First Semester Final Exam Review

First Semester Final Exam Review • • • • • • • • •

Topics Covered Social Psych Thinking Critical thinking Learning Neuroscience Consciousness Stress and Health Nature and Nurture of Behavior • Developing Person

Attributing Behavior to Persons or to Situations

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Attribution Theory: Fritz Heider (1958) suggested that we have a tendency to give causal explanations for someone’s behavior, often by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition. Fritz Heider

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Attributing Behavior to Persons or to Situations A teacher may wonder whether a child’s hostility reflects an aggressive personality (dispositional attribution) or is a reaction to stress or abuse (a situational attribution).

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Dispositions are enduring personality traits. So, if Joe is a quiet, shy, and introverted child, he is likely to be like that in a number of situations.

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Napolitan and Goethals experiment at Williams College • They had students talk, one at a time, talk to a woman who was either acting critical or was being warm. They told half the students that she was being spontaneous and told the other half the truth. What do you suppose the effect of being told the truth was? NO EFFECT- if friendly, they thought she was warm. If unfriendly, believed she was cold. Thus, they thought her behavior was dispositional rather than situational- even when told her behavior was situational. FAE is universal. However, does it occur more in Western countries or East- Asian countries?

Who are we more likely to commit FAE with? • When explaining our own behavior, or the behavior of those we know well and see in varied situations, we are sensitive to how behavior changes with the situation. • When explaining others behaviors, we disregard the situation and leap to unwarranted conclusions about personal traits.

Effects of Attribution How we explain someone’s behavior affects how we react to it.

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Effects of Attribution • Real life examples• Deciding whether a shooting was malicious or self- defense ? • Happily married couple- He/ she are having a bad day; • Unhappily Married couple- why did I marry such a mean person? • Political effects – Some people blame New Orleans residents for not evacuating before the predicted 2005 Hurricane Katrina. Others attributed their inaction to their situation- to their not being cars or bus transportation

Attitude A belief and feeling that predisposes a person to respond in a particular way to objects, other people, and events.

If we believe a person is mean, we may feel dislike for the person and act in an unfriendly manner. 8

Attitudes Can Affect Action Our attitudes predict our behaviors imperfectly because other factors, including the external situation, also influence behavior. Democratic leaders supported Bush’s attack on Iraq under public pressure. However, they had their private reservations.

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Attitudes Can Affect Action Not only do people stand for what they believe in (attitude), they start believing in what they stand for.

D. MacDonald/ PhotoEdit

Cooperative actions can lead to mutual liking (beliefs).

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Attitudes Guide Our Actions if • Outside influences on what we say and do are minimal • Attitudes is specifically relevant to behavior • We are keenly aware of our attitudes • How does this occur? • Through central route persuasion and peripheral route persuasion

• Real life example- Al Gore’s filmInconvenient Truth changed some minds through central route persuasion- when interested people focus on arguments and respond with favorable thoughts (took the scientific evidence) Other persuasion techniques include a faster peripheral routeincidental cues such as endorsements by respected people. • What to remember? You change mind due to info- CRP; you change mind due to person, PR

Small Request – Large Request In the Korean War, Chinese communists solicited cooperation from US army prisoners by asking them to carry out small errands. By complying to small errands they were likely to comply to larger ones.

Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon: The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request. 12

Foot in the door Phenomenon- Good Deeds vs. Bad Deeds • Good Deeds• Boost charitable contributions • Blood donation • Product sales • Bad Deeds• Hazing • Zimbardo Experiment • Abu Ghraib

Role Playing Affects Attitudes Zimbardo (1972) assigned the roles of guards and prisoners to random students and found that guards and prisoners developed roleappropriate attitudes. Originally published in the New Yorker

Phillip G. Zimbardo, Inc.

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Actions Can Affect Attitudes Why do actions affect attitudes? One explanation is that when our attitudes and actions are opposed, we experience tension. This is called cognitive dissonance.

To relieve ourselves of this tension we bring our attitudes closer to our actions (Festinger, 1957). 15

Role Playing Affects Attitudes • Role- a set of make explanations about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave. • Examples- soldier, teacher, military • “Fake it until you make it” • Example- Zimbardo experiment

Details of Zimbardo Experiment • College students volunteered to spend time in a laboratory situation, half guards, half prisoners? Guards succumbed to the situation- same thing happened at Abu Ghraib Prison

Cognitive Dissonance • Proposed by Leon Festinger; says when our attitudes and actions don’t coincide, we experience tension, or cognitive dissonance. Thus, we bring our attitudes in line with our actions. Ex- WMD’s in Iraq, public changing opinion

Cognitive Dissonance

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Social Influence Examples • People stare upwards and passersby do the same • Put your own money in tip jar • Laughs, cough, yawning • We are natural mimics • This is called the chameleon effectunconsciously mimicking other’s expressions, postures, and voice tones • We get happier around happy people and sadder around sad people

Shootings and Suicide • After Columbine, every state experienced copycat threats • Marilyn Monroe suicidesuicides increased by 200 that month • Saddam Hussein execution- dozens of boys accidently hung themselves, after slipping nooses around their own heads.

Group Pressure and Conformity • Conformity- adjusting one’s behavior of thinking to coincide with a group standard • Solomon Asch ExperimentActors pick the wrong line and then people are coerced by conformity to pick something they know is wrong • Alone- less than 1% made mistake • In Groups- wrong 33% of the time

Conditions that Strengthen Conformity 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

One is made to feel incompetent or insecure. The group has at least three people. The group is unanimous. One admires the group’s status and attractiveness. One has no prior commitment or response. The group observes one’s behavior. One’s culture strongly encourages respect for a social standard.

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Reasons for Conformity Normative Social Influence: Influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid rejection. A person may respect normative behavior because there may be a severe price to pay if not respected. Example- GBN Hazing Case Informative Social Influence: The group may provide valuable information, but stubborn people will never listen to others. Example- Ku Klux Klan experiment 24

Informative Social Influence Baron and colleagues (1996) made students do an eyewitness identification task. If the task was easy (lineup exposure 5 sec.), conformity was low in comparison to a difficult (1/2 sec. exposure) task.

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Informative Social Influence

Baron et al., (1996) 26

Obedience

Stanley Milgram designed a study that investigates the effects of authority on obedience.

Courtesy of CUNY Graduate School and University Center

People comply to social pressures. How would they respond to outright command?

Stanley Milgram (1933-1984) 27

Both Photos: © 1965 By Stanley Miligram, from the film Obedience, dist. by Penn State, Media Sales

Milgram’s Study

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Milgram’s Study: Results

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Obedience is Highest When? • Person giving the orders is considered a legitimate authority figure • Authority figure supported by prestigious university (Yale higher than CLC) • Victim depersonalized or at a distance, even in another room • No role models for defiance

Real Life Examples • German reserve police officer story; ordered in Poland500 men, only 15 dissent • GBN Hazing Case • Pledge of Allegiance

Lessons from the Conformity and Obedience Studies In both Ash's and Milgram's studies, participants were pressured to follow their standards and be responsive to others.

In Milgram’s study, participants were torn between hearing the victims pleas and the experimenter’s orders. 32

Group Influence- How is our behavior affected by being a part of the group? 1. One person affecting another 2. Families 3. Teams 4. Committees

Individual Behavior in the Presence of Others

Michelle Agnis/ NYT Pictures

Social facilitation: Refers to improved performance on tasks in the presence of others. Triplett (1898) noticed cyclists’ race times were faster when they competed against others than when they just raced against the clock. If your good, you do better, if your bad you do worse.

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Social Facilitation and Crowding • Comedy routines seem funnier when the room is densely packed room • Arousal triggered by crowding amplifies other reactions (laughter)

Social Loafing The tendency of an individual in a group to exert less effort toward attaining a common goal than when tested individually (Latané, 1981) Example- Kids in group projects once they identify the overachiever. Example 2- Tug of War 36

Deindividuation The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity. Example- class colors; GBN Hazing case

Mob behavior

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Effects of Group Interaction Group Polarization enhances a group’s prevailing attitudes through a discussion. If a group is like-minded, discussion strengthens its prevailing opinions and attitudes. Examplepolitics; racist jokes

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Groupthink A mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides the realistic appraisal of alternatives. Attack on Pearl Harbor Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis Watergate Cover-up Chernobyl Reactor Accident

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Power of Individuals- Minority Influence Margaret Bourke-White/ Life Magazine. © 1946 Time Warner, Inc.

The power of social influence is enormous, but so is the power of the individual. Non-violent fasts and appeals by Gandhi led to the independence of India from the British. Key Point- a minority that holds its position is far more successful at swaying majority than a minority that waffles.

Gandhi

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Social Relations Social psychology teaches us how we relate to one another through prejudice, aggression, and conflict to attraction, and altruism and peacemaking.

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Prejudice Simply called “prejudgment,” a prejudice is an unjustifiable (usually negative) attitude toward a group and its members. Prejudice is often directed towards different cultural, ethnic, or gender groups. Components of Prejudice 1. Beliefs (stereotypes) 2. Emotions (hostility, envy, fear) 3. Predisposition to act (to discriminate) 42

Reign of Prejudice Prejudice works at the conscious and [more at] the unconscious level. Therefore, prejudice is more like a knee-jerk response than a conscious decision.

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How Prejudiced are People? Over the duration of time many prejudices against interracial marriage, gender, homosexuality, and minorities have decreased.

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Experiments that illustrate unconscious Prejudice • Implicit Racial Associationswords associated with races • Unconscious Patronizationwhite teachers score black essays higher • Race influenced perceptionsComputer simulation where people shot faster and more if suspect was black • Black Faces- death sentences given to defendants that had stereotypically Black features

• Nine out of ten white respondents were slow when responding to words like “peace” or “paradise” when they saw a black individual’s photo compared to a white individual’s photo (Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2003).

Examples of public and private prejudice •

Black motorists stopped more and searched more than whites by police in CA

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9/11 aftermath- 4/10 admitted prejudice against Muslims

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Gays and lesbian discrimination

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Most women still live in more poverty than men.

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About 100,000,000 women are missing in the world. There is a preference for male children in China and India, even with sexselected abortion outlawed.

Social Roots of Prejudice • Prejudice develops when people have money, power, and prestige, and others do not. Social inequality increases prejudice. • Example- Blame- thevictim- dynamic- poverty produces higher crime rate; which someone can use to justify discrimination of those who live in poverty • Allport- believes this causes self- blame and anger

In and Out Groups Ingroup: People with whom one shares a common identity. Example- Cubs fans Outgroup: Those perceived as different from one’s ingroup. ExampleWhite Sox Fans Ingroup Bias: The tendency to favor one’s own group.

Mike Hewitt/ Getty Images

Scotland’s famed “Tartan Army” fans.

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Cognitive Roots of Prejudice One way we simplify our world is to categorize. We categorize people into groups by stereotyping them. Michael S. Yamashita/ Woodfin Camp Associates

Foreign sunbathers may think Balinese look alike.

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Cognitive Roots of Prejudice In vivid cases such as the 9/11 attacks, terrorists can feed stereotypes or prejudices (terrorism). Most terrorists are non-Muslims.

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Cognitive Roots of Prejudice

© The New Yorker Collection, 1981, Robert Mankoff from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.

The tendency of people to believe the world is just, and people get what they deserve and deserve what they get (the just-world phenomenon).

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Aggression Aggression can be any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy. It may be done reactively out of hostility or proactively as a calculated means to an end.

Research shows that aggressive behavior emerges from the interaction of biology and experience.

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Influences Genetic Influences: Animals have been bred for aggressiveness for sport and at times for research. Twin studies show aggression may be genetic. In men, aggression is possibly linked to the Y chromosome. Neural Influences: Some centers in the brain, especially the limbic system (amygdala) and the frontal lobe, are intimately involved with aggression. Case Study- 15 death row inmates all suffered head injuries

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Influences Biochemical Influences: Animals with diminished amounts of testosterone (castration) become docile, and if injected with testosterone aggression increases. Prenatal exposure to testosterone also increases aggression in female hyenas.

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The Psychology of Aggression Four psychological factors that influence aggressive behavior are:

1. 2. 3. 4.

Dealing with aversive events Learning aggression is rewarding Observing models of aggression Acquiring social scripts

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Aversive Events Studies in which animals and humans experience unpleasant events reveal that those made miserable often make others miserable. Frustration Aggression Example- A principle in which frustration (caused by the blocking of an attempt to achieve a desired goal) creates anger, which can generate aggression.

Jeff Kowalsky/ EPA/ Landov

Ron Artest (Pacers) attack on Detroit Pistons fans.

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Learning to Express and Inhibit Aggression When aggression leads to desired outcomes, one learns to be aggressive. This is shown in both animals and humans.

Cultures that favor violence breed violence. Scotch-Irish settlers in the South had more violent tendencies than their Quaker Dutch counterparts in the Northeast of the US.

• Inhibiting Aggressionreplacement programs have brought re- arrest rates of gang members by improving communication, learning to control anger, and encouraging moral reasoning.

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TV violence, pornography, and society • Pornography leads some men to accept the rape myth- the idea that some woman invite or enjoy rape

Observing Models of Aggression Sexually coercive men are promiscuous and hostile in their relationships with women. This coerciveness has increased due to television viewing of Rand X-rated movies. Experiment- men who watch X rated films- find partner not as attractive, woman’s friendliness as a come on

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Do Video Games Teach or Release Violence? The general consensus on violent video games is that, to some extent, they breed violence. Adolescents view the world as hostile when they get into arguments and receive bad grades after playing such games. Experiments- Mortal Kombatarousal and hostility rose; Myers does not believe in catharsis hypothesis- the idea we feel better if we blow off steam 60

Conflict

 by pursuing our self-interest and not trusting others, we can end up losers

Person 1 Choose A

Person 2 Choose B Choose A

 Conflict has occurred in society since the beginning of times, but psychologists see it as a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas. This occurs due to our pursuing of our own interest rather than the collective well being. This leads to social traps. Social trap

Choose B

Optimal outcome

Probable outcome

Social Relations Person 1

Person 2 Choose B Choose A

Choose A

Choose B

 Social trap  by pursuing our self-interest and not trusting others, we can end up losers

Optimal outcome

Probable outcome

Enemy Perceptions • Those in conflict have a curious tendency to form diabolical images of one another. This leads to mirror image perception- as we see our side as ethical and peaceful, the other side views us as evil and aggressive.

3 components to attraction • Proximity- geographic nearness; occurs due to the mere exposure effectrepeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them

• We prefer people who also look like us which is the idea of the mirror images. (works when we vote)

3 components to attraction • Physical attractivenessstudy; people liked good looking dates the best; predicts popularity; dating; unrelated to selfesteem • Universal Aspects- men prefer youthful appearance; woman to those they deem mature, dominant, affluent • Both prefer symmetrical faces

3 components to attraction • Similarity- prefer people who have our attitudes, beliefs, and interests • Reward theory- simply states we will continue relationships that offer more rewards than costs

Social Relations- Romantic Love  Two factor theory of emotionadrenaline makes the heart grow fonder- explain study  Passionate Love  an aroused state of intense positive absorption in another  usually present at the beginning of a love relationship

 Companionate Love  deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined

Social Relations  Equity  a condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give to it

 Self-Disclosure  revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others

 Altruism  unselfish regard for the welfare of others

Altruism + Examples • Darley + Latane- attributed inaction to situational factors- the presence of others; They believe we will only help if we 1- interpret situation; 2- interpret as emergency; 3- assume responsibility; • Why did Genovese murder occur? Diffusion of responsibility- any single person less likely to help • Best odds of helping- appears to need and deserve help, similar to us, just observed someone being helpful, not in a hurry, small town or rural area, feeling guilty, not preoccupied, are in a good mood

Social Relations  The decision-making process for bystander intervention

Social Relations  Bystander Effect  tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present

Social Relations- Psychology of Helping  Social Exchange Theory  the theory that our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs  Social Responsibility Norm- an expectation that people will help those dependent upon them- example religious service

Social Relations- Peacemaking  Occurs through cooperationNeed to have  Superordinate Goals  shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation; Examplepatriotism after 9/11- 90% approval rating  Communication- third party mediator- win, win rather than win-lose; ExampleRelationship troubles

Social Relations  Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-reduction (GRIT)  a strategy designed to decrease international tensions  one side announces recognition of mutual interests and initiates a small conciliatory act  opens door for reciprocation by other party  Example- Kennedy’s gesture of stopping atmospheric nuclear tests began a series of conciliatory acts that culminated in 1992 atmospheric ban- treaty