Soc Psych 4 - ?

Front 1

Automatic processing

Back 1

Little effort
Little conscious awareness that you’re performing the task
Parallel processing - doing the task at the same time as other tasks
o Ex. Reading: identifying letters, recognizing words, understanding sentences all together
Normally fast
Little or no interference with other tasks
o Ex. A good driver, talking, putting on make-up and driving all at once

Front 2

Controlled processing

Back 2

High effort
Very aware
Serial processing - one task at a time
o Ex. Driving: remember to check the mirror, then put the car in gear, then move, then stop, then turn
Normally slow
A lot of interference!
o Ex. Learning to drive and trying to hold a conversation - tend to forget what you’re talking about, or run into things

Front 3

Schemas

Back 3

Information about a concept (people, place, things, etc.)
o Ex. Teachers have particular traits, behaviors.

Front 4

Scripts

Back 4

Schemas for events
Ex. When you go to a restaurant you know you get seated, order food, get drinks, get your meal, pay, leave the restaurant.

Front 5

Priming

Back 5

Concepts in memory are linked together
• When one concept is activated, energy spreads to the connected concepts
• Experiment:
o Bargh, Chen & Burrows (1996)
o Unscramble sentences: rude, polite or neutral
o Then have to get experimenter
o Experimenter is busy talking to a confederate (pretending to be the next participant)
o “Rude” participants interrupted most often, “polite” participants interrupted least often

Front 6

Framing

Back 6

The same information presented in different ways can lead to different decisions

Front 7

Attribution theory

Back 7

Group of theories which describe how we explain other people’s behavior (making up why people did that)

Front 8

Kelley’s Covariation Theory

Back 8

Based on the covariation principle
o Attribute behavior to factors that are present with behavior, and absent when the behavior is absent
• Covariation information: (does she only drink around the same group or no?)
o Consensus - do other people do the same thing?
o Distinctiveness - is it a unique behavior for the individual?
• Consistency - does the person do the behavior repeatedly?

Front 9

Heurisitics

Back 9

Frequently we use shortcuts to make attributions - faster, but biased

Front 10

Availability

Back 10

Strategy based on how easily things come to mind
• The media may bias our decisions, by making certain things seem more likely
Another example:
• Things that you’ve done yourself may come to mind more easily than things done by others
o Ask husbands and wives to estimate their responsibility for 20 household chores (making dinner, watching the kids, grocery shopping)
o They both claimed to have more responsibility for the activities!

Front 11

Representativeness

Back 11

You make a decision based on how representative an example is of a population

Front 12

Actor-observer effect

Back 12

Make situational attributions for our own behavior (but personal attributions for other people’s behavior)

Front 13

Fundamental Attribution Error

Back 13

Focus on personal causes instead of situational factors in understanding other people’s behavior
• Why does this happen?
• Attribution is a 2-step process
o Step 1 - easy & automatic; observe behavior, personal attribution
o Step 2 - difficult, effortful; situational attribution
• When we do this for whole groups of people, it’s called Ultimate Attribution Error

Front 14

Confirmation Bias

Back 14

Tendency to seek, interpret & create information that confirms our beliefs
• Perseverance of beliefs
o Tendency to maintain beliefs, with ambiguous or false information
• Confirmatory hypothesis testing
o Seeking evidence to support beliefs - leading questions
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
o Predictions about someone become true through subtle influences

Front 15

Conjunction fallacy

Back 15

• More event seems more likely as it becomes more specific because the specific elements seem true
• Ex. Remember Linda? Bank teller & feminist
• But really, the more specific the less likely something is because more things have to be true

Front 16

Illusory correlation

Back 16

Sometimes we think we see plausible relationships in observations that aren’t really there

Front 17

Base rate fallacy

Back 17

We tend to ignore base rate information
• Base rate: the actual probability of something

Front 18

Gambler’s fallacy

Back 18

If you watch a roulette wheel and it comes up red 8 times in a row, would you place your bet on red again, or on black?
• It may seem that after 8 reds in a row, a black is more likely - BUT the roulette wheel isn’t keeping track!

Front 19

False consensus

Back 19

Overestimate extent to which others share your opinions, behaviors, etc

Front 20

False uniqueness

Back 20

Underestimate extent to which others share your most unique (special, prized) characteristics

Front 21

Statistical regression

Back 21

• Regression to the mean: extreme behaviors, scores, etc. will tend to return to the mean
o Really good performance will become worse
o Really bad performance will become better

Front 22

Illusion of control

Back 22

We believe we can control random events
o Ex. Doing a rain dance, having a lucky charm when gambling

Front 23

Magical thinking

Back 23

2 things that touch each other pass properties
 Ex. May imagine contamination after wearing a sweater owned by someone with HIV
o Things that look alike share properties
 Ex. May avoid eating candy shaped like insect
o Thoughts can influence the world
 Ex. Thinking about bad things will make them happen

Front 24

Counterfactual thinking

Back 24

Imagine what didn’t happen (what might have been)
• Emphasize disappointment by thinking about a close success
o Coming in second

Front 25

Emotion

Back 25

o Subjective experience (I feel happy)
• Physiological response (increased heart rate)
o Behavioral or expressive response (smiling or laughing)

Front 26

James-Lange Theory

Back 26

Earliest psychological theory of emotion 1884
• Your body reacts to an event
• Then you decide how you feel
• Ex. Being dumped by a boyfriend/girlfriend makes you cry, so you feel sad because you cried


Problems with this theory
o The only way to have different emotions is to have different bodily responses
o But, we cry when we are happy OR sad
• Support for this theory
o Reducing the body’s ability to respond (I.e. spinal cord damage) does reduce emotional response

Front 27

Facial feedback hypothesis

Back 27

Izard, 1971
• Feedback from your facial muscles can strengthen or trigger an emotion
o Smiling makes you happy

Front 28

Cannon-Bard Theory

Back 28

Cannon was a major critic of James’ theory
• The thalamus in the brain receives information and passes it on to the cortex, creating emotion, and to the autonomic nervous system, creating bodily response
• Arousal & emotion happen together

Front 29

Two factor theory

Back 29

Schacter-Singer Theory
• 1960s
• 2 factors contribute to feeling an emotion
o 1: physiological arousal
o 2: cognitive interpretation
o Arousal + attribution = emotion
Love Bridge

Front 30

3 versions of critical slide

Back 30

• Neutral - woman riding bike
• Unusual - woman carrying bike
• Emotional - woman wrecked her bike

Front 31

Emotional Stroop task

Back 31

Show phobics words related to their phobias
o If you have an insect phobia you would take longer to name the color of words related to insects
• SPIDER CHAIR

Front 32

Insufficient justification

Back 32

behave in a way that isn’t consistent with your own attitudes without reward

Front 33

Insufficient deterrence

Back 33

don’t engage in a behavior, without threat of substantial punishment

Front 34

Attitude-discrepant behavior

Back 34

Insufficient deterrence
Insufficient justification

Front 35

Attitude polarization

Back 35

Attitudes become more extreme when people think about them
o Biased evaluation of information
• Look for support for your attitude, ignore evidence that goes against your attitude

Front 36

Social Learning

Back 36

Also called observational learning
o More likely to imitate behaviors that you see other people rewarded for
o And avoid behaviors that you see others punished for

Front 37

Operant Conditioning

Back 37

Condition voluntary behaviors using reinforcement or punishment
o Reinforcement increases frequency of a behavior, punishment reduces it

Front 38

Classicial Conditioning

Back 38

o Food --> saliva reflex
 Food is Unconditioned Stimulus
 Salivation is Unconditioned Response
o Bell --> attention orienting reflex
 Bell is Conditioned Stimulus
o Pair the Conditioned Stimulus with the Unconditioned Stimulus
o Conditioned Stimulus may cause salivating reflex (Unconditioned Response)
 Unconditioned Response has become the Conditioned Response

Front 39

Mere exposure effect

Back 39

Being exposed to something can change your attitude towards it
o Seeing something repeatedly will make you like it more
 Familiarity = liking
o Except, if you dislike something on the first exposure, repeated exposures make you like it less
 Strengthen the initial attitude of dislike

Front 40

Measuring attitudes

Back 40

May measure nonverbal behaviors (facial expression, tone of voice)
o Facial EMG
 Measure muscle contractions in face as an indication of emotion
o ERP (event related potential - a type of EEG)
 Measure changes in activity related to change (novel items), inconsistency, & positive/negative change

Front 41

Bogus pipeline

Back 41

Self-reports while attached to a fake lie detector (more likely to be honest)

Front 42

Attitude scales

Back 42

Multiple questions that are combined
 Likert scale
 Can be biased

Front 43

Explicit Attitudes

Back 43

o Controlled
o Conscious

Front 44

Implicit Attitudes

Back 44

Automatic
o Not conscious

Front 45

Attitude

Back 45

o Positive, negative or mixed reaction to a person, object or ideas
o Evaluations

Front 46

4 steps are required to create behavior based on cognitive dissonance

Back 46

Attitude-discrepant act with unwanted consequences
o Feeling of personal responsibility
o Arousal or discomfort
o Attribution of the arousal to the attitude-discrepant behavior

Front 47

Cognitive dissonance theory

Back 47

Inconsistency between attitudes and behavior creates unpleasant psychological tension
• Motivated to reduce cognitive dissonance, people change their attitudes

Front 48

• Kinship selection

Back 48

Protect own genes by helping close relative

Front 49

Reciprocal altruism

Back 49

Those who give also receive (if I help you, you’ll help me)

Front 50

• Group selection

Back 50

Members of a social group help each other survive

Front 51

Egoistic

Back 51

Motivated by desire to increase own welfare

Front 52

Altruistic

Back 52

Motivated by desire to increase another’s welfare

Front 53

Empathy

Back 53

Involves understanding & concern for another
 Cognitive: perspective taking
 Emotional: personal distress & empathic concern

Front 54

Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis

Back 54

Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis
• Empathic concern for a person in need produces an altruistic motive for helping
 When altruistically motivated, people will help even when they can avoid it easily
o Not taking another person’s perspective creates the self-oriented emotion of personal distress, which can produce an egoistic motive to reduce your own distress (low empathy)
 Will only help if it is the only way to relieve personal distress

Front 55

The bystander effect

Back 55

• The presence of other people decreases the chances that an individual will help

Front 56

Step 1: Noticing

Back 56

 Notice that someone needs help, that something unusual is happening
 Potential helpers may be distracted
 Potential helpers may be caught up in own concerns

Front 57

Step 2: Interpreting

Back 57

 Need to interpret event as an emergency
 Ambiguity: people are less likely to help when a situation is unclear
 Less likely to help if they think attacker knows the victim
 Pluralistic ignorance: assume other bystanders know something that they don’t

Front 58

Step 3: Taking Responsibility

Back 58

 Take responsibility for providing help
 Diffusion of responsibility
• Belief that others should or will take responsibility
• Most likely when number of bystanders is high & number of victims is low
• Most likely under anonymity
• Responsibility can be increased by a person’s role

Front 59

Step 4: Deciding how to help

Back 59

Decide what to do
 Direct help is more likely when the person feels competent to help
 People can also help indirectly by calling for help

Front 60

Step 5: Providing help

Back 60

 Take action
 Audience inhibition
• Reluctance to help based on fear of making a bad impression on observers (may also fear that not helping will make you look bad)
 Costs-rewards comparison (I’ll be sued)
• When rewards to self & victim outweigh potential costs, people are more likely to help