Week 4 - Exploring Psych - Revision
Attraction
Similarity: Liking others who are similar
Similarity does not spark attraction; rather dissimilarity triggers repulsion, the desire to avoid someone who is not ‘similar.’
Rosenbaum (1986)
We like people who have similar attitudes to our own. Byrne (1971)
How does similarity work?
A common social environment - we will do things together.
Selectivity bias - liking people who are similar.
Reciprocal Liking - We like those who like us.
Familiarity
The people and objects that are familiar to us are our favorite. We feel more safe in what we are familiar with.
Related to proximity because we become more familiar with people that we are exposed to frequently.
Interaction will incrase liking, because want. to get along (Berscheid, Garziaano, Monson, & Dermer, 1967)
Students liking of roommates was determined by how similar they are. Newcomb (1961)
When we know we will interact with someone over time we are likely to focus on the positive qualities, as the alternative is to costly.
Social Cognition - Social Perception
Do opposites attract?
Opposites attract initially - then not so much
The things that bother us are three things we admire at first.
Physical appearance - based on research - is more important than personality or any other factor.
Attractive people are rated as more intelligent, trustworthy, friendly, competent ect.
Halo effect - associate other positive attributes with them as well because they are attractive.
Baby faced features - do not get leadership jobs but they have 70% more chances to get a teaching job or a job as a nurse - get a caring job
McArthur & Berry, (1987)
Todorov et al 2005
Asked participants to rate competence based on an image - appearance - which person is more confident.
Confidence is key!
Experiments Antonakis and Daglas (2009)
First experiment
Second experiment
Asked swiss students to rate politicians in french elections - 72% accuracy predicted the actual winners and gave a good indication of differences.
Rely on first impressions to elect a leader.
Asked adults and kids to do the same experiment. Asked who is more competent to be the captain from Troy to Ithaka
Results show that adults and children are relying on the same aspects of facial appearance in order to judge a person's competence.
Attributions
Types of Attributions
Personal - I studied really well, I am intelligent - I got a good grade.
Situational - The test was unreasonably hard - so I got a bad grade.
Fundamental Attribution Error
In explaining other people's behavior, the tendency to overemphasise personality traits and underestimate situational factors
Actor/observer bias
When interpreting our own behavior, we tend to focus on situations.
When interpreting other people's behavior, we tend to focus on personal attributes.
Attribution of Behaviour
Humans are hyper intentional - people usually try to interpret others behavior.
Heider and Simmel (1944)
Showed that people, on viewing a simple animation involving geometric shapes, would attribute emotions and intentions to the shapes based on their movements.
Jones and Harris (1967)
Asked participants to read essays that were written in a political science class. They asked people to read the essays - and said they are only reading out essays that we have given them and asked them to rate how pro-castro they were.
Participants thought the ones reading stuff out loud strongly believed in what they were reading.
Social Identity Theory
Claims that every person has a distinct unique personality and personal identity
Different social roles - Daughter, classmate, member of a sports club/religion.
We have many different roles, based on these roles we take pride from them this affects our self worth and self esteem.
We make sense of ourselves and view ourselves based on these social roles.
If our friends are good to us we feel that we are valued - this impacts the social role and how we identify within the society/community with our immediate environment. These are important to our self concept and self worth and esteem.
Limitations
Does not explain why we feel so comfortable in a group of people who look like us/are similar to us uncomfortable around people who are dissimilar to us.
Does not explain fully why there is so much aggression between different groups.
Group memberships are an important part of a persons self concept and how they value themselves (e.g self esteem)
Provide people with a sense of their place in the world and where thy stand in relation to others.
Prejudice, Stereotypes & Discrimination
Social identities and the dynamics of the crowds
It is groups and not individuals who are the main engine of social conflict and social change.
Reicher, Haslam, Spears, and Reynolds (2012)
Prejudice - negative evaluation of another social group.
Results from stereotypes (cognitive representations of another group)
Results in discrimination (negative behavior directed towards another group.)
Stereotypes - cognitive representations, schemas about others, can be negative or positive, accurate or inaccurate, explicit or implicit.
Implicit association test (IAT)
measures people's implicit (unconscious, inaccessible) associations between different concepts e.g ‘male’ and ‘maths’.
Greenwald, McGhee. & Schwartz, (1998)
Implicit Stereotypes
Payne (2001)
Participants showed pictures of black or white faces then had to identify an object as a gun or a tool.
Faster to identify guns following a black face.
Groups
Ingroup: Thee social group to which an individual perceives herself or himself ass belonging (“us”)
Outgroup: Any group other than the one to which individuals perceive themselves as belonging (“them”)
Social Comparison
Explains how we behave with each other and how we identify ourselves and our sense of self worth. We constantly divide the social world into categories - we are constantly comparing ourselves.
Leads to social categorisation - identifying people as members of a certain group.
High self worth and self value linked to lower levels of prejudice discrimination.
Social Group - two or more people who share socially meaningful characteristics.
Blascovich et al. (1997)
Link between prejudice and social categorisation
Relevant Studies/Reading
Madziva R (2020) Bordering through religion: A case study of Christians from the Muslim majority world
seeking asylum in the UK.
Badea and Sherman 2019 - Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Reduction
Jiang & Ngien (2020) - The Effects of Instagram Use, Social Comparison, and Self-Esteem on Social Anxiety
Larsen et al (2012) Attraction and relationships - The Journey from Initial Attachments to Romantic Love.
findings showed that:
Instagram use alone would not directly increase social anxiety.
its effect was completely mediated by social
comparison and self-esteem.
One exciting implication of the self-affirmation approach in the domain of prejudice reduction is that self-affirmation shows the potential malleability of prejudice in situations of intergroup conflict