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Social Psychology 2 - Coggle Diagram
Social Psychology 2
Social Perception
- first impressions:
- how we perceive others when there is little information available.
- people readily gather first impressions of others >> even based on a still photograph for a tenth of a second.
- first impressions are lasting >> enduring for months and even in the face of contrary evidence.
- drawn from:
- baby-facedness: people who have more of a baby face or look less mature are seen to be kinder.
- familiarity: easier to process if they look like someone you already know,
- emotional resemblance: emotions people display with their face and body
- attributions:
- how do we explain why people do the things they do?
- is it internal dispositions (how the person is), external situations (from the situation), or a combination of the two >> situational influences and personal influences.
- consensus: the extent to which other people react to the same stimulus or event in the same way as the person being considered.
- do others regularly behave this way in this situation?
- consistency: the extent to which the person in question reacts to the stimulus or event in the same way on different occasions.
- does this person regularly behave this way in this situation?
- distinctiveness: the extent to which the person in question responds in the same manner to different stimuli or events.
- does this person behave this way in many other situations?
- low consensus, high consistency, low distinctiveness = internal/dispositional attribution
- high consensus, high consistency, high distinctiveness = external/situational attribution.
- correspondence bias: occurs when people infer dispositions from situationally induced behaviours.
- situation perception: people lack awareness of the actor's objective or subjective situation.
behavioural expectation: people have inappropriate expectations for how a person will behave in a situation.
- behaviour perception: people have an inaccurate perception of the actor's behaviour.
- attribution: people lack the motivation or capacity to correct for the trait inferences that may have arisen.
Stereotypes:
- can be based on any kind of group membership.
- thoughts affect affective states (feelings (can have positive or negative valence)), affective states affect behaviour, and behaviour affects thoughts.
- stereotypes (thoughts): a generalisation about a group of people in which identical characteristics are assigned to virtually all members of the group, regardless of actual variation.
- prejudice (feelings): hostile or negative feelings towards a distinguishable group of people, based solely on their membership in that group.
- discrimination (behaviours): unjustified negative or harmful action toward a member of a group, simply because of membership in that group.
- due to correspondence bias, we usually blame internal characteristics rather than the situation when attributing the behaviour of stereotyped individuals.
- attributional processes can lead us to maintain our stereotypes when confronted with stereotype-inconsistent behaviour.
-consistent behaviour > internal attribution > stereotype maintained.
- inconsistent behaviour > situational attribution > stereotype maintained.
- self-fulfilling prophecies: when our beliefs and expectations create reality by influencing our own and others' behaviour.
- pygmalion effect: person A believes person B has a certain characteristic. person B may begin to act in accordance with that characteristic.
- rosenthal and jacobson 1968: academic blooming test (IQ) to students. randomly selected children were said to be "bloomers" to their teachers even though there was no actual difference. those that were said to "bloom" performed better after a year and a re-test than those not said to be "bloomers."
Compliance
six basic principles:
- pretend friendship/flattery
- obtain commitment/consistency
- scarcity
- reciprocity
- appeals to social validation
- appeals to authority.
- advertising and marketing:
- economic growth is driven by consumer demand
- exploiting unsatisfied search for status and identity.
- seeking identity through consumption: often selling an image and an identity, not a product
- foot-in-the-door technique: start with a small request, then escalate to a larger one.
- door-in-the-face technique: start with a large request, after refusal, use a smaller request that you wanted all along.
- following up an extravagant request with a reasonable one so now the guilty subject complies.
- low-balling technique: first, obtain agreement, then revise offer to a worse one.
- eg >> pitching an attractive offer and then increasing the price.
- the power of group identity:
- minimal group paradigm (tajfel 1971)
- random group assignment (allocation task) groups X and Y, distribute rewards, in-group bias.
- no real conflict, no real gain.
- when assigned to a group, humans will immediately do what benefits their own group and discriminate against the other group.
- the mere reference to group identity can promote tribalism and intergroup conflict.
the tribal mind:
- biological: in primates, brain size is related to group size.
- evolutionary: adaptation for group survival
- historically: most societies are collectivist, hierarchal marked by poverty, illness, war.
- cults, religions, sects >> totalitarian political movements and parties.
- gullibility: tendency to believe and follow others exploited in advertising, politics, marketing.
- the partisan mind:
- group identification reduces cognitive flexibility, freedom of expression, and tolerance. partisan extremely increases mental rigidity.
- protecting the 'group mind': intolerance for alternative views, control of free speech and thought (political correctness), regulating language to change thinking.
- **university of frankfurt study (revers and traunmueller 2019)
- intolerance of divergent views, many students favour restricting free speech, conformity and group influence.
- left-leaning students less tolerant of free speech, right-leaning students more likely to self-censor speech.
Attitudes
- an attitude is a tendency to think, feel , or act positively or negatively towards objects in our environment.
- components of attitudes:
- affective states (emotions, moods, feelings) behaviours, cognitions (thoughts).
- ABC model of attitudes: affect comes first, then thoughts, then behaviours.
- intuitively, affect and cognition should affect behaviour, but sometimes, behaviours influence affect and cognition.
cognitive dissonance theory:
- when behaviours are inconsistent with affective attitudes and cognitive attitudes it leads to tension > cognitive dissonance.
- to reduce dissonance, we change the behaviour or change the attitude
- the amount of dissonance is determined by situational factors such as the reward and the reason.
- minor behaviours:
- gestures of agreeance or disagreement can influence behaviours.
- nodding or turning head from side to side while listening to an editorial advocating tuition increase (wells and petty 1980)
- non-chinese speaking/reading participants rating chinese characters while pulling them towards or pushing them away (caciopp and colleagues 1993)
- both nodding and pulling things towards you are compatible with positive attitudes whereas shaking your head and pushing away are compatible with negative attitudes.
- attitudes guide our behaviour when:
- the attitude is specifically relevant to the behaviour, outside influences are minimal, and we are very aware of that attitude.
- festinger & carlsmith (1959): asked participants to complete a boring task for an hour and then lie to participants that it was fun. then asked what they themselves thought (enjoyment) and if they would do a similar study.
- control group was not asked to lie > didn't enjoy, wouldn't do another
- group 1 was payed $1 for lying > did enjoy, would do another > not sufficient reward for lying if they feel bad about lying in general. to reduce dissonance they would have had to change their beliefs to no longer make it a lie.
- group 2 was payed $20 for lying > didn't enjoy, wouldn't do another.
- acted in a manner not consistent with affective attitude > wasn't rewarded/had no good reason for doing so > large amount of dissonance > large amount of affective attitude change.
- acted in a manor not consistent with affective attitude > was rewarded/had a good reason for doing so > small amount of dissonance > small amount of affective attitude change.