to. c. Social modeling increases compliance. Ex: Cartwright (1949) examined the factors leading people to buy war bonds in the 1940s Buy a war bond vs. Buy an extra war bond. Suggests that others are already buying war bonds, and you should too d. Scarce items are valuable because Valuable objects are rare, so the reverse must be true. When free choice is limited, we value the limited things more, even if we didnt value them much in the first place. Reactance theory - People desire things they are told they cannot have because there must be a reason why they cant have it and it creates an artificial demand. But wait, theres more - The initial price and object combination set a standard for a reasonable price. The additional products then make it seem like a great value. e. Guilt makes you more likely to help someone. Positive emotions increase compliance, and fear does sometimes. Channel factors are aspects of the situation that make action particularly easy or likely (or vice versa). These can be very small changes like specific details about where/when/how to do something. f. An experimenter walked down the street, dressed one of two ways: As a neatly dressed civilian. As a security guard. They ordered passersby to pick up a paper bag, or put a dime in a strangers parking meter, or move away from a bus stop (No standing!), and then left before they did so. People listened to the guard. Coincidence increases compliance because more likely to comply with a request if they share a superficial trait like their names. In an experiment where they asked people to help a stranger edit an essay, people were more likely to comply if they both had an uncommon fingerprint type (the placebic condition). 9. e. Groupthink - groups try to agree with one another for the sake of harmony and fitting in, and they ignore problems with their plans. Antecedents - High cohesiveness, Insulation of the group, Lack of procedures for information search and appraisal, Directive leadership, High stress w/little hope of finding a better solution than the leaders proposed one. Symptoms - Illusions of invulnerability, Collective rationalization, Belief in inherent morality of group, Stereotypes of outgroups, Direct pressure on dissenters, Self-censorship, Illusion of unanimity. Reduce groupthink by increasing diversity, have a dissenter, make the group as equal as possible, access to outside viewpoints. f. Happens when virtually every member of a group privately feels one way, yet believes that virtually everyone else privately feels another way. People mistakenly think theyre out of step with the rest of the group. Trigger: Discrepancy between peoples private feelings and public acts. Results in conformity from almost everyone. Ironic because people end up conforming to a norm that almost no one is happy with! Ex: College drinking

(Prentice & Miller, 1993). Men and women think that they are much less confortable with drinking than their peers. This discrepancy leads to conformity. Peer sessions about pluralistic ignorance make people realize that others dont like drinking that much, so they start drinking less. g. Diffusion of responsibility - When no one reacts, everyone assumes everything is ok. No one takes responsibility because they think that if others havent reacted, then they shouldnt/dont need to either 10. a. Milgram experimenter had subjects shock someone in another room with a heart condition (it was a fake person) in escalating degrees of voltage, until they reached a deadly voltage and killed the person. Having few choices, hearing no response from the person being shocked, telling them they could keep their money increased obedience. Putting the persons hand on the shock plate, having a nicer office, having a second objecting person in the room decreased obedience. b. It was ineffective disobedience and not blind because the subjects were unhappy and distressed. People didnt want to participate but did anyway. Slippery slope - Participants started at 15 volts and inched up. Very little difference between 100 and 115 volts. Easy to increase the voltage incrementally when you couldnt see the difference between one voltage and another. People start quitting after 285, when the learner stops responding. c. Attributes of power: The ability to control ones own outcomes and those of others and the freedom to act. We saw power in the form of authority in the Milgram experiment power that derives from institutionalized roles or arrangements d. Status is a result of differences in respect and prominence. In the teasing study, people with high status were teased less because they were more prominent e. Conspicuous consumption is often used to express status. Creates another barrier to responsible consumption. Cant convince people to do something even if it makes sense if they are doing it for status

11. a. i. Handedness shows that perception is active because peoples preference about turning left or right, or their ability to remember which direction something occurred, is affected by their preferred hand. ii. Quiet eye period time needed to accurately program motor responses. Occurs between the last glimpse of a target and the first twitch of the nervous system. The time you take to focus in on what youre looking at. Longer periods are better.

iii. Change blindness failure to detect a major change because of a visual disruption like a blink. Ex: Experiment done where a stranger asks someone for directions, when a pair of people holding a door walk between them, and they change the stranger to another person. Only about half notice the change. Stereotyping influences change blindness because you look at something, categorize according to a stereotype, and then ignore the details, making it harder to detect when something changes. iv. Quitting threshold the amount of time you will look for something before you give up. You are likely to quit looking earlier if youre unlikely to see an object because it is rare. b. i. Names and surface details are hard to remember because they dont actually mean anything on their own. Names also dont have synonyms, so its harder to get the right answer if you dont have enough associations. ii. Mnemonics help you group or synthesize meaningless information into meaningful information. Traits require a deeper level of processing than features because you have t analyze what the traits mean. Attractive people are easier to recognize. Unattractive people commit more crimes. c. i. Multitasking doesnt work. Your brain has to switch between tasks unless the tasks are ones that you do so often that they are automatic (like walking). When multitasking, it takes you longer to do the tasks combined than it would take to do them separately. You lose focus and it takes longer to get into a state of deep concentration. You make more errors and are susceptible to inattentional blindness (when you completely fail to see something obvious because youre so distracted) ii. Its not the hands that get distracted its the brain. One task interferes with your ability to tend to another. d. i. People tend to draw map lines straighter than they really are. They also estimate the distances between places to be very inaccurate and align places in straight lines to make things tidier. With the War of the Ghosts story, people tried to rationalize the story that didnt make sense and clean it up when they retold it. ii. Inaccuracies arent lies. The people who tell stories believe the versions that they tell to an extent, because the tellers must make assumptions about the purpose of their stories. Conversation is a form of behavior designed to accomplish a goal, so when people try to make the story do a job, it can get distorted. People will remember things that arent true when they tell a story. e.

i. Experts arent accurately confident. In fact, they arent much better than statistical models, novices or chance. Experts are deep thinkers that can think ahead, they start young, they practice a lot and dont necessarily have innate ability, make sense of patterns. ii. People dont follow directions because of functional fixity, where they learn to do something one way and stick to it. They also dont tend to be creative because they think based on prior experiences. The solutions they learned to the old problems stop them from learning or figuring out new solutions.

Relationship between explicit and implicit attitudes isnt that strong.

12. a. i. People take cues to stop eating based on when the meal is over when the plate is empty, when people leave the table, etc. Bigger portions mean youll eat more of it. Ex: experimenters gave some people a large bucket of stale movie popcorn and other people a medium bucket. People with a large bucket ate 53% more total popcorn. ii. When you expect something to be good, you already make up your mind that youre going to enjoy it. When you think youre going to be disappointed, you convince yourself that your food will be bad. Ex: Experiments gave 2 groups the same wine, but said one was from California, while the other was from North Dakota. People with Cali wine stayed longer, ate more, and liked their food better. iii. Mindless margin the zone in which you can over or under eat without being aware of it. Causes gradual weight gain or loss because its only a few calories/day. You can use it to lose weight or not gain weight by understanding that if you just cut enough calories to be under your daily limit by a few calories, youll be able to stick to your diet for longer and youll lose weight slowly. 20 % rule dish out 20% less than you think youll want. You probably wont notice. b. i. People eat less when they can see what theyve eaten. When a table is bussed, you might lose track of how much youve had if you cant see the evidence of how much you ate. The bigger food looks, the more full you will feel. Ex: Filling a burger with fluffy lettuce and veggies and less cheese makes it look bigger even though it has less calories. Blending a smoothie for longer adds more air to it. Both methods make you report feeling more full. Bottomless soup people dont realize how much they ate because the same amount is left

no matter how much they have. People ate 73% more than they thought because they couldnt tell how much theyd had out of their portion. ii. Seeing what you eat before you eat it allows your eyes to count how much youve had instead of letting your stomach try to count. Put everything on the plate before you start eating. While eating, leave the remnants out and use fresh plates or glasses so people can remember how much theyve had. c. i. The larger the package of food that you buy, the more you will cook and/or eat from the package. The larger package suggests that it is normal to use/eat more. Shows perception is active because it demonstrates that how much you think youve eaten is relative to everything around you. ii. The Horizontal-vertical illusion is that humans overfocus on height as opposed to width. Tall things look bigger than wide things. Size-contrast illusion something will look smaller than it really is if it is in contrast with larger objects. Food on a big plate will look like a smaller portion because it will only take up a small area. Nowadays, plates are much larger than they used to be in past generations iii. The greater the variety in food choices, the more you eat because you dont get bored of the food.

13. a. i. Called fixed-action patterns, they can involve intricate sequences of behavior, such as entire courtship or mating rituals. A fundamental characteristic of these patterns is that the behaviors comprising them occur in virtually the same fashion and in the same order every time. A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. Although several important similarities exist between this kind of automaticity in humans and lower animals, there are some important differences as well. The automatic behavior patterns of humans tend to be learned rather than inborn, more flexible than the lock-step patterns of the lower animals, and responsive to a larger number of triggers. ii. The advantage of such shortcut responding lies in its efficiency and economy; by reacting automatically to a usually informative trigger feature, an individual preserves crucial time, energy, and mental capacity. The disadvantage of such responding lies in its vulnerability to silly and costly mistakes; by reacting to only a piece of the available information (even a normally predictive piece), an individual increases the chances of error, especially when

responding in an automatic, mindless fashion. The chances of error increase even further when other individuals seek to profit by arranging (through manipulation of trigger features) to stimulate a desired behavior at inappropriate times. b. i. The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us. If a woman does us a favor, we should do her one in return; if a man sends us a birthday present, we should remember his birthday with a gift of our own; if a couple invites us to a party, we should be sure to invite them to one of ours. By virtue of the reciprocity rule, then, we are obligated to the future repayment of favors, gifts, invitations, and the like. ii. 1. The rule demands that one sort of action be reciprocated with a similar sort of action. A favor is to be met with another favor; it is not to be met with neglect and certainly not with attack; however, considerable flexibility is allowed. A small initial favor can produce a sense of obligation to agree to a substantially larger return favor. 2. One of the reasons reciprocation can be used so effectively as a device for gaining another's compliance is its power. The rule possesses awesome strength, often producing a yes response to a request that, except for an existing feeling of indebtedness, would have surely been refused. 3. Although an obligation to repay constitutes the essence of the reciprocity rule, it is the obligation to receive that makes the rule so easy to exploit. An obligation to receive reduces our ability to choose those to whom we wish to be indebted and puts the power in the hands of others. iii. Joe did a small, unsolicited favor for the true subject. During a short rest period, Joe left the room for a couple of minutes and returned with two bottles of Coca-Cola, one for the subject and one for himself, saying "I asked him [the experimenter] if I could get myself a Coke, and he said it was OK, so I bought one for you, too." In other cases, Joe did not provide the subject with a favor; he simply returned from the two-minute break empty-handed. In all other respects, however, Joe behaved identically. Later on, after the paintings had all been rated and the experimenter had momentarily left the room, Joe asked the subject to do him a favor and buy some raffle tickets. 1. The favor was returned by people buying tickets. 2. The strangers felt obligated to buy something they wouldnt otherwise buy. 3. People felt obligated to buy after getting the Coke. iv. People view your second, smaller request as a concession to the person that originally asked for something large and should feel inclined to respond with a concession compliance with the second request. v. People will fulfill their end of an agreement because they have already committed to it, and will feel that they are letting you down if you dont meet them halfway. They will also volunteer to compensate for not agreeing to your first request because they feel guilty for denying you the first time. c. i. Consistency is valued and adaptive. Inconsistency is commonly thought to be an undesirable personality trait (Allgeier, Byrne, Brooks, & Revnes, 1979; Asch, 1946). The

person whose beliefs, words, and deeds don't match is seen as confused, two-faced, even mentally ill. On the other side, a high degree of consistency is normally associated with personal and intellectual strength. It is the heart of logic, rationality, stability, and honesty. ii. Since it is so typically in our best interests to be consistent, we fall into the habit of being automatically consistent even in situations where it is not the sensible way to be. When it occurs unthinkingly, consistency can be disastrous. Nonetheless, even blind consistency has its attractions. First, like most other forms of automatic responding, it offers a shortcut through the complexities of modern life. Once we have made up our minds about issues, stubborn consistency allows us a very appealing luxury: We don't have to think hard about the issues anymore. We don't really have to sift through the blizzard of information we encounter every day to identify relevant facts; we don't have to expend the mental energy to weigh the pros and cons; we don't have to make any further tough decisions. iii. active, public, effortful, and freely chosen. If the commitments escalate slowly (foot-inthe-door). Reward the person or make them indebted iv.Something special happens when people put their commitments on paper: They live up to what they have written down. One reason that written testaments are effective in bringing about genuine personal change is that they can so easily be made public. Public commitments tend to be lasting commitments. v. After a person gets low-balled (first told that something is cheap so that you commit to it, and then later told that they made a mistake and its more expensive) people dont want to give up. A personal commitment can build its own support system, a support system of new justifications for the commitment. Often these justifications provide so many strong legs for the decision to stand on that when the dealer pulls away only one leg, the original one, there is no collapse. The loss can be shrugged off by the customer who is consoled, even made happy, by the array of other good reasons favoring the choice. It never occurs to the buyer that those additional reasons might never have existed had the choice not been made in the first place d. i. Social Proof - This principle states that we determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct. The principle applies especially to the way we decide what constitutes correct behavior. We view a behavior as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it. We laugh at canned laughter because it tells us that we are supposed to be laughing.

ii. The group members had gone too far, given up too much for their beliefs to see them destroyed; the shame, the economic cost, the mockery would be too great to bear. It was necessary to risk the scorn and derision of the nonbelievers because publicity and recruitment efforts provided the only remaining hope. If they could spread the Word, if they could inform the uninformed, if they could persuade the skeptics, and if, by so doing, they could win new converts, their threatened but treasured beliefs would become truer.

The principle of social proof says so: The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more a given individual will perceive the idea to be correct. The group's assignment was clear; since the physical evidence could not be changed, the social evidence had to be.

iii. Uncertainty and the behavior of similar others maximize social proof. In the alien, Guyanese environment, then, Temple members were very ready to follow the lead of others. As we have also seen, it is others of a special kind whose behavior will be most unquestioningly followed: similar others. Therein lies the awful beauty of Reverend Jones's relocation strategy. In a country like Guyana, there were no similar others for a Jonestown resident but the people of Jonestown itself. What was right for a member of the community was determined to a disproportionate degree by what other community members influenced heavily by Jones did and believed. When viewed in this light, the terrible orderliness, the lack of panic, the sense of calm with which these people moved to the vat of poison and to their deaths seems more comprehensible. They hadn't been hypnotized by Jones; they had been convincedpartly by him but, more importantly, by the principle of social proofthat suicide was the correct conduct. The uncertainty they surely felt upon first hearing the death command must have caused them to look around them for a definition of the appropriate response.

iv. Especially in an ambiguous situation, the tendency for everyone to be looking to see what everyone else is doing can lead to a fascinating phenomenon called pluralistic ignorance. A thorough understanding of the pluralistic ignorance phenomenon helps explain a regular occurrence in our country that has been termed both a riddle and a national disgrace: the failure of entire groups of bystanders to aid victims in agonizing need of help. v. It can be assumed, however, that their apathy was indeed one of the big-city variety. It is almost a matter of psychological survival, if one is surrounded and pressed by millions of people, to prevent them from constantly impinging on you, and the only way to do this is to ignore them as often as possible. Indifference to one's neighbor and his troubles is a conditioned reflex in life in New York as it is in other big cities. vi. Werther effect increase in suicides after a story of a suicide is published because people are imitating others who killed themselves. Its an example of social proof because people who are unhappy follow the example and do what other unhappy people are doing. vii. So, purposively but furtively, they cause the wreck of a car or a plane they are operating or are simply riding in. This can be accomplished in a variety of all-too-familiar-sounding ways. A commercial pilot can dip the nose of the aircraft at a crucial point of takeoff or can inexplicably land on an already occupied runway against the instructions from the control tower; the driver of a car can suddenly swerve into a tree or into oncoming traffic; a passenger in an automobile or corporate jet can incapacitate the operator, causing the deadly crash; the pilot of a private plane can, despite all radio warnings, plow into another

aircraft. Thus, the alarming climb in crash fatalities that we find following front-page suicides is, according to Phillips, most likely due to the Werther effect secretly applied. Phillips's findings illustrate a distressing tendency for suicide publicity to motivate certain people who are similar to the victim to kill themselvesbecause they now find the idea of suicide more legitimate.

e. i. A halo effect occurs when one positive characteristic of a person dominates the way that person is viewed by others. The evidence is now clear that physical attractiveness is often such a characteristic. People who are good looking are liked more and treated better. ii. One researcher who examined the sales records of insurance companies found that customers were more likely to buy insurance when a salesperson was like them in age, religion, politics, and cigarette-smoking habits (Evans, 1963). Another researcher was able to significantly increase the percentage of people who responded to a mailed survey by changing one small feature of the request: On a cover letter, he modified the name of the survey-taker to be similar to that of the survey recipient. iii. Polite and noncompetitive social events didnt work. What worked: experimenters constructed a series of situations in which competition between the groups would have harmed everyone's interest; instead, cooperation was necessary for mutual benefit. Ex: On a day-long outing, the single truck available to go into town for food was "found" to be stuck. The boys were assembled and all pulled and pushed together until the vehicle was on its way. iv. Bask in glory dwell on your accomplishments and announce them a lot. they are individuals with hidden personality flaws: poor self-concepts. Deep inside is a sense of low personal worth that directs them to seek prestige not from the generation or promotion of their own attainments but from the generation or promotion of their associations with others' attainments. f.