Chapter 13 Social Cognition

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Social Psychology

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The study of how people think about, influence, and relate to other people.

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Social Cognition

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The area of social psychology that explorers how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information. The way in which individuals think in social situations.

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Person Perception

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The processes by which we use social stimuli to form impressions of others.

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Todorov Study

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Examined how perception of faces can influence political elections. Asked people to rate the competence of individuals from photographs of their faces. They were correct up to 70%. Faces have away information about the candidates that was meaningful to the perceivers. Faces have important implications for social perceptions.

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Physical Attractiveness and Interpersonal Attraction

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Judith Langlois found that even infants showed a preference for looking at attractive faces versus unattractive faces. Attractive individuals are generally assumed to have a variety of other positive characteristics.

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Stereotype

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A generalization about a group's characteristics that doesn't consider any variations from one individual to another.

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Self-fulfilling Prophecy

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Expectations cause individuals to act in ways that serve to make the expectations come true. Rosenthal & Jacobsen conducted a study where researchers told teachers that five students were likely to be late bloomers. They found that teachers' expectations for the late bloomers were reflected in student performance- the academic performance of these five was beyond that of other students.

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Attribution Theory

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The view that people are motivated to discover the underlying causes of behavior as part of their wrote to make sense of the behavior.

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Fundamental Attribution Error

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Observers' overestimation of the importance of internal traits and underestimation of the importance of external situations when they seek explanations of an actor's behavior.

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False Consensus Effect

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People's overestimation of the degree to which everybody else thinks or acts the way they themselves do.

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Positive Illusions

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Favorable view of the self that are not necessarily rooted in reality.

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Self-serving Bias

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The tendency to take credit for one's successes and to deny responsibility for one's failures.

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Self- objectification

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The tendency to see oneself primarily as an object in the eyes of others.

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Stereotype Threat

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An individual's fast acting, self-fulfilling fear of being judged based on a negative stereotype about his or her group.

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Attitudes

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An individual's opinions and beliefs about people, objects, and ideas- how the person feels about the world.

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Can Attitudes Predict Behavior?

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Some conditions under which attitudes guide actions.

When the person's attitudes are strong: you are more compelled to do something if you are passionate about it.

When the person shows a strong awareness of an attitude and rehearses and practices

When the person has a vested interest

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Can Behavior Predict Attitudes?

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Social psychologists offer two main explanations for how behavior influences attitudes: cognitive dissonance theory and self- perception theory.

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

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An individual's psychological discomfort (dissonance) caused by two inconsistent thoughts.

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Persuasion

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Trying to change someone's attitude and often his or her behavior as well.

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Carl Hovland 4 Elements of Persuasion

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The communicator (source)- the person doing the persuading.

The medium- technology used to get the message across.

The target (audience)- the target of a message can play a role in message persuasiveness.

The message- the final aspect of persuasion.

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Foot-in-the door Technique

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Involves making a smaller request at the beginning, saving the biggest demand for last. Relies on the notion that in agreeing to the smaller offer and expressing a level of trust.

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Door-in-the-face

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Involves making the biggest pitch first which the customer probably will reject and then making a smaller concessionary demand. Relies on the sense of obligation.

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Resisting Persuasion- inoculation

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McGuire proposed that just as administering a vaccine inoculates individuals from a virus by introducing a weakened or dead version of that virus to the immune system, giving people a weak version of a persuasive message and allowing them to argue against it can help individuals avoid persuasion.

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Bystander Effect

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The tendency of an individual who observes am emergency to help less when other people are present than when the observer is alone.

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Aggression

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Social behavior with the objective of harming someone, either physically or verbally.

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Psychological Influences in Aggressions

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Aversive circumstances: frustration. Weather, physical pain, crowding.

Cognitive determinants: priming, perception of unfairness.

Observational learning.

Personality: some people are more likely to behave aggressively than others.

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Conformity

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A change in a person's behavior to coincide more closely with a group standard.

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Solomon Asch's Experiment

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A classic experiment on conformity. The group is shown two cards the first having a single vertical line on it and the second having three vertical lunes of varying length. On the first several trials everyone agrees but then the confederates choose the wrong choice. 35% of the time the participants conformed to the incorrect answers.

Psychological: informational social influence, nonnative social influence.

Biological: brain equates nonconformity work making an error, oxytocin promotes conformity.

Culture: collectivism promotes conformity, pathogenic prevalence correlated with conformity.

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Informational Social Influence

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The influence other people have on us because we want to be right.

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Normative Social Influence

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The influence others have on us because we want them to like us.

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Obedience

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Behavior that complies with the explicit demands of the individual in authority.

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Milligram's Experiments

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Study where a learner is strapped into a chapter. The experimenter makes it look as if a shock generator is being connected to his body through several electrodes. 65% of subjects went up to 450 volts. Factors that Contribute to Disobedience: disobedient models, authority figure not legitimate or not close by, victim made to seem more human.

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Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment

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Demonstrated the power of obedience.

2 week simulation: guards vs prisoners, paid $15 a day

Manifested extreme aggression and abuse: participants did not quit, stimulation was aborted after 6 days.

Biased Sample: 24 men

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Deindividuation

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The reduction in personal identity and erosion of the sense of personal responsibility when one is a part of a group.

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Group Performance

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Social facilitation: appeal with well-learned talks.

Social loading: reduced accountability.

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Social Facilitation

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Improvement in an individual's performance because of the presence of others.

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Social Loafing

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Each person's tendency to exert less effort in a group because of reduced accountability for individual effort.

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Prejudice

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An unjustified negative attitude toward an individual based on the individual's membership in a group.

Explanations for Prejudice: competition between groups, cultural learning, motivation to enhance self-esteem, limitations in cognitive processes.

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Discrimination

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An unjustified negative or harmful action toward a member of a group simply because the person belongs to that group.

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Mere exposure effect

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The phenomenon that the more individuals encounter someone or something, the more probable it is that they will start liking the person or thing even if they do not realize they have seen it before.

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Similarity

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Plays an important role in attraction. People like to associate work people who are similar to us. Friends and partners share similar attitudes, behavior patterns, taste in clothes, intelligence, personality, other friends, values, lifestyles, and physical attractiveness.

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Consensual Validation

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Explains why people are attracted to others who are similar to them. Our own attitudes and behavior are supported when someone else's attitudes and behavior are familiar- their attitudes and behavior validate ours.

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Impact of Social Isolation and Loneliness on Health Outcomes

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Social isolation is a strong risk factor for a range of physical illnesses. Loneliness relates to a number of negative health outcomes, including impaired physical health and early death.

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Impact of Diverse Social Ties on Health Outcomes

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Individuals who participate in more diverse social networks live longer than those with a narrower range of social relationships.