Tuesday,
January 16, 2001
Review of syllabus
I. Social
Psychology
-The
scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are
influenced by other people.
A. Similar disciplines
1. Sociology
2. Social work
B. Goals of Social Psychology
1. Description
2. Explanation
II. Five major
perspectives
A. Sociocultural
B. Evolutionary
C. Social Learning
D. Phenomenological
E. Social Cognition
Thursday,
January 18, 2001
Elaboration on
social learning theory: Bobo doll experiment (Bandura, et al., 1961)
I. Activity: Men's
risky behavior explained by the five different perspectives
II. What do the
perspectives have in common?
A.
Social behavior is goal-oriented
1.
Fundamental motives-to establish and maintain social ties, to understand
ourselves and others, to gain and maintain status, to defend ourselves and
others, to attract and retain mates
2. Longer-term goals
3. Day-to-day goals
B. Social behavior represents an
interaction between the person and the situation.
-Social psychology tries to
predict the results of such interactions
-In
social psychology we define person as features or characteristics that
individuals carry into social situations, while the situation is any
environmental events or circumstances outside the person
III. Methodology
A. Descriptive methods
1. Naturalistic observation:
observing behavior in its natural setting
2.
Case studies: an in-depth exploration of one individual or group of individuals
3.
Archival studies: examining systematic data originally collected for other
purposes
4.
Surveys: researchers ask people to report on their beliefs, feelings, or
behaviors (e.g., Kinsey, 1953, 1954)
Tuesday,
January 23, 2001
Extra Credit Study
Participation – Russell Jackson, honors student, guest speaker:
Evolutionary bases
of human behavior
Behavioral genetics: genes do play a
role in predicting behavior, e.g., Y chromosome
Biology may play a role in attraction:
Human universals - there are certain things that most people find attractive
(symmetry) or unattractive (open wounds).
Back to Dr. Bryan:
Continuation of
Descriptive Methods
5. Psychological
Tests
Extensively researched surveys (e.g.,
SAT, MMPI, career aptitude tests)
Associated issues:
1. Reliability- Is the measure
consistent?
2.
Validity- Does the measure actually measure what it says it's measuring?
6. Correlational
(Passive Observational)
Look for associations between two or
more variables
-Ranges from -1.0 to +1.0
-evaluate strength and direction
**CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION!**
B. Explanatory
(Experimental) Methods
-Independent
variable (IV): A variable that the experimenter manipulates or changes
-Dependent
variable (DV): The variable that is being measured
-Random
Assignment: each participant has an equal chance of being in a particular
experimental condition
-Confounds:
something that systematically differs between conditions
-Internal
validity: the extent to which an experiment can make confident statements about
cause and effect
-External
validity: the degree to which findings can generalize to other persons,
situations, etc.
- An increase in
one type of validity generally results in a decrease in the other.
Thursday, January
25, 2001
All methods have
strengths and weaknesses
-Full cycle
approach (Cialdini): need full cycle of different methodologies to answer
questions
I. Three Systems
A. Motivational
1. Where do motives come
from?
a. Biology
(fundamental motives)
b. Socialization
(long-term, day-to-day)
-cross-cultural
research
2. How do we achieve these
goals?
a.
Self-regulation: a process by which people select, monitor, and adjust their
strategies to achieve their goals
b. Attention:
environmental cues
-automaticity
-cognitive load
3. What causes a goal to have
priority?
a. priming
b. inhibition
c. chronic
activation
B. Representational
1. How do we perceive the
self, others, and the situation?
a. Exemplars: mental
representations of a category
b. Schema: mental
representations of the characteristics of a particular category
c. Script: a
schema for how an event is supposed to occur
d. Self-concept (or
self schema): What are your characteristics?
1. Self-perception:
inferring things about ourselves by observing our own behavior
2. Reflected
appraisal: inferring internal characteristics by imagining how other people see
us
3. Social
comparison: comparing with other people (typically peers)
C. Affective
1. Components
a. Attitudes:
favorable or unfavorable feelings toward particular people, events, or things
b. Emotions:
intense feelings that are characterized by physiological arousal
c. Moods:
relatively long-lasting feelings that are not directed at any particular target
2. How are they measured?
a. Self-report
b. Behavioral
observation
c. Physiological
measures
3. Where does the affective
system come from?
a. Genetics/
biology
b. Culture and
learning
c. Ongoing
cognition (What are we thinking about?)
-Attribution
of arousal
-Counterfactual
thinking
4. Do emotions serve a
purpose?
a. They tell us how
we're doing in terms of achieving goals
b. They allow us to
take action quickly
Tuesday,
January 30, 2001
Social cognition:
the process of thinking about oneself and others
Four core
processes of social cognition:
1. Attention
2. Interpretation
3. Judgment
4. Memory
We have different
goals when we engage in social cognition.
We might want to:
·
simplify the
world so we can make quick decisions
·
think well of
ourselves or boost our self image
·
be accurate
Depending on the
goal, we adapt our cognitive processes of attention, interpretation, judgment
and memory. We are motivated tacticians
(Fiske and Taylor, 1991)
SIMPLIFYING THE
WORLD
A. Expectancy
Confirmation: we use our expectations about individuals and events, and often
look for information and pay attention to information that confirms our
expectations. Can lead to…
Self-fulfilling
prophecy: when an initially inaccurate expectation leads to actions that cause
the expectation to come true
B. Fundamental
attribution error: the tendency to overestimate the causal influences of personality
on another=s behavior and to underestimate the causal influence of the
situation, while reversing the process for yourself
Jones and Harris
(1967) – the “Castro” study
C. Other cognitive
shortcuts
1.
Representativeness: classify something as belonging to a certain category
because it matches the schema we have for that category
2. Availability:
estimate the likelihood of an event by the ease with which instances of that
event occur in our minds
3. False consensus
effect: tendency to overestimate the extent to which others agree with us
4. Anchoring and
adjustment: begin with a rough estimation as a starting point, and then take
into account the unique characteristics of the present situation
Characteristics of
the Person that Make the Use of Heuristics more/less likely:
Need for structure
- the extent to which people are motivated to organize their mental and
physical worlds in simple ways
Need for Cognition
– the tendency to enjoy thinking, a “preference for deliberative thinking”
GROUP ACTIVITY
Thursday,
February 1, 2001
Last time,
discussed features of the person that affect whether or not cognitive
heuristics and shortcuts will be used.
There are situational influences as well:
A. Situational
complexity - Gilbert, Pelham, and Krull (1988)
GOAL TO MANAGE
SELF-IMAGE
In general, people
want to feel good about themselves, and another goal of social cognition is to
help us to maintain positive self-regard.
A. Social comparison: Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory (SCT)
1. downward social comparison
2. upward social comparison
B. Self-serving
bias: DeMichele, Solomon, & Gansneder (1998)
C. Believing we
have control: series of studies of nursing home residents Langer and Rodin
(1976), Rodin and Langer (1977)
INTERACTION OF
PERSON AND SITUATION AFFECTS USE OF SELF-SERVING BIASES
Kernis, Cornell,
Sun, Berry, & Harlow (1993)
Person:
Level of
self-esteem—High vs. Low
Stability of
self-esteem—Stable vs. Unstable
Situation:
Positive or
Negative Feedback
GOAL TO BE ACCURATE
Very different
goal from others; with others, we actually ignore or distort information to
suit our purposes. Now we need to be accurate in our judgments so we don’t want
to distort our judgments.
1. Unbiased information
gathering and assessment
2. Work to form
accurate attributions about others, the situation, and ourselves
Situations where
individuals are interdependent on another for outcomes produce a motivation to
be accurate.
Need for cognition
is feature of the person associated with accuracy motivation
Person/Situation
Interaction - Pendry and Macrae (1994)
-individuals who
are cognitively busy are less likely to accurate, particularly when
interdependence is high
Tuesday,
February 6, 2001
Lecture by Megan
Lineberger
Class exercise on
what you would do to prepare for three situations: studying on a Sunday
afternoon, a job interview, party on Saturday night.
SELF-PRESENTATION
(a.k.a., impression management): the process through which we try to control
the impressions people form of us
Why do we
self-present? Acquiring resources, constructing self-image, self-perception
Self-monitoring:
the tendency to be chronically concerned with one’s public image and adjust
actions to fit the needs of the situation
-people can be high or low
self-monitoring
When
self-presentation fails: social anxiety, secondary impressions
-can
measure whether people are being “truthful” about themselves via physiological
“lie detectors”
Reasons for self-presentation:
1.Acquiring status
-status
is conveyed by the use of props, conspicuous consumption, nonverbal behavior,
and our associations (BIRGing and CORFing)
-there
is a gender difference such that men are more likely to engage in
self-presentation for status; displays of status by women are costly, convey
coldness
-status
is displayed when position is threatened or when competing for scarce resources
2. Being seen as
competent (self-promotion)
-competence
is conveyed by staging performances, claiming competence, using props, and
making excuses/creating obstacles (self-handicapping)
e.g., Study by Berglas & Jones
(1978) on self-handicapping
Thursday,
February 8, 2001
Self-Handicapping
(cont'd)
Components
1. Setting up the
roadblock
-Ferrari and Tice (2000)
IV1: Evaluated math test or
"fun" task
IV2: Procrastinators or
non-procrastinators
DV: Amount of time playing
games during practice period
Results:
Procrastinators played more when evaluated. No difference when told they would be doing a "fun"
task
2. Making excuses
-Mello-Goldner and Jackson (1999)
-more reported PMS symptoms =
more self-handicapping
-Men are more likely to self-handicap
-People with more
intense desire to be seen as competent more likely to self-handicap
Does it work?
-Rhodewalt, et al. (1995)
IV: No excuse, intended low
effort, anxious, on drugs
DV: Subjects' evaluation of
speaker
Results: No excuse > low
effort, anxiety, drugs
Goal: To be
likable (ingratiation)
How do you do it?
1. Flattery- Social
flirting
2. Creating
similarity- may require compromise
3. Appearing
attractive- many rewards associated with being attractive
4. Projecting
modesty
-Holtgraves and Dulin (1994)
-black
participants rated a description of a truthful bragger more positively than did
white participants
-suggests different cultural
preferences for modesty
-women, in
general, are better at ingratiation strategies
-social and biological reasons
Multiple audience
dilemma: Having to present to distinct groups at the same time
-can try to moderate presentation, but
that may leave both groups unhappy
(Activity)
-we often make
many inferences about people from a single piece of information
-Bryan, Aiken, and
West (1999)
-viewed video of male condom proposer in
an initial sexual encounter
IV: Proposed or did not propose condom
DV: Perceptions of male
Results: If
proposed condom, seen as more mature, more responsible and more concerned, but
also less exciting, less romantic, and less spontaneous
-Gerrard and
Gibbons (1995)
-Prototype willingness model
-Prototype º
willingness to engage in a behavior º actual behavior
Tuesday,
February 13, 2001
ETHICS in RESEARCH
What are
responsibilities?
-Set by APA
guidelines
Ethics in research
1. Risk-benefit analysis:
physical, psychological, emotional
2. Informed
consent:
-voluntary participation
-can quit at any time without penalty
-no harmful consequences
3. Rights of
privacy
4. Deception
-social desirability- we do what we
thing people want us to
-demand characteristics- cues that
give information about influential hypotheses
-these are both threats to
internal validity
-Christiensen (1988)
-deception studies didn’t
result in psychological harm
5. Confidentiality
of data: keep separate and secure
6. Debriefing
-discuss procedures
-alleviate any problems subjects had
-address negative reactions of
subjects
Thursday,
February 15, 2001
MIDTERM EXAM #1
Tuesday,
February 20, 2001
Organ Donation
Attitude Study
-Theory of Planned
Behavior
Attitudes, Subjective Norms, Perceived Behavioral Control à
Intention à Behavior
Moderating
variables: variables that change the strength of the IV DV relationship (in
this case, death anxiety is hypothesized to be a moderating variable)
Persuasion
Definition: A
change in private attitude or belief as a result of receiving a message
Strong attitudes
can be resistant to change:
1. commitment
2. embeddedness
How do we measure
attitude change?
1. Direct measures
-post only design: only
measure after communication
-pre-post design: measure
attitudes before and after communication
-problems: pretest
may create demand characteristics, social desirability
2. Indirect measures
-Milgram, Mann & Harter
(1965)
"lost
letter" technique
-measured percentage
of people who mailed letter to integration support organization
-problem: we don't know why people
behaved as they did
Dual Process Model
of Persuasion
-Petty and Cacioppo (1986):
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)
-Chaiken (1987): Heuristic systematic
model
Two routes to persuasion
1.
Central (systematic): high motivation, high ability; deep processing focus on
argument quality long-lasting attitude change
2. Peripheral (heuristic):
low motivation, low ability superficial processing, focus on
surface features temporary attitude change,
susceptible to persuasion
Thursday,
February 22, 2001
Motivation
-Situation
-Petty & Cacioppo (1984)- Motivation to
process deeply
-proposed
implementation of comprehensive exams (this yr. or in 10 yrs)
-increased
personal relevance à greater systematic processing
-Person:
high need for cognition
Ability
-Do we have the information we need?
-Do we have adequate cognitive resources?
-Do we have time?
Medium
-Chaiken
& Eagly (1983)
IV1: medium (radio, tv, print)
IV2: likeability of the communicator
Results: Situations with audio and TV
presentation of information were more persuaded by
likeable communicators (more peripheral
processing)
Goals of
Persuasion
1. Accuracy
-credibility of communicator (expertise,
trust)
-other people's opinions, responses
-Kassin & Kiechel (1996)- False
accusations
IV1: cognitive load
IV2: eyewitness corroboration with
experimenter
Results:
high cognitive load and eyewitness corroboration increased likelihood of signed
confession
-Person
features:
1.
issue involvement
2.
mood
-Situation
features
-Cooper,
Bennet & Sukel (1996)
IV1:
expertise of communicator
IV2:
complexity of message
Results: more expertise and more complexity
resulted in greatest persuasion
-Priester
& Petty (1995)
IV1:
Trustworthiness
IV2: need for cognition
Results: high trustworthiness and low need
for cognition results in greatest persuasion
2. Consistency
-The consistency principle: people will change
attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and actions to make them consistent with one
another
-Balance Theory
(Heider): we like harmony in our lives
-+/-
relationships among three entities must be positive or else the relatioships
are not balanced
-Cognitive
Dissonace (Festinger): an uncomfortable physical and psychological arousal
resulting from inconsistency
-Festinger & Carlsmith (1959)
Peg turning task
IV: Paid $1 or $20 to lie
Results: People paid $1 experienced
greater attitude change
-didn't
receive enough money to justify lying
-counter-attitudinal action: a behavior
that is inconsisten with an existing attitude
Conditions for dissonance:
1. Action has to be freely chosen
2. Action cannot be justified as due to
strong rewards or threats
3. Action cannot be withdrawn
4. Action produces negative consequences
that were not foreseen
Post-decisional dissonance: after choosing
between options
-goal changes from accuracy to consistency:
make option you chose more attractive
-Person
features
1.
arousal
2.
preference for consistency
-Situation
features
1.
consequences
2.
salience of inconsistency
Aronson, et al. (1995)
-giving testimonials about the importance
of safe sex behavior induced dissonance (which resulted in attitude change) in
people who had not been engaging in safe sex behaviors
Tuesday,
February 27, 2001
Class activity
Group activity: Persuasion
Persuasion: changing attitudes
Influence: changing behavior
3 Categories of Persuasion
1. Conformity: behavior change to match the
actions of others
2. Compliance: behavior change as a result
of a direct request
3. Obedience: behavior change as a result
of a direct request from an authority figure
-Milgram
(1974): Video
Thursday,
March 1, 2001
Remaining portion of Milgram film
Factors that contribute to obedience
1. Salience of authority figure
2. Salience of the victim
3. Affilitation with respected institution
4. Others in group (conformity)
5. Decrease authority of experimenter
6. Have victim request more shocks
7. Conflicting orders by experimenters
Conformity: Behavior change to match
actions of others
-Asch
(1956)
-groups
of 8 people (7 confederates, 1 real subject)
-control
(correct answer): 95% chose correct line
-experimental
(wrong answer): 25% chose correct line
Compliance: Behavior change as a result of
a direct request (more general)
-6 Principles of Influence
1. Reciprocity
2. Commitment/Consistency
3. Authority
4. Social Validation
5. Scarcity Principle
6. Liking/ Friendship
Goals of Influence
-Accuracy (we want to choose correctly)
1.
Authority
-Hofling,
et al. (1996)
-Doctors
instruct nurse to give patient 2 times maximum safe dose of drug
-95%
of nurses complied
2.
Social Validation
-Asch
study
-Characteristics
of the person
-uncertainty
-Sherif,
et al. (1936) Autokinetic effect
-no
right answer
-ambiguous
stimuli à uncertainty à social validation
-task
difficulty and shaky grasp on reality also result in uncertainty
-Characteristics
of the situation
-Consensus-more
likely to go along with a majority opinion
-Similarity-
increase social validation use with increased similarity
-Baron,
Vandello, Brunsman (1996) Uncertainty and Accuracy
-IV1:
desire for accuracy (paid $20 or $0)
-IV2:
Uncertainty (shorter or longer presentation of picture)
-DV:
Conformity to majority opinion
-Results: Low motivation to be accurate
($0): Moderate conformity for both certain and uncertain
High motivation ($20): Uncertain= high
conformity to majority opinion
Certain= low conformity to majority opinion
Tuesday, March
6, 2001
Social Influence (cont'd)
Goal: To gain social approval
-Descriptive
norms: What do people actually do?
-Injunctive
norms: What is socially appropriate? What do people think I should do?
-Henry
(2000): Influence of norms on aggression
-Elementary
school children
-Injunctive
norms had large impact on aggressive behavior
Characteristics of the Person
-Anticonformists:
do not seek social approval à not as susceptible to norms
Characteristics of the Situation
-More
likely to want social approval if the person or group trying to influence us is
appealing
-Observability of behavior: more likely to
be influenced if behavior is visible/ overt
-Mayhew
(1968): Religion (anti- birth control)
-IV:
prominence of woman's husband in church
-DV:
Fertility (# of children)
Goal: To be seen as consistent
1.
Foot-in-the-door technique: Agree with a small request and then a subsequent
larger request
2.
Lowball technique: Get commitment to an initial request then raise cost of
carrying out behavior
3.
Bait and Switch: Gain commitment then make the arrangement unavailable but
offer a more costly alternative
4. Labeling: Assign label to individual and
request a favor consistent with that label
-Cialdini,
et al. (1998)
-Kids
labeled as those who thought penmanship was important chose handwriting task
during free time
5. Door in the face: As for a large
request, then get them to agree to a smaller request
Thursday,
March 8, 2001
Motive of Affiliation: Desire to be around
others
-McCrae
& John (1992): Circumplex
1.
Everyone prefers to associate with people who are agreeable
2.
People prefer others who compliment their level of dominance
Goals of Affiliation
1. To get social support
-The emotional, material, and/or
informational assistance provided by other people
-Bolger
& Eckenrode (1991)
-Medical
students: Good and bad social support
-Pierce,
et al. (2000): Depression and alcohol consumption
-low
social support à depression à alcohol use
Components
of social support
1.
Tangible assistance
2.
Appraisal/ availability of trusted person
3.
Self-esteem support
4.
Belonging/ availability of social group to relax with
-Birth
order
-Schachter
(1959)
-IV:
receiving painful shocks or not
-DV:
wait alone or with others
-1st
borns more likely to wait with others
-Self-focused
attention
-Flory,
et al. (2000)
-experience
sampling
-Positive
or negative social interaction
-Positive
or negative mood
-Highly self-focused people more likely to
be in neg. mood after neg. interaction
-Embarrassment
-Sarnoff
& Zimbardo (1961): Oral phase activities
-don't affiliate with people who will
evaluate us when we're embarrassed
-Self-perpetuating
cycle of loneliness
-Lonelinessà
Uncomfortable around others à Avoidance àSelf-defeating thoughts à Depression à
Negative interpersonal behaviors à Others
avoid you à Loneliness
2. To Get Information
-Festinger's Social Comparison Theory: we
compare with similar others because we get the best information from those like
us
-Self-disclosure:
the sharing of intimate information about oneself
-Aron,
et al. (1997)
-Liked interaction partners at end of
session better when disclosing personal information
-Gender
is the best predictor of self-disclosure
-defining
feature of same-sex friendships
-Martin
(1997)
-Conversation
between 2 men or 2 women
-Altered
voices, references to gender specific info.
-Ss could still discern gender of speakers
by content of conversation
Tuesday, March
13, 2001
Self-Disclosure (cont’d)
-higher
for women than for men
Group Activity
Goal of Getting Information
-Situations of Uncertainty
-Kulik
& Mahler (1990)
-Coronary
bypass patients
-room with someone who had had the procedure
or was also awaiting surgery
-most preferred to wait with someone who
had already had the procedure
-Depression and the Situation
-Lyvbomirsky
& Ross (1998)
-IV1-
Happy or depressed
-IV2-
Others performed better or worse on anagram task
-DV-
Estimate of own ability
-results indicative of self-esteem
maintenance- we avoid information that will decrease self-esteem
Goal of Gaining Status
1. We
promote the success of our friends
2. We
want our friends to succeed
3. We
affiliate with powerful people whose status helps our own
- Males
more likely to gain status with affiliation
-Ways to obtain status through affiliation
1. Kissing
up- affiliate with people of higher status (BIRG)
2. Kissing
off- dissociate from low-status others (CORF)
-Snyder, Lassegard & Ford (1986)
IV:
Failure, success, or no feedback about team performace
DV:
Take badge
-Those in failure conditions far less
likely to take badge than those in success conditions
Goal of Exchanging Material Benefits
-Evolutionary
bases: survival of family groups in hunter-gatherer societies
-Social exchange
-Equity: when a person’s costs and benefits
from a relationship are proportional to costs and benefits incurred by the
partner
Four forms of social exchange
1. Communal
sharing : take what you need, put in what you can
2. Authority
ranking: goods are divided by status within group
3. Equality
matching: put in and get out same amount
4. Market
pricing: get out what you put in- looking for the “best deal”
Thursday,
March 15, 2001
Love and Romantic Relationships
-Sternberg
1. Passion: physiological arousal, romantic
attraction, sexual desire
2. Intimacy: close bond, desire to take
care of a partner, concern for partner’s happiness
3.
Decision commitment: short term decision to love, long term commitment to
maintain the relationship
Evolutionary perspective
-Trivers (1971) Differential Parental
Investment (minimum)
-females-
internal gestation, long period of care
-males-
single act of copulation
-females have more to lose from
indiscriminant mating ® selective
pressure to be choosy
-selective
pressure on males to compete for females (scarce resource)
-Reversed
trend in some animals
-Kenrick, Sedalla, Groth & Trost (1990)
-Qualified Differential Parental Investment
-Type of relationship matters (DPI pattern
emerges for short-term relationships)
Goals
1. Sexual
Satisfaction
-Characteristics of the person
-Erotophobia
(sex guilt): negative affect about sexuality
-Sociosexual
orientation
-Simpson
& Gangestad (1991)
-restricted
vs. unrestricted (not related to erotophobia or sexual desire)
-Gender
-Kenrick,
et al (1990)
-males less selective about intelligence in
female partner when interested in casual sex only relationship than in other,
more committed types of relationships
-Clark & Hatfield (1987)
-Confederate approaches and asks men and
women for a date, to go back to their apartment, or to have sex.
-Males more likely to agree to go to apartment
and to have sex than females
-Bailey
finds same patterns in homosexual population
-Social Norms
-Generations: -Kinsey (1948, ’53) by age
25, 71% of men and 33% of
women had had premarital sex
-Hunt
(1974) figures change to 97% of men and 67% of women
-Age
at first intercourse
-college
students: 16
-inner
city high school students- 14
-incarcerated
kids- 12
-Interaction between culture and evolution
-Shepher
-children
in Israeli kibbutzim