Social Psychology

02/19/2013

Psychology as a Science: Theory Based

Good scientific approach should be theory based
Step 1: Formulate Theory
o people who are intoxicated will show less motor coordination
o Theory: tries to account the WHY behind the research finding, understanding
of the prediction of the behavior.
o Research is based on theory and the theory comes before the experiment.
o Theory definition:
Theory vs. Phenomenon
Theory: WHY
men are more likely to eat alone in public than women
because they eat more
men enjoy alone time more, men are more likely to be
introverted than women
Phenomenon: doesnt answer WHY
men are more likely to eat alone in public than women
Study: subjects were recruited and asked to come into lab,
write on laptop computer for 20 minutes a day for 3 days a
week
people wrote about either trauma or events of the day
people who wrote about trauma were more healthy over
the next 6 months than people who wrote about events
of the day. PHENOMENON. no WHY
Theory Development:
Inductive: specific to general (e.g. Kitty Geno)
go from a very specific observation to a general
perspective that can account for a variety of things.
more common! people are better at trying to solve a
specific problem and then use that to develop a general
theory
Deductive: general to specific (e.g. ego depletion)
start with people making observations generally in a
variety of situations, and seeing the link between them.
takes more imagination more difficult.

Theory Evaluation:
testable/falsifiable
people cant evaluate a theory unless they know you can
make it account for whatever you are researching.
need to be able to prove if it is right or if its wrong
#1 theory thats untestable: Freud; psychoanalytic
theory unconscious battle that happens underneath
the surface that we do not know its going on. id, ego,
superego ect.
fits data
data that supports the concept
parsimony
simple explanations are preferred over complex
explanations when referring to data
generates research
makes other people want to do research, creates a buzz
Step 2: Design Study
o plan an experiment in which you give alcohol to one group and no alcohol to
a control group. Alternatively, compare people before and after drinking
alcohol.
Step 3: Collect The Data
o give people alcohol and measure motor coordination and valance. select tasks
that are appropriate to collect this information
Step 4: Analyze Data
o use statistical techniques to assess whether the results are genuine or
probably due to chance
Step 5: Disseminate The Results
o report the findings in a research journal or at a conference
o try for the results to have an impact on society
Background Issues for Research Methods
1. Design: Experimental vs. Correlational
o not all research or experiments are all one
o want to be able to say causation

Experimental:
manipulate (independent variable)
ex: writing about trauma or writing about everyday experiences
ex. alone vs. group
measure (dependent variable)
ex. self-reported health issues, number of trips to health center
(over next 6 months)
ex. how long does it take for someone to get up and get help
from the smoke or give help to the screaming
key point: dependent variables are NUMBERS,
QUANTIFIABLE, you can measure it
random assignment key: any subject in the study must be randomly
assigned to either the experimental or control group, they have an
equal chance for both
insures that any weirdness about the individual, any thing that
could affect the study could either be in the control or
experimental group (aka personality differences)
so there is no question as to what is causing the results of the
experiment
control key: no other third thing situationally that might effect the
dependent variable that isnt the result of the independent variable
standardization: subjects are treated the exact same way, not
something else between the conditions thats creeping in. need to have
standardizations in instructions and treatment in how you act to the
subjects. that might mean that the script is written down so that what
they say to one subject is completely the same to what they say to the
other subjects. instructions might be recorded
goal: to say any change in dependent variable was caused by change in
independent variable
o Correlational:
make sure there is a systematic measure between two variables
ex. commitment to romantic partner, willingness to sacrifice. how
many times you do something you dont want to do but your partner
wants to do
relationship between variables -1 0 +1
-1: as variable A goes UP one unit, variable B goes DOWN one
unit
+1: as variable A goes UP one unit, variable B does UP one
unit
0: no correlation
no causation: correlation does NOT imply causation
SAT scores HIGH, college GPA HIGH, doing well on your
SATs does not cause you to have a high GPA its probably
because youre smart or you work hard. you go glen coco
o

2. Validity: Internal vs. External

o Internal Validity: degree to which you are sure of the cause of your results
going to be a continuum, not a yes or no; tends to be increased in
experiments. because in an experiment youre manipulating and controlling
things
you can also use path analysis
does not MEAN measurement of independent or dependent variables
could be LACK of random assignment, LACK of
standardization
o External Validity: the degree to which subjects behavior is naturally
occurring
looking at children having difficulties on the playground, boys vs. girls
natural observation!
experiments tend to be LESS strong in external validity, they KNOW
they are in an experiment
social psych has a way to create stronger external validity in
experiments through the use of deception, subjects thing experiment is
in one thing, but the experiment is measuring something else.
3. Measurement Issues:
o 1. Operationalization: most important
the way that you choose to manipulate and independent variable, and
or how you choose to measure the dependent variable. how you
choose you measure or manipulate matters a great deal, you want to
make sure you can measure what you think youre measuring, or
manipulating what you want to manipulate
ex. arousal enhances performance
if you are good at the task arousal makes you even better,
however if you are not good at task arousal makes you worse
how are you going to manipulate arousal? people there
give them a drug? gives arousal, a sugar pill
have people do something physically active gets heart
racing and blood pumping
o 2. Manipulation checks:
either in pre-testing (pilot study) procedurally do experiment and then
check if you are actually doing the measurement
o 3. Reliability:
scale of intelligence or extraversion expect these things to be stable
states, is your scale reliable?
same person should score about the same on the same test 6 months
apart makes it reliable. ONLY THINGS THAT ARE STABLE
core personality states
somethings are expected to change, commitment in a romantic
relationship over the course of a year
Research Methods: Pros and Cons

1. Laboratory: independent and dependent variables

o ex. writing about trauma
o Pros: manipulation, you get exactly what youre looking for, control all parts
of experiment; higher internal validity
o Cons: people know they are in a study (unless you use deception) threat to
external validity
2. Observational: people are observing behavior out in real world as it actually occurs
o ex. who was more likely to eat alone, women or men?
o Pros: how people actually behave, high external validity
o Cons: have little control, hard to code behavior (what to constitute people
sitting alone vs sitting together?)
3. Field Experiment: attempt to cross bridge between laboratory and observational
study. manipulating independent variable and measuring dependent variable in a real
world study, subjects dont know they are in a study, still trying to maintain control
(random assignment)
o Pros: externally valid, keep causation
o Cons: could have trouble with ethics
4. Surveys: self reported, checking off things yes or no, scale of 1-10
o Pros: takes little time, get a lot of people, easy to do
o Cons: people lie; consciously or non consciously, passive not actually
measuring people doing anything (not measuring behavior)
2/8/12
5. Experience Sampling:
o mostly in social psychology rather than any other branch
o cross between survey research and observational research; you want a capture
of behavior of subjects as it is in the real world (as it is occurring) over a week
or 2 week period (rolling snapshot) and some self-reporting by subject
ex. give subjects a diary and whenever they have a social interaction
that lasts 10 minutes or more, the subjects would record and self-report
about interaction (gender, who initiated it, quality, how many people)
attractive women had a lot of opposite sex interactions and
good quality
attractive men had a lot of opposite sex interaction and good
quality
unattractive men had a lot of same sex interactions and bad
quality
unattractive women had many opposite sex interactions but bad
quality
o Pros: happens close in time (being prompted then asked right away)

o Cons: self reported (could lie)

6. Simulation:
o want to get at what people THINK about a situation that they are in
ex. Phil Zambaro prison experiment
o Pros:
o Cons: could be unethical
7. Archival:
o primary data was not collected for psych reasons, use archive data to test a
hypothesis
ex. sports related, myth of hot hand took data of entire NBA
season and wanted to see probability if there was a pattern for shots
o Pros: takes little time
o Cons: not primary data
8. Quasi-experimental:
o independent variable is naturally occurring and NOT manipulated, either
because you cannot change it or because it would be unethical (gender)
o Pros:
o Cons: because its not randomly assigned there will always be a question if
there is another difference between groups that you are measuring.
Which one is best?
o good researchers follow MULTITRAIT and MULTIMETHOD
multitrait: how do you choose to measure and manipulate variables?
try to come up with different ways of doing this, operationalize
multimethod: good researchers when they are testing a theory try and
test the theory using different types of methods, laboratory experiment
and field experiment and experience sampling design. if one can see
links between all of these, then it is much more likely that the theory is
true, and is not simply the artifact by the method you choose
Potential Biases:
1. Design Problems
o Demand characteristics: some sort of que in the environment in the study
that tips off the subject as to what the hypothesis is (more likely in an
experiment (laboratory)) oh this is what they are testing problem: subjects
behavior becomes a decision as to whether they want to go against or with the
hypothesis
ex. want to help but DONT want to conform
threat to external validity

how do you get rid of this? before run study they do a pilot test, run
procedure and probe subjects as to what the hypothesis was at the end.
also through deception
o 3rd variable (control): you need to consider alternative explanations that
might explain your results. you should have TESTS for these 3rd variables in
your research and try to rule them out

2/10/12
Social Cognition: The Study of Schemas:
Schemas: organized knowledge structures that influence m perception, memory, and
behavior
o lots of things tied to a schema, acquire through life
o we can have similar schemas
fire truck
o schemas can be connected and linked red fire truck
how we think about people, situations, ourselves
Culebra: small island off the coast of Puerto Rico; he didnt know what it was until
his brother bought the house, but now that his brother bought a house he know has a
schema as to what people are like there, what life is like there, food, culture ect.
Schema Generation: where do schemas come from?
o very equipted to develop and use schemas; children and language, as we grow
older our schemas become harder to change
o Experience: having experience with objects and situations, giving them labels;
as you have more information and experience you tend to develop a much
richer schema
o Modeling: especially important at early ages, modeling peoples behavior;
parents have a very dramatic influence on what schemas their children
develop, imitating schemas
o Operant Conditioning: how we are reinforced on the schemas we have, watch
trailer for kid movie that looks fun friends: what are you 5 ooopss.. well
changes opinion on movie. you wear the clothes you wear because youve
been shaped into thinking what we like and what we dont like, influenced by
other people
o Social Comparison: we are often motivated for whatever reason to compare
ourselves to other people, sometimes motivation comes because we dont
know how to think about ourselves, so we compare. when we dont know
whats going to happen in a novel situation, we often look to other people as
to how to behave. this allows other people to have a strong influence on us
o Genetic Predisposition: to the way people organize schemas, identical vs.
fraternal twins.
Schema Measurement:
o Attitude Surveys: survey research that tests organization of schemas
o Cluster Analyses (Q-sort): given index cards with concepts or objects on it,
organize cards any way you want.

o Implicit Association Test (IAT): attitude measurement, stereotypes, indirect

way to try and measure if two things are linked in your brain. you are given a
cover story that you are doing a cover test, two words will flash up on the
screen; when the two words come up and they are a pair you were asked to
memorize you respond yes asap, if they were not paired in your list you say
no. looking to see how long it takes you to say NO to pairs that were not on
list; were these paired in your brain? if they were not closely paired with each
other it is going to take you longer to say you havent seen them
Schemas:
o Structure Characteristics:
how are these schemas organized?
DYNAMIC: greater ability to change when we are young because
information is all new to us, when we are older and are taking on
completely new subjects the schemas are changeable
YET STABLE: when we have thoughts of old things and once we
have a lot of information schemas are much more stable and harder to
change
CENTRAL NODES: not all bits of information about a topic matter
are equal, if we know that that thing exists it influences a great deal on
what we are going to think about that topic; physical attractiveness is a
central node, we tend to use it while we make schemas about them;
warm/cold as a personality description tends to lead us to think other
things about that person
halo effect: physically attractive people tend to be assumed to
have other positive characteristics
FUZZY BOUNDARIES: not always clear where one schema ends and
another begins; there will be overlapping
o Evaluation Characteristics:
SEEK MEANING: want to be able to label people, we want to know
why something is happening, use schemas to determine meaning
CATEGORIZE QUICKLY: once we know small amounts of
information about a person or situation we use this to draw
conclusions quickly; this can be both good and bad
SEEK CONSISTENCY: that once we have categorized and made
assumptions; because we know X we can assume Y and Z; we look for
information to support our thoughts, we avoid information thats
inconsistent. we tend to downplay things because it makes life more
predictable and easy.
hallo effect again
2/13/12
Types of Schemas
Person: schema for roommate, Jennifer Anniston, romantic partner, ect. some are
simple and some are complex
Concept: broad category of all sorts of concepts; love, objects. the way we label
things

Self: one of our most complex schemas, you know yourself the best, lots of different
roles that you play
Group: categories of group membership; meet someone and they tell you they are an
accountant a banker a dog groomer, different schemas are going to come up based on
what job they have. that set of assumptions may or may not be accurate or may or
may not be correct for this individual
Event (script): your schema about what happens, having an event schema about what
will happen during an event makes us less anxious, gives us a guide in our behavior;
makes event predictable
o when we go into an event when we dont have a schema we tend to be
nervous about it, makes us anxious
o when we dont have a strong event schema when we go into an event, makes
us susceptible for comparison, when we dont know what to do, we look at
everyone else. we are at risk of emulating their behavior.
Influence of Schemas:
Perception (expectations, motives, moods, activation):
o ex. Hannah study: just going to watch a video tape of a little girl named
Hannah going to school and taking an oral exam. of subjects (her coming
out of her house) is manipulated one way. of subjects see her coming out of
a large very nice home, versus the other half sees her come out of a small
poor, rundown house. then the two groups watched the same tape; Hannah
gets some hard questions right then some easy questions wrong
then asked to take a survey about Hannahs performance on exam,
group 1 (rich house) she did well; believe she is a smart girl. group 2
(poor house) she did poorly on the exam, she does not have high
intelligence
once you have this schema of nice house, lots of support, or poor
house, no support, less smart; made the two groups see her very
differently
o change our expectations
o what motives do we have: motive either to be competitive or to be corporative
between two groups, your perception of the other group changes how you
perceive the other people
o moods: being in a good mood or being in a bad mood can change your
perception of someone else. when you are in a bad mood you tend to perceive
the other person negatively
o activation: we can activate
Memory and Recall:
o ex. people are going to watch a video of a women in her apartment; half of the
objects/ things she does were stereotypical of a librarian, and half were things
stereotypical of a waitress
o people either get the schema before they watch the video, (Linda is a librarian
or Linda is a waitress) half dont get anything before an then after they get
Linda is a librarian or Linda is a waitress
o break

o then asked what Linda did or what she had in apartment, they looked at
accuracy of memory, and how accurate you were based on the schema
o having any schema helped you remember both consistent and inconsistent
things
o much better at remembering schema consistent things over schema
inconsistent things
Behavior:
o overtly: behavioral confirmation
conscious level
what schema we have overtly activated at that time will influence and
effect how we behave; other persons behavior is more likely to be
aligned to our expectation of them (self-fulfilling prophecy)
o covertly: priming
subconscious level
subtle activation of behavior: old vs. new words, priming people
walked slower down all with old words
Decision Making:
missed one b feminist bank teller 75 actresses
2/15/12
Controlled vs. Automatic Processing
Controlled: performance/thought concentration
o ex. first learning to drive (gas vs. break, mirrors)
o perform more slowly, more effort
o concentrated behavior cognitively focused
o single task orientated
o put into controlled when:
difficult or novel task
high motivation
individual difference: need for cognition
Automatic: performance/thought with little awareness
o ex. drive and car and talk on cell phone, sing with radio
o perform more quickly, less effort
o often inflexible (automatic) behavior
o multi-task
o put into automatic when:
routine task
easy task; doesnt require a lot of cognitive energy
tired
distracted
low motivated
Social Cognition Biases (tendencies)
rely on schemas to make a decision without weighing the consequences

weight wrong information

more likely under
o automatic processing
o low need for cognition
Cognitive Miser behavior in general
o if we could take an easier way out in terms of putting cognitive energy in a
task we tend to take the easier way out
o ex. copy machine in college library (field experiment) planted confederate
whos making copies at the copier, another research confederate whos just
waiting around, right when 1st confederate is done the 2nd confederate comes
right up
3 conditions
can I cut in front of you? 50% of the time they allow them
to cut
can I cut in front of you because I borrowed someones notes
and Im late to class I need to go 85% of the time they allow
them to cut
can I cut in front of you I need to make copies? 85% of the
time they allowed them to cut
SCHEMA OF BECAUSE allows them to have a reason
o benefit to be cognitively active; health
Social Cognition Biases (tendencies, errors)
o small sample error: people over generalize, make assumptions of statistical
relevance of things based on a very small sample
o underuse baserate information: vivid, personal information is important and
out weights all others
o availability heuristic: how readily available examples come to mind
o representativeness heuristic: ignore statistical information and use how much
the description fits a certain schema
o illusory correlations: can get people to believe two things are systematically
related when they are not; they are paying attention to the wrong things so
they think things are related
o overconfidence: tendency to be more confident with its accuracy, you are
more confident then your actual performance; greater the confident less likely
they are right
o framing
2/17/12
Attribution Dimensions:
the way we go about assigning cause for behavior (other peoples behavior, our own
behavior, ect.)

a continuum (not going to be completely internal or external)

Internal
o trying to assign the cause to the person (either ourselves or someone else, they
MEANT to do this, something about them. cause of their behavior is internal
to them
o Stable: e.g. personality, traits
I failed because Im not smart enough
o Unstable: e.g. mood, motivation
I failed because my dog died and I was sad
External
o there is something about the situation that is causing them to behave how they
are behaving (or you)
o Stable: e.g. re-occurring situation
I failed because my professor is a douche
o Unstable: unpredictable situation
I failed because I was sitting next to someone who smelled and I was
distracted
Attribution Theories
o 1. Heiders Levels of Responsibility
GOAL: we want to make internal attributions about other peoples
behavior (want to blame them) (they meant to do it)
recognized that we have a tendency that we want to make internal
attributions to peoples behavior this theory is designed to make an
internal attribution
ex. who threw the snow ball? and why did they do it?
1. Association: association between who did it
you turn around and see two people, one of them threw the
snow ball
2. Causation: who actually did it
one of them has a snowball in their hand and one person is
shaking the snow off their hand the one who is shaking
caused the snowball to hit me in the head
3. Forseeability: could this person have foreseen what would happen
when they threw the snowball
the person who is shaking their hand is looking right at you,
yeah they knew what they were doing

4. Intentionality: could they have known the consequences and still

meant to do it
person shaking their hand is grinning at you, you believe they
did it and knew what would happen
5. Justifiability: they had some reason they did this (something that
would lessen it)
5 minutes before you threw a snowball at them
o 2. Correspondent Inference Theory
you want to say that this persons behavior corresponds to something
about them internally
try to find THE ONE internal thing, all about internal, not really about
external.
it is trying to make a SINGLE internal attribution to what caused the
person to act that way
we compare their behavior to all the other things they could have done,
in that array of things they could have done
Common Effects: things that are common across the choices they
could have made
Non-common effects: things that are unique about each behavioral
choice
when there is only one non common effect about what they
chose to do, we can be sure thats the reason why they did it
if there are many things that are different, you will be less
positive that this is the ONE cause
GOAL: that one non-common effect corresponds to something internal
to them and was the cause as to why they did it.
example: Miss. Teen USA contest
final 3 contestants, all attractive, all smart, all sang.
he was rooting for Maine, common effects (pretty smart
good singer) uncommon effects (from maine) so thats why
he was rooting for her.
if they were a little different aka Maine played the piano you
might not know if he wanted her to win because she was from
Maine or because she played piano.
more likely to make an extreme internal attribution
Peronalism: much more likely to make a stronger internal
attribution if their behavior is directed at us, the person meant
to do it
ex. someone cuts someone else off in traffic yikes
that was dangerous vs. someone cuts you off in traffic
asshole

ex. someone sends you a valentines day card who

was it, omg they must like me vs. your friend gets one
they just wanted to make you feel better about your
life
Hedonism: whether the behavior causes us pleasure or pain
ex. walking down the street with your friend and YOU
LOVE DOGS, your friend doesnt care; youre walking
down the road and you see a dog tied to a tree outside a
store; someone comes out of the store and hits the dog
and yells at him, you and your friend will have very
different reactions, you will make a strong internal
attribution about the person; hes a jerk, inhumane,
ect! causes you pain but your friend will be like
whatevvvvz, maybe the dog was bad, not causing them
pain.
o 3. Kelleys Cube: 3 Dimensions
we have more about a person than what they are doing in that
situation; we have seen them in similar or the same situations before,
weve even seen others in that situation before
consensus (social desirability): we have information about how other
people are behaving in this same situation
ex. making an attribution about a student who is late to class
one day, they are 10 minutes late.
consistency: if this person is late to
distinctiveness: if this person is late to other things too.
2/22/12
Attribution Tendencies (biases)
o 1. Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence Bias):
the tendency to overestimate internal causes for others behavior
why?: salience, stable expectations
we want to categorize people, be able to predict actions in the
future. you MEANT to act this way; this will give me a
prediction on what to see in future.
pro life vs. pro choice talk: however across these two options, half
could choose pro life or pro choice and half were assigned half pro life
or pro choice; gave speech, audience rated how much they were really
pro life or pro choice, people were just as likely to make internal
attributions to subjects who were made to give the speech, the
observers believed all of them were internal reasons to give speech,
ignored external factors
leads to belief in "just world
research that have shown that people tend to develop a world
view that people get what they deserve, what happens to you is
result of you; homeless? you dont work hard enough.
o 2. Actor-Observer Effect:

FAE holds for others actions, but not our own

possible reasons: ego-defense, actor more info about us; about why we
do things and how situation is effecting us, observer wants consistency
wants to focus on person acting, less information about situation.
more internal for others and less for us when its a negative
action
more internal for us and less for others when its a positive
thing
Visual Salience Study
Perspective
no video
same
other
Actors attributed for own
2.25
.15
6.80
Observer attributed for actor
4.80
4.90
1.60
3. Self-Serving Bias:
the tendency to make internal attribution for success and external for
failure
when things go well internal attributions
ex. Im smart, I studied really hard, how good they are
when things go poorly external attributions
ex. bad luck, road was slippery, hard test, the referees werent
fair
Researched in:
gambling, insurance claims, school grades, coaches in sports,
marital behaviors, ect
people who suffer from depression make internal attributions for
things that go wrong, and when good things happen it must be good
luck or external reasons
The Self (Social Aspects of the Self)
Self Concept: cognitive component
o part of our self-schema
o knowledge of self (traits, abilities, ect)
o How Gathered?
introspection
look to others
looking glass self how other people react to me, look to
other peoples reactions toward us to think about ourselves
Social Comparison Theory motivated to compare ourselves
to other people
ex. your grade on an exam (85) want to know how
other people did (especially our friends) means
something totally different if all our friends got 75s or
95s
want to compare ourselves to our friends rather than
other random people

o Once gathered:
complex and resistant to change
egocentric bias:
self referenced remembered (behavior?) better remember in our
favor
remember things more when we are in a good light better
things we do
2/24/12
Self-Esteem: affective component
o the way we feel about ourselves
o Measurement:
Self-Discrepancy Theory
actual vs. ideal self
how you actually are vs. how you want to be
when that gap is large you will feel worse about
yourself
easier to lower ideal self than change actual self
o Related to Self-awareness: degree to which you have self focused attention
to be made self aware you are focused in on yourself
being made self aware very much makes you aware of your self
discrepancy; could be a good thing or a bad thing. depends how
different your ideal vs. actual self is.
o Ego protection devices
Self-Serving Bias: internal reasons for success and external
attributions for failure
self-handicapping: blaming something else for the reason you didnt
do as well
Basking in Reflective Glory (BiRGing): tendency to associate yourself
with groups that are doing well, or individuals that are doing well,
connecting yourself
Muhammad Ali Effect: pick dimensions you do well at and say youre
the best at them, evaluate yourself based on that. people think whats
the best characteristic is what they are best at.
Downward Comparison: motivated to compare ourselves to people
who are worse than us.
Self Presentation: behavioral component
o Impression Management Devices:
self-monitoring: very good at monitoring their behavior to fit the
situation, you cant really tell who they are, what they are really like
self-promotion: spend a lot of time trying to win esteem of other
people winning over impression of someone else

self-regulation: you are able to set a goal of behavior and what kind
of impression you wanna give and act upon that goal, how am I going
to change my behavior to achieve this goal
o However, often hard and tiring: ego-depletion effortful to manage
impression youre making on other people, cognitively tiring (controlled
processing)

EXAM:

40 multiple choice each worth 2.5 pts

look at notes 1st
using scantron sheets pencil
fill in ID number (home phone number)

EXAM 1 OVER EXAM 2 MATERIAL

2/29/12
Attitudes: tendency to evaluate objects/issues favorably or unfavorably
Components
o 1. Evaluation (affective): to think about things favorably or unfavorably,
whether you like it or dont like it, your emotional thoughts
o 2. Belief (cognitive): your set of beliefs about something
o 3. Behavior: some researchers think that behavior should be a component of
your attitude, what is a better way to measure something but by your
behavior? versus, other psychologists think that behavior isnt a component, it
is what is your outcome of your attitude, you use your attitudes to predict your
behavior.
very similar to schemas they are attitudes, structure and evaluation issues apply
dynamic and changeable when they are new and when we are younger, they become
stable when we are older or when we have a lot of knowledge of something. they
become harder to change over time.
once we become comfortable with our attitude we ignore inconsistent information
and remember consistent things inline with our attitudes keeps things stable
However, may have many beliefs but usually one overall feeling (which can be tough
to change).
Attitude Generation:
o Experience: living in the world
o Modeling: imitation, attitudes are handed down from parent to child
through modeling
o Operant Conditioning: we are rewarded or punished from having our
attitudes, other people can affect our attitudes by their rewards or punishments
for what we believe.

o Social Comparison: motivated, when we dont know what were feeling or

what our attitude is, motivated to compare to other people
o Genetic Predisposition: research looking at identical twins and their
attitudes, more similarities in identical twins vs. fraternal twins
Functions of Attitudes:
o 1. Value Expression: summary of what we believe, what we like what we
dislike, they communicate who we are. we communicate a lot about who we
are when we express our attitudes
o 2. Provide Expectations: people know what to expect; how are we going to
behave, what we will be like in a situation.
o 3. Organization: attitudes similar to schemas part of organized knowledge
structure, they help us make shape of the world, how we think of the world.
some things are tied together and some things are not
o 4. Utilitarian: attitudes work to reward us, we benefit from our attitudes
Attitude Measurement:
o Direct: getting self-report, what is your attitude?
surveys
pros: easy, lots of people, quickly, use them to be a prediction
or representative sample
cons: bias, conscious bias normally happens when having
negative or positive views are unacceptable (race, porn,
violence, ect.) unconscious bias: people will not say 1 or 10 in
a 1-10 scale, always respond 3-7, want to stay in middle of
scale, and this can be completely opposite too, people only use
1 and 10 not 3-7. passive; not measuring anything dynamic
such as behavior
interviews
Types:
Likert: method of summated ratings uses 1-5 pt scales (agree
disagree, ect.) try and come up with as many beliefs of an
attitude as they can and you have to respond whether you agree
or disagree with the beliefs, tries to measure all of these beliefs
and then makes a summarized conclusion
goal: summated ratings you can establish a global
evaluation with all the information and all the agree
vs. disagrees in the same belief.
Semantic Differential: uses ratings of opposite adjectives to
rate the attitude concept; pairs of adjectives (opposite
adjectives) measure the evaluated component NOT BELIEFS,
looks to measure EMOTIONS your thoughts on JUST
Dallas based on your adjective words on Dallas (good vs. bad)
(easy vs. hard) (clean vs. dirty)
o Indirect: people dont know their attitudes are being measured, often used for
measuring socially undesirable things; stereotypes, ect.
Physiological Measures

Head Movements: hook you up into a machine and want to

measure peoples heads movement when target slide comes
on, people will subtly nod or shake based on if they like it or
not
Galvanic Skin Response: similar to lie machine, degree to
which you have response
Pupil Response:
Facial EMG: use different muscles to smile or to frown
Bogus Pipeline: fake lie detector test, give you questions that you
know the answer comes to, if you lie or if you tell the truth red or
green light comes on, then they ask questions about socially
undesirable beliefs, if you believe that this machine will tell you the
truth about whether you are lying or not; people are more wiling to
admit if they think the machine works
Implicit Association Test: you think youre memorizing pairs of words,
but then they see how quickly you respond; if things are closely
associated in your mind (Lithuanian and lazy) you will click or
respond very quickly vs. if these things are not linked in your mind.

3/2/12
Attitudes and Behavior:
Do attitudes predict behavior at all?
1934 study of hotels and willingness to have Chinese stay
o some hotels said no Chinese cant stay (amen)
o man wrote to each hotel asking if he can stay with Chinese couple at their
hotel, no relationship between if they actually could stay and if when he asked
they could stay
1969 meta analysis of 31 attitude behavior studies: no relationship
o tries to account of the variance in attitude and behavior no relationship.
Characteristics associated with higher consistency:
o 1. Measurement relevance
attitude
behavior
specific
specific
general
general
Example: target behavior- using BC pills in the next 2 years
birth control: .08
BC pills: .32
using BC pills: .52
using BC pills in next 2 years: .57
o 2. Strength of Attitude
information more information attitude stronger
direct experience stronger attitudes; behavior flows from attitude
ex. not enough housing for incoming freshman, some freshman
for 1st and a half months of school they lived in gym in cots.

behavior whether people would attend a protest rally over

the issue that people are living in the gym; measured peoples
attitudes about the situation and how strongly they feel about it.
the people who were living in the gym (some loved it some
hated it) strength of the attitude was much higher in the gym
(loved, hated, middle) participation in protest rally people
who hated living in the gym, people who lived in the dorms
couldnt predict what their behavior would be (if they went to
the rally or not).
personal importance if it is effecting you directly
ex. peoples attitudes towards raising money for cancer
research, their attitudes (strengthen and predict your behavior
more naturally) and behavior become more correlated and
predictable if they know someone with cancer
o 3. Measurement Timing
closer in time you measure the behavior and measure the attitude
closer relationship and better can predict. if you measure an attitude
too soon it might not predict behavior not a very strong link.
Reasoned Action Model (Theory of Planned Behavior)
o important components: if you want to be able to predict behavior; their best
predictor is their behavioral intentions
ex. what is your attitude about hamburgers? vs. are you going to eat a
hamburger today.
o subjective norm: what other people are thinking about what you are doing, if
there are outside forces your attitude about something might not be the same
as to what you are doing (your behavior).
guys are more likely to be influenced by this
girls are less likely
o behavioral control: whether you feel that you have control over if you can
control it, has a link to behavior and intention: if people have a greater sense
of behavioral control you will be better able to predict behavior no matter
how strong their attitude is.
Attitude Change Theories:
1. Learning Theories:
o changes in attitude based on environment
o historically came out of a backlash to psychoanalytic theory all about the
internal battle (id, ego, superego) and how it battles and changes your
behavior/attitude. LEARNING THEORY you can SEE these things, you
can measure them, ect.
o classical conditioning (automatic responses):
Pavlov and his dogs
unconditioned response conditioned response
thing that was previously neutral gets paired enough times that
it produces a response
classical conditioning in humans:

 reflex responses, sexual responses, fear responses

attitude changes something neutral (attitude) paired with something
that creates an automatic response after a while you will have an
attitude and an automatic response happen together
ex. movie Jaws took something previously neutral (music), first
time you saw shark music would be paired with it. (you will be
afraid) later on in movie, he can have just the music and then
you freak out before anything happens
ex. products that are neutral to you, paired with something that
creates an automatic response; beer ads with attractive model,
automatic response is to sexy model paired with beer; their
hope is that when you are buying beer, you see their beer and
you go oooh because you were previously conditioned to feel
that way when you see that beer
o operant conditioning (reinforcement)
looks at pattern of reinforcement of punishment and rewards
more likely to repeat behavior if paired with reward, less likely
to repeat behavior if paired with punishment
John Watson, B.F. Skinner
attitude changes your attitude preferences are the product of how
you get shaped by the reinforcement about people/situation around you
ex. at a university, there was a debate over whether to have a spring
fair in the week before finals, social psychologist wanted to see if he
could operant condition peoples attitudes toward the fair randomly
called students on campus asked a series of questions about having a
spring fair
controlled condition: anytime they said something positive the
caller would respond uh huh
experiment condition: anytime they said something positive
about the spring fair the caller would respond good
able to track people they called down and measure attitude
toward spring fair, they found a huge difference. people who
were reinforced with good were much more likely to favor
spring fair over the people who received uh huh
o social learning (observation)
seeing someone else reinforced or punished for their attitude can
change yours
2. Cognitive Motivation/Balance
o a lot going on within our brains as well as the environment that will also effect
us and our attitude that learning theories ignores
o cognitive dissonance theory: when your attitude and behavior dont line up, or
two attitude do not line up (dissonant) creates cognitive tension; that you are
motivated to reduce, to fix this tension; how do we reduce it? alter our
attitude to align with behavior and resolve tension

people who believed world was going to end on may 10th and the
world doesnt end, (creates psychological tension) people reacted by
saying they saved the world by telling everyone that the world was
going to end.
1st study to pair operant conditioning and cognitive dissonance
theory hour long study about motor skills, you are waiting you get
to a table that has three boxes one filled with nuts and bolts, one filled
with nuts, one filled with bolts, you are required to sort them. you are
done and experimenter asks you to do him a favor and tell the next
subject in the waiting room how exciting and fun it was to do the task.
for half the subjects they were told I will pay you a dollar, for the other
half the subjects were told they would be paired 20 dollars tell the
next subject. the guy to give you your credit asks you how much you
enjoyed the task, depending upon how much you were paid you gave a
different report on how exciting the task was
results: people who were paid a dollar said they actually
enjoyed it, people who were paid 20 dollars said they didnt
enjoy it
how are you going to resolve tension about lying? realizing
they were telling the truth to the next subject for a dollar
(changed attitude to match behavior)
operant conditioning would have said that 20 dollar people
would have said they liked it more
Other dissonance studies:
Initiation Study:
women subjects signed up for a group discussion,
experimenters want to make sure women are OK with
doing discussion.
1st group: read 20 words that they had to read out loud
to guy (words like breast) easy initiation
2nd group: read sexually explicit stories to a male
hard initiation
women were then allowed to listen in to discussion
literally about birds and bees, when you go down to get
research credits, asked how exciting was discussion,
would they come back
o women that were in 2nd group (hard initiation)
want to come back next week
o women that were in 1st group (easy initiation)
dont want to come back
o this is because since you had to do this really
hard task and you got nothing no exciting group
discussion, you had to change your attitude to
relieve tension
3/7/12

Eating Grasshoppers Study

sign up for study on taste perception, research assistant
and takes your questionnaire (he is either neutral or
harsh to you) move on to taste perception (would
you be willing to eat a grasshopper? do him a favor)
98% of people willing to do it, send off to get research
credit, third party administer asks how much you liked
the fried grasshopper; people who guy was a jerk to
were much more likely to report that the grasshopper
tasted good, people who he was neutral to said theyd
never want to eat them again.
cognitive dissoance: guy was mean to you, he asked
you to do him a favor and you did it, why did you?
because they tasted good!!! reduced tension by
changing attitude about the taste of the grasshopper
Marketing Study
housewives come in to small appliance store, want real
people to test them out and rate them 1-10 scale. took 2
items that women had rated about a 7 and said to them
you can take either one of these home. each women
took an appliance store. asked to come back again
because they lost their ratings, rate thing that they took
home much higher than they did the first time and the
one they didnt take home much lower then the first
time. cognitive dissonance: since you took it home you
know all the things you love about it, something you
didnt take home you think of all the bad things about it

o balance theory
talking about relationship between three things, structure of these
things; if they are positively or negatively related. if you multiply all
these things together and there is a negative number you want to
change it to be positive
ex. me, my girlfriend, my girlfriends roommate
me + my girlfriend + her roommate me
(multiply them and it comes out negative)
either girlfriend will change her thoughts on me, or of her
roommate
doesnt make a prediction about which link is going to change,
just saying that there will be a change in one link
o reactance
when a person feels like something is being taken away unfairly (that
someone is trying to alter your attitude) it motivates you to want it or
like it even more (reverse psychology)
something is being taken away from me unfairly and makes me want it
even more

3. Persuasion Approaches
o cognitive response vs. heuristic responses work
o Message Learning Approach:
Source Factors
attractiveness more likely to be persuaded because they are
good looking
credibility person can be trusted, they are an expert
power people of higher status are more persuasive
Recipient Factors
intelligence higher intelligence harder to persuade (but
opinion or attitude will stay if you can change theirs), lower
intelligence easier to persuade (more likely to flip flop back
between attitudes or opinions)
esteem higher esteem harder to persuade, lower esteem
easier to persuade
Message Factors
comprehensibility is the argument understandable, more
likely to be persuaded if they can understand it
number of arguments if you have more reasons as to why
you should change attitude or opinion the more persuasive
argument is
fear arousal elicit fear better persuaded
Medium Factors
print vs. video when subjects have to read arguments they
are more likely to be convinced vs. watching a passive video
face to face vs. media face to face is more effective than
video or commercials.
o HOW DOES THIS DO THIS?
Cognitive Response Theory:
what matters is nature of response to message, if they have
active thoughts that are positive to the message they are more
likely to be convinced. however if they have a negative
response they are more likely to not be convinced
controlled processing
Heuristic Approach:
what matters is heuristic activated; if you see someone is
attractive the halo effect heuristic will be activated and you will
be convinced by them. if you see someone as an expert you
will be more convinced because you think they know more
than you
automatic processing
maybe they are both right? Elaboration Likelihood Model
going to be two different routes to attitude change by
persuasion

going to be things that keep us in central route processing

how motivated you are to pay attention to arguments?
o motivated stay
o not motivated? leave
ability to process information?
o too complicated? leave
o able to understand? stay
central route processing (controlled)
o is this person making a good argument?
peripheral route processing (automatic)
o focusing on if person is attractive, if commercial
is funny, ect

3/9/12
Social Influence
1. Conformity
o changing ones beliefs or behavior to be consistent with group standards
o Social comparison can play a big role
1. Normative Social Influence: Desire to be liked, to fit in, to belong to
the group
2. Informative Social Influence: Desire to be right, you think other
people know what is the correct behavior, you act the way they do
because you think they know how to behave
o Early conformity study: Sherifs Autokinetic Effect
put people in groups of three in a darkened room, flash a small light on
a wall that is stationary, asked to look at the light and say how far its
moving
each person would say it out loud how far its moving, found that a
norm would develop. people would first say very different things then
their answers would become very similar
o The Asch Line Study
confederates and subject which line is the same length? everyone is
given the false answer, you change your answer to match everyone
else 72% of people changed their answer, gave the same wrong
answer at least once
o Conformity is Reduced if:
1. Social Support: at least one other person gives the right answer
2. Someone gives an even worse answer than the majorities (could be
wrong but it is different from everyone elses)
3. The response is given privately
o Conformity increases if:
1. No social support
one person doing it wont conform
more than one more likely to
2. Group attractiveness

how much do you want to be a part of this group?

a lot very likely to conform
not at all not going to conform
3. Status effects: medium status people conform more
low status Im at the bottom I dont give a fuck
high status Im always right so Im going to do whatever I
want
middle status if I conform I could increase my position, if I
dont I might lose my position
4. Social Comparison Effects come into play
when motivated to compare ourselves
o Johnny Rocco Studies:
5 people have the same attitudes and 1 who doesnt about crime
put them in a room and make a group decision about Johnny Rocco
and what to do with him
once people figured out 5 were the same and 1 was different, they all
ganged up on him; didnt talk to each other just tried to change the one
persons belief
85% of the time that person moved to the majority (if it was a
subject)
if it was a confederate the majority would kick the person out
(social exclusion)
then they added two people in minority
the rates to which they moved to the majority reduced
2. Compliance
o doing what we are asked to do even if we prefer not to
o mindless conformity: the use of heuristics
a rule of thumb a schema
o automatic processing
o Langer Study: A placebo reason (Can I use the copier now because I have
to make copies?) increase compliance over no reason, and almost as much as
a real reason, (because Im in a rush)
o Associations with Positive Mood:
flattery works complimented, more likely to do something
wine and dine (restrictions on lobbyists)
o Norm of Reciprocity
one of the strongest norms in human nature if someone does
something for us we feel an obligation to do something for them in
return (an equal thing)
as its own strategy: soda study, Hare Krishnas

sign up for a study on personality (told that there is 2 20 minute

sessions back to back with 10 minutes in between) you and one
other subject in study (confederate) both fill out personality
surveys, 10 minute break, during the break the confederate gets
up and leaves and either come back with 2 sodas or comes back
empty handed. second study over with; confederate asks you if
you could donate to his foundation, buy raffle tickets that are 5
dollars results: if the guy bought you a 50 cent soda you are
significantly likely to buy a raffle ticket.
we feel obligated to do something in return
we will do the first thing we can do to pay someone
back
Hare Krishnas took flower or not, took promotional
literature, gave them money
if you took the flower you were more likely to spend
more time with them and more likely to give them
money
people threw out the flowers after they were out of sight
Hare Krishnas knew this and took and reused flowers
door in face: zoo study, Watergate
negotiation study, you have a target behavior (you want the
person to do this behavior) instead of asking for that behavior
you ask for something much much higher, and when the door is
slammed in your face, you go down a level and then they will
do that level
zoo study: college students were approached and asked if they
would be willing to be a mentor for a troubled youth, it would
only take 6 hours a week for 10 weeks. when they said no, then
asked again if they would go to the zoo on Saturday for 2 hours
and chaperone children. other students were just asked to
chaperone at the zoo
results 1st group were much more likely to go to the
zoo than second group because they feel more obligated
since person came down a level for me
Watergate: instead of the yacht and women and sexual shit,
they asked to break into Watergate people said yes
Thats not all: Cupcake study, free giveaways
throwing something in for free (sales and infomercial
technique)
the notion of someone throwing something in for free makes
people more likely to go along with it
people set up a baked good sale
1st group: 1 dollar a cupcake and a cookie
2nd group: 1 dollar a cupcake and we will throw in a
cookie for free

results people were more likely to spend the dollar if they

got a cookie for free (norm of reciprocity and people feel like
they are getting a deal).

o Commitment:
get you to commit to something you would not have done in the first
place
foot in the door: drive safe study
you get someone to do something small for you to begin with
and it will make them more likely to do something larger later
on
drive safe study: two neighborhoods in suburban area that were
very very similar; 1st neighborhood: put big ugly sign in yard
for safe driving, 2nd neighborhood: would you be willing to
sign a petition that says youre in favor of driving safe
results if you are in 2nd neighborhood and signed
petition you were more likely to put sign up when asked
2 weeks later
low balling: 7 am study, car sales, heating oil study
low balling/bait and switch gets you committed on a course
of action because it makes you think youre going on one thing
but then dramatically changes and youre still willing to go
along with it
car sales you come in with all your knowledge and car
salesman said he doesnt have the one you want but does have
the same one 50 miles away, you come back the next day and
then you find out they sold the car. but you can have the car
you test drove for x amount more because it has a moon roof
and leather seats and ect you are more likely to go along
with this
7 am study: people more likely to go if they commit to doing the study
even though they didnt know it was at 7 am on a Saturday
o Law of Scarcity:
one time deal, time is running out, limited time offer
one time deal
more willing to go along with it, reactance (things are being
kept away from me unfairly)
3/14/12
3. Obedience
o complying with a person or group perceived to be an authority
o Obedience to Authority
o Six Bases of Social Power
1. Rewards providing + outcome
tend to work better than coercion (positive outcomes more
effective than negative outcomes effecting behavior)

2. Coercion providing + outcome

not as effective as positive rewards
3. Expertise social knowledge
a person with special knowledge has a certain amount of
authority especially when that knowledge is needed, when you
need the expertise the person with the expertise has more
power over us
4. Information message content
having information gives you power,
5. Referent Power identifying with other
people just want you to like them, (Candace) when they ask
you to do things you just do them because you want their
acceptance and you want them to like you
6. Legitimate Authority influencers right to make request
police man, judges, congress, fireman, ect. sometimes when we
just see a man in a security outfit that tells us to do something
we just do it even though we dont have to (put a quarter in the
meter)
Milgrams Obedience Study: shocks
65% shocked the guy all the way through
easier to stop if you were side by side with another
person (confederate) and they stopped
easier to stop if the experimenter leaves the room and
another teacher gives you orders to continue
very easy to stop if you can pick your own level of
shocks
o obedience to authority is an ingrain norm that we are taught when we are very
young and taught to follow and be obedient to authority
3/16/12
Group Behavior:
1. Performance Behavior:
o Social Facilitation: Arousal Enhances the Dominant Response (if youre good
at something you will be better with lots of people, if youre not then youll be
worse)
Maze Study: if the maze was easy people were faster putting their
pencil through the maze if someone was watching rather than by
themselves, if it was difficult they were worse with other people than
by themselves
Anagrams
Sports: good free throw shooters are better with people there, people
who are bad at it they do worse when people are there
Cockroaches: put in a maze

o Yerkes-Dodson Model: optimal level of arousal for a certain task, arousal can
become too high or too low, any one person doing a certain task will have a
unique curve on how arousal will effect performance
o Social Impact Theory: where arousal comes from
arousal = f (strength x immediacy x number)
strength: status, how much do you care about the people
watching you and their evaluation? or do you not care at all
immediacy: how much are you feeling the audiences presence?
are they right there? or far away?
number: more people = more arousal, increase in number but
every one more person has less effect as the number gets larger
having other people with you (in a group performance)
makes you less aroused (attention isnt 100% on you)
2. Intragroup Behavior:
o Social Loafing: Many hands do NOT make light work
people in a group tend to work less hard, tend to loaf
o Shouting: got people into lab, got cover story on what they were doing, they
were suppose to yell and you wanted to measure how loud the output was.
people yelled more loudly when they were by themselves rather than if they
were in a group of 3 or 6
o Clapping: people clap more loudly when you are alone, then when you are in
a group
o Sports: people work less hard in groups
o Why:
diffusion of responsibility when you are doing a task by yourself you
are 100% responsible for your output, everyone knows it too. but when
you are in a group, the group output is only going to be measured as a
group you do not feel as responsible, responsibility is diffused among
group
deindividuation when you feel that you cannot be identified
individually, it frees you up to act in ways you wouldnt normally act
(could be a good thing or a bad thing) (open up to a stranger) (more
likely to act selfishly) in a group project: people dont know how much
work I am doing
free riding people think that I can ride on the back on other people
in the group, they are going to work hard so Im not going to because I
dont have to
o Group Task Types Effecting Performance:
1. Additive: measured at the group level but everyone is included in it,
how loud can the whole group scream susceptible to social loafing
2. Compensatory: goal of the task is to be as accurate as possible, and
they are going to take the average of that accuracy as a measure of the
group, people do not social loaf as much because they are in controlled
processing, more motivated to do well because its accuracy test rather
than additive task

3. Disjunctive: group has to come up with one answer as a group,

normally as BEST as the best person in the group; if its a math
question, if they have one good person it doesnt matter what anyone
else thinks. however sometimes this person is not socially dominant
and then they would not be allowed to emerge their thoughts or ideas
because they are held back because of status reasons
4. Conjunctive: the task lends itself to groups performing at the same
time (crew). if you have one person who is out of rhythm, the group
will not do well but if everyone is working at the same time and
working together the group can do very well. you are as good as your
WORST member all it takes is one bad person for the group to fail

3/26/12
o Intragroup Issues
1. Group Polarization: when you get together with people with similar
attitudes, your attitudes tend to get more extreme
Normative Social Influence: desire to be liked
Informative Social Influence: desire to be right, act like
everyone else because you think they act right
2. Group Think: deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and
judgment that results from in-group pressures
ex. Bay of Pigs Invasion us
Variables Effecting:
1. Central Leader there is going to be someone who is at the
head of command, who is the decision maker (do it, dont do it)
final word yeeaaabuddy or nobro
2. Gate Keeper controls what information central leader is
recieveing, very powerful force in their ability to keep the
central leader from thinking that there is any alternative
decisions, controls what central leader has as info and who is
talking to them, such that they are able to channel central
leader for making a decision that could be very bad
3. Pluralistic Ignorance think they are the only ones that
think it is a bad idea, they just dont say they think its a bad
idea because they think everyone else agrees, they think
everything will be OK because everyone agrees
4. Self-censorship people who think it will be a bad decision
wont say anything because they are either held in check by gate
keeper, think their opinion will not be heard, or think their
opinion will not be agreed with so they dont say anything
5. Pressure to uniformity tends to be a lot of pressure to
come up with one idea, or to have the same idea, pressure to
have one course of action and everyone should get on board,
everyone whos off board is going to pay the price (Johnny
Rocco Study)

Combating: Brainstorming, group is free to think of any ideas

they want, more creativity, there is no limits to ideas or ways to
solve a problem
idea generation followed by evaluation
throw down as many ideas as you can, they go one by
one through ideas and evaluate whats good or bad
about them to make a good decision
people are more willing to give as many ideas as they
want
3. Minority Influence: gets minority to get majority to move towards
them
consistency: position of minority has to be consistent, when
minority remains consistent it is harder on majority. but if
minority shows any movement towards majority, majority
pounces
confidence: exude a certain amount of confidence that they are
right
independence/objectivity: minorities that arent going to be
rewarded for having their own opinion, they are not getting
anything out of having this opinion have an influence on
changing the majority
4. Leadership: Contingency Model:
two different modes of being a leader, people can be either
socioemotional leaders or task leaders
socioemotional: good at reading people, when someone needs
their voice heard, good at keeping people happy (better than
task leaders when moral is medium)
task: good at keeping people working, keeping people on task
(better than socioemotional leaders when moral is really good
or really bad)
o Larger Intragroup Issues
1. Social Dilemmas
the conflict between wanting to maximize self-interest against
the interest of the group has a whole
Types:
Commons Dilemma:
o harvesting natural resources one resource, if
too many people take too much from the
resource it will ruin it for everyone; act selfishly
or self-lessly?
o ex. Halloween candy please take one
Public Goods Dilemmas:

o giving to a resource for the resource to survive,

however you could use the resource without
giving
o ex. public television and public radio, get
funding from listening public
o ex. recycling
General Social Dilemma
o if everyone tries to maximize as a whole
o ex. HOV lanes, temptation to go into HOV lane
when you are empty; problem if too many
people act on this thought the traffic jam will
move to the HOV lane too and then no one can
benefit

o 3/28/12
Ways to reduce selfish behavior in social dilemma
1. Normative/ Informative Social Influence: we rely on other
people to act selflessly, shows you the correct behavior, show
this norm in a bold way. people dont want to be different, want
to follow the norm
ex. Dont throw it away! Put it in the recycling bin.
2. Smaller Groups: break people down into smaller groups, if
you separate into groups people feel that they have a greater
impact in a smaller group, 4th floor of wolman recycling
3. Identifiably: making people identifiable when their actions
will be known to everyone, people will not act so selfishly
4. Operant Conditioning: proving rewards for acting selflessly
can be an effective tool, punishment can also be effective but
not as much as rewards
5. Legal Measures (last resort): of operant conditioning;
running a red light (general social dilemma) we have red
light cameras, only way legal measures work are if the odds of
getting caught are significantly higher if you act selfishly
2. Mob Behavior: panics vs, riots
Panics: survival instinct kicks in, fight or flight behavior,
autonomic nervous system arousal
2003: Rhode Island Fire in the Nightclub
o people ran out and were panicked and
stampeded over people
Riots:
1992: LA Riot following Rodney King verdict
NBA Championship Riots
Race Riots of 1960s
Conventional Wisdom: Social Rage

o dramatic events (assassinations, unpopular

verdicts) crystallize social rage stemming from
underlying root reasons: racism, poverty, ect.
and why people who experience this rage
manage it in a self destructive manner,
breakdown of families, media influences, ect.
o feeling of injustice
o riots are episodic, they last a certain amount of
time and with a certain energy
o problems with this view: explain too much:
have these conditions all the time but riots are
episodic, explain too little: often riots are the
result of good things (Maryland basketball
championship); crowds are not riots waiting to
happen
Instead you Need
o 1. Unifying Event: mass of people together;
spontaneous or planned
o 2. Convergent Norm: a substantial enough
number of like minded people who would factor
mob behavior. A potential trouble maker must
have the confidence that there are others
thinking like he/she is thinking and would
follow suit
o 3. The Instigator: just having many people in the
same mood doesnt start a riot. Most people
make the calculation that if they start it they
might get caught but if they wait for someone
else to start it the odds go way down. he risk of
getting caught decreases based upon ratio of
crowd/police, probably everyone will join in
o 4. The Incident: has to be some incident that
calls people to action, not what to do, but what
other people will probably do. ex. rock through
a window, or sacrificial action and arrest
Once Started
o 1. Emergent Norm: what constitutes acceptable
behavior
o 2. Contagion: arousal and behavior is
contagious
o 3. Deindividuation: allowed to do behavior not
normally acceptable
EXAM 2 OVER EXAM 3 MATERIAL

3. Intergroup Behavior:

between group behavior; group vs. group

tends to be more competitive, more nasty than just person to person
want your group to do better than the other group
Discontinuity Effect: intergroup behavior is much more competitive than
inter-individual behavior
often presented by the prisoners dilemma game
either 2 individuals or 2 groups of 3 and put in separate rooms,
you do a number of trials of matrixes (x vs y) talk to the other
person or other group and talk briefly about what to choose,
then go back and make final decision,
matrix looks like this: person/ group a (x or y)
person/group b (x or y)
based on combination of choices you end up in 1 of 4 cells of
the matrix, if both chose x in same cell, (numbers represent
something of value (1-3, 1-5, 0-5 ect) goal is to collect as
many points as you can))
when its just 2 people they choose the cooperative choice (X)
where they both get the same points
when its groups about half the time groups scheme to try and
screw each other over
something about being in a group makes people believe us vs. them
and competitive behavior
o Reasons for intergroup competition:
1. Discontinuity: schemas of fear and greed when you look at
mental models of intergroup behavior, we learn at a young age that
groups compete with each other, since groups compete they are
worried about getting screwed over, so they choose the better one for
them out of fear, group schemas also feed a schema of greed, OK to be
competitive and greedy if you are in a group
2. Social Identity Theory: part of our self esteem and evaluation of
ourselves is tied to the groups we belong to, we tend to want our
groups to do better than other groups,
3. Diffusion of Responsibility: notion that responsibility of behavior
gets diffused across a group, not your responsibility if youre greedy
4. Social Support for Greed: one thing that happens within groups
when they are talking about whether they are going to choose x or y, if
one person wants to choose Y (and be greedy) more people are going
to join in, if youre by yourself that doesnt happen
5. Deindividuation: when you feel like you cant be identified we tend
to act in ways we wouldnt normally act alone.
6. Reciprocity Effects: prisoners dilemma game, if one group screwes
the other group over (we both should choose X. but then one group
chooses Y while the other one chooses X) once that occurs there are
strong reciprocity effect, the next time they have to choose the group
that got screwed will choose Y for then on out
o
o
o
o

7. In-group- Out-group Bias: we tend to make attributions, have

schema characteristics about our ingroup members much more positive
than when looking at outgroup people. we think positively about
members in the same group. outgroup members we think negatively
of. makes people think they DESERVE more and better because they
are the better people, because they suck they get what they deserve
8. Group Norms: what becomes normative when imbedded in a group
than when you are alone. it is easier for social influence when you are
in a group, when you are in a group there is a pressure to behave
competitively. there is pressuere from your other teammates or group
mates, it is a way to fit in
o Reduction of Intergroup Competition:
1. Contact Effects: brown vs. board of education (desegregating
schools, integrating schools) are we still going to have problems? if
you got members of two groups and make them have contact with one
another, you will alleviate intergroup competition, reduce competitive
behavior (idea didnt work not JUST simple contact)
2. Robbers Cave Study: rich social psychologist bought summer
camp, recruited people to go to camp that were all white 10 year old
boys, all same socioeconomic status, boys were very similar. wanted to
see if he could create conflict by the standard ways you create conflict;
1st couple of days of camp they had not been assigned where they were
going to live, it was very free-form. after those days the boys in their
mind rated who they were friends with and ect. then he randomly
assigned them to two different groups and allowed themselves to name
themselves, then made them live together.
then they started games, tug-of-war, soccer, ect after a few
days of competitions the aggressive behavior dramatically
increased
then found out the ratings of the people they used to be friends
with, (boys loved the boys in their group and hated the others)
then wanted to see if he could reduce competition
forced to eat lunch together with members of other group
(didnt work at all, still were very competitive) simple contact
DIDNT work
what really worked was to use super ordinate goals or higher
level goals which basically means that he created situations in
which the two groups would have to come together to solve a
CAMP problem, they came together and rallied together as a
larger group. engaged in a camp vs camp activity
cognitively refraining from my group vs your group and
changing to us vs problem or us vs them
3. Jigsaw Classroom: classroom teaching technique, wants to
decrease outgroup ingroup stereotypes and competition.

divide class into small groups (members of outgroups and

ingroups) he would make their performance interdependent of
each other to do well
this little jigsaw pod get a topic civil war
one member would get north, the other south, the other
ect. ect. ect. each person has to learn about their part
and then teach the other members of their group their
part. each childs performance would also be based on
how everyone else in the group was doing
contact among outgroups increased
4. Positive Intergroup Examples: set up a study where collage aged
subjects signed up for a study on group tasks, one groups were
assigned blue shirts or green shirts, wanted to see if they created in and
out group bias and competition (it did) then they took out some one
from each group to do a task together 1v1, they need to work together
to solve a problem, those two people and the rest of the group asked
how it was, the one person usually reported how cool or nice the other
person was. having just one example of a positive trickled down and
took away some bias and some competition, but didnt take away all of
it

4/6/12
Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
1. Stereotypes: a set of beliefs about attributes of group
o can be either positive or negative
o Origins and Persistence:
1. Cognitive: exaggeration based on limited processing: cognitive
misers
small samples: limited contact
vivid examples override base rate
look for consistent, ignore inconsistent
illusory correlations: think things are related when they are not;
but just based upon limited processing
priming studies: people who have high or low stereotypes on
out groups, when primed with an our group they tend to view
stimuli in a stereotypical fashion, proves most people have the
IDEA of a stereotype even though they might not believe it.
because when they are primed the schema is there but normally
they control it, and have controlled processing that controls it
2. Motivational: tend to be ethnocentric, most likely motivational
component
realistic conflict theory: groups that you are in direct conflict
with you have a higher and more negative views against them
(ex. going after same job)

social identity theory: notion that part of your esteem comes

from groups that you belong to then you want your group to do
well, that gives you a motivation to think differently about a
group that you are in competition with. because they are a
threat to our self esteem and our social identity theory.
scapegoat theory: freud talked about unconscious drive
associated with id, to be better than other people. when the id
over powers the super ego it leads to scapegoat theory which is
a drive to have people worse off than you. (so we think about
out group people as worse than us)
3. Cognitive/Motivational
ingroup-outgroup bias: outgroup is inferior has worse traits and
in group is better than out groups, this belief is stronger for
groups that we are in competition with
belief accentuation: notion that we tend to assimilate
differences between our own group members are more similar
than they actually are. however we tend to think of our
differences vs an out group person way more different than
they are. do this more for groups we are in competition with
rather than not in competition with
ex. pro choice vs. pro life (you score a 4 on pro choice)
o someone else scores a 2 (in your same group)
think its similar
o someone else scores a 6 (in an our group)
think its very different
4. Learning:
experience vital for creation and maintenance
negative experiences
limited experience
social learning: you dont have to be the person having the
negative experience you can learn by seeing a negative
experience with someone else out group stereotypes are
passed down
o Stereotype Threat: miniature golf study
make people aware of stereotype known they will act out stereotype
looked at how people played miniature golf
you were either given a stereotype half subjects were told that how
intelligent you are will determine your golf skills, and half were told
that how athletic you are will determine your golf skills result: only
when told stereotype did you predict and act out stereotype (blacks did
better when told athletic, than intelligent or control) (whites did better
when told intelligent than athletic or control)
2. Prejudice: unfavorable attitude about a group
o emotional feeling
3. Discrimination: unfavorable behavior

Measurement:
o Direct:
self report: diagnostic ratio rate groups to degree to which average
member of each group has this type of trait (1-7 scale how athletic,
nice, generous, ect) when 1st asked to do it wants ratings of average
PEOPLE in general, then you are asked to make ratings for same traits
for a whole differently types of groups. looks at ratio of your general
ratings vs. your group ratings ratio = 1 (trait of group is similar to
people in general) this tends to be flawed because people lie and dont
want to tell the beliefs of attitudes you have.
indirect: physiological responses, IAT
4/9/12
Interpersonal Attraction:
1. Physiological Approaches
o Pheromones: chemicals that get admitted by both males and females
important or not important? smell is especially powerfully linked to memory
(hippocampus, emotional memories) research on pheromones on humans are
very weak, not attracted to people based on their smell
o Arousal: we feel passion, chemistry and relate it to attraction
Bridge Study: planted a female park ranger on the middle of the old
wooden bridge and also put her on a very sturdy metal bridge. she
would stop men and asked them about their experiences in the national
park, they were then stopped by another park ranger and asked another
survey about if they liked that lady, if they found her attractive, if they
wanted to have a date or call her. men who went over the wooden
scary bridge were more likely to find her attractive, call her and want
to talk to her than the sturdy bridge
Lingerie Slides: brought into lab and given cover story on why you
were doing this task (hooked up to something that measured heart rate
and autonomic nervous system) men looked at lingerie models, hooked
up to a head set where you can hear your heart they pretend your
heart was racing for one slide but its just the head phones. then they
call you back the next week and say they forgot to have you rate the
women, the woman that you think your heart responded to you rate her
the highest
secrets: if youre holding this relationship secret from someone you
think your relationship is better (cognitive) you think about it ALL
the time because you HAVE to keep it a secret, also increases arousal
with this person because secrets are exciting, once everyone knows
about your relationship you are not as exciting about being with that
person now that everyone knows
2. Learning Theory:
o Rewards/punishment: like people who are nice to us

gain-loss hypothesis: winning over someone makes us like them more,

because its a bigger reward same thing goes for loss, more troubled by
loss of esteem then if someone doesnt like us from the get go. change
has an effect
reciprocity effects: we tend to like people who like us
flattery effects: even if you think its insincere you feel good because
youre being flattered
o Social exchange theory:
look at rewards and costs in friendships and we look at
PROBABILITY of getting those rewards and costs in the future, how
we think about them and their probability of staying around what those
rewards mean to you and what costs mean to you
tend to look at rewards and costs more strongly when we know we will
be with someone for a long time vs. looking at rewards and costs when
we know we will only see this person once or twice
3. Contacts Effects
o whether we have contact with that person or not
o Proximity: inclined to like someone because we have more contact and
experience with them, need to have contact with someone to form a judgment,
we tend to be friends with people who live in our dorm, our floor, our classes,
people who we are forced to be with, people who live in high traffic areas
tend to be the most popular, because everyone passes by where they live
mere exposure: tend to view things more positively if we are exposed
to more; look at slides one slide you saw a lot more, you tend to like
that slide the best
class confederate lady visited 20 times liked her more than other
classes she visited (she didnt do anything just sat there)
o Familiarity: tend to like people more when we think they seem familiar, we
tend to have less anxiety, even though familiarity isnt really all that real
(could look like but not have the same personality)
4/11/12
4. Trait Approaches
o Physical Appearance
computer dance
commit to spend a certain amount of time with that person they
were set up with at the dance
randomly assigned to freshman partner, except for guy had to
be taller than girl
they were photographed and sent photographs to another
school and these photographs were rated based on appearance

you had to spend the 1st hour with your date you were
randomly assigned with, and then you were aksed how much
fun you were having how much fun the dance was, how much
did you like the person you were assigned to, how much do
you think they are attractive, do you want to spend another day
together
the only thing that mattered whther you want to spend more
time with them was how much attractiveness you thought they
were
halo effect
less likely to found guilty of a crime
more likely to find a job
more likely to be able to persuade people
people at the really extreme level will not get the benefits
(9.5/10) sometimes they are seen as unapproachable
diary record study
signed up for a study on experience sampling, every interaction
you had that lasted 10 minutes or more you needed to fill out a
sheet about it (how long it was, who was the interaction with,
gender, 1v1 interaction, how quality, how satisfying?)
took photo, rated photo at another school
did your social interactions differ based on social interactions,
more socially interactions with more attractive people, but for
women high attractive ones were less likely to initiate the
interactions while for less attractive ones were more likely to
initiate interactions, for men more attractive males interacted a
lot with women while less attractive males didnt
little kids (moms, persuasion techniques)
cute babies get more attention than not cute babies
moms that thought their children were good looking loved
them more than unattractive babies
physically attractive girls would just ask if they would eat
crackers for them and smile
physically unattractive girls would do they same but use logic
too
physically attractive males slowly swaggered
physically unattractive males said eat the cracker or ill hit you
teachers called on cute children more
o Matching Hypothesis
who people are mutually attractive to each other, physically
attractiveness positive correlation; people tend to be matched and with
someone who is about the same physical attractiveness as they are
how does this happen?

1. we know where we stand in attractiveness and we

purposely seek out someone whos the same
attractiveness as we are
2. high physically attractive people pair off first, and
then so on and so forth
o Similarity
(demographics & attitudes; not personality)
tend to be attractive to people who are same race, same religion, same
education level, same socioeconomic strata, ect.
and like people who share the same things we like and we do.
not really same personality though, not as powerful as youd think
o Positivity effects
people who are high in neuroticism are not really liked, people who
are positive dont complain, dont talk about themselves tend to be
liked more
o Small imperfection
like people with one small imperfection, dont like when people are
perfect in everything
5. Evolutionary Approaches:
o Differential Parental Investment
women and men value different things in a partner
women have a certain amount of resources, women will only be fertile
for a certain amount of time, they can only have a certain amount of
kids per year
women also go through lots of changes that go through having a child,
women tend to be much more invested in one offspring
men are much less sure that their genes are actually in any offspring,
always the chance that it was someone else
men can also have kids for a longer window of time than women, can
have lots of children at one time
o Men value physical attractiveness
more than women do
shows health (good genes)
we like body and facial symmetry (both men and women) (linked to
health and good genes and survival)
women tend to value body symmetry more than men do body
symmetry linked to social dominance in men
o Women value resources
more than men do
4/13/12
Close Relationships: Theoretical orientations:
1. Evolutionary Approaches
o Differential Parental Investment
Sociobiology Effects

mate preferences
jealousy (male sexual jealousy and homicide)
what are men vs. women tend to be more jealous of?
is your parent sexual unfaithful or falling in love with
someone else?
men get more upset when they imagine partner having
sex with someone else
women tend to get more upset when they imagine
partner falling in love with someone else
this is because for men issues of sex mean issues of
reproduction, he could be the father and your genes
wont be passed down
for women, falling in love means spending more time
and losing those resources
for women, especially women in 20s are most likely to
be murdered by their romantic partner if they think they
are having sex with someone else
step-parents are more likely to abuse children then
when you are genetically linked
denigration (of potential rivals)
when men are talking about other men as a rival, trying
to convince women other wise you dont want to be
with him he is a psychologist, drives a Honda
when women are trying to convince men to not be with
another girl shes ugly, shes a slut
mate poaching
2. Cognitive Approaches
o 1. Adult Attachment (early socio-emotional bonding has later implications for
schemas types: secure, avoidance, anxious-ambivalent)
test: Stranger Situation Test
avoidant people: dont want to be close to other people (much less
likely to be in a close relationship, if their partner wants to get closer
they run away)
secure: trust and arent anxious
anxious ambivalent: less trust of romantic partners, worries and
obsessive, more clingy, more relationships overtime (want to be in a
close relationship and have someone there but focused on negative
things that go on in persons mind) if they see a shadow of doubt they
freak out, tend to obsess over it
tends to show itself when you are under stress
want new way to determine this (new model)
if you want to be close to people (avoidance of intimacy) high
or low

if you think you are not worthy of other peoples time (anxiety)
high or low
low anxiety & low avoidance of intimacy (secure)
high anxiety & low avoidance of intimacy (anxiousambivalent)
high anxiety & high avoidance of intimacy (dont want to be
close to other people but think people dont want to be near
them) (avoidant fearful) more likely to experience
loneliness, depression
low anxiety & high avoidance of intimacy (dont want to be
close to other people and think people want to be with them)
(avoidant dismissal) dont feel depression
if they are in a romantic relationship they are more
likely to be unfaithful
o 2. Illusion vs. Accuracy
should we have more illusory thoughts of partner or accurate thoughts
of partner?
power of positive illusions when estimating partners traits
if you see your partner a little better than what they are
according to their traits (more intelligent, nicer, funnier),
having this positive illusion tends to be dramatically linked to
happiness, and stability of relationship
accuracy: understanding partners values and attitudes helps to have a
good relationship, knowing what your partner likes, how many kids
you can better navigate what you guys are going to do together,
how youre going to act
o 3. Cognitive Interdependence
how you think about your and your partner in a romantic relationship,
if you think about each other as separate entities tend to be in less
functionally relationships as people who describe relationship with us
or we if you are constantly thinking about each other separately it
trickles down to how you treat each other. if you think about each
other together you make better decisions for both of you
o 4. Attribution Effects
couples who are doing well tend to have an attribution pattern of if
their partner hurts them they tend to make external attributions rather
than internal attributions (cognitively protecting relationship) and
internal for positive
coupes who arent doing well tend to make internal attributions about
partners negative behavior and external about positive behavior
3. Interdependence Theory: Interaction key to any relationship
o if you want to be in a relationship with someone you need interaction to make
your decision, the outcomes you receive while interacting with this person
will be dependent on what you want and what your partner wants (what
happens to you depends on romantic partner) both

o outcomes across interactions: test correspondence

how well you fit together, if you want same outcomes, more similar
you are more correspondence you will have.
you need multiple interactions with a person to determine if you will
have correspondence
Satisfaction: outcomes to comparison level (CL)
a schema about what outcomes you should expect, comparison level
comes from observing friends relationships, parents, siblings
relationships and medias
if you set CL too high you might not fufill them,
o Dependence: outcomes to Comparison Level for Alternatives (CLalt)
related to your own stay-leave decisions, your outcomes across
interactions
CLalt: your expectations of what you could receive if you were with
someone else; could be one person or many people
if your relationship now is better (in your mind) than your next best
option you are more likely to be dependant
if your relationship now is worse than your next best option you are
more likely to want to leave
4/18/12
Investment Model (extension of Interdependence theory):
o satisfaction and alternatives are important with investements, they all have
links to commitment, and commitment is the primary force in relationships
(whether they are going to leave or stay, what decisions they are going to
make)
o shift emphasis to commitment from interdependence theory
o in every relationship there are going to be happy and unhappy times and some
couples are going to work through this while some couples end relationship,
putting too much emphasis on satisfaction is not going to tell you if youre
going to maintain relationship
o investments: things you put in a relationship that you would lose if the
relationship would end
children
financial
o commitment also leads to:
warding off alternatives people who are committed to their
relationship and someone else wants to date you even if they are very
good looking this person tries to find whats wrong with them, (hes
cute but hes stupid), purposely spend less time, bring up relationship
around them
infidelity commitment can predict if you cheat, people who are
committed are less likely to do this
sacrifice if you are committed you are more likely to give up things
you like if your partner doesnt like them

accommodation basically how you respond when your partner does

something that hurts you. and how people respond to that predicts how
well partner is doing
two dimensions:
how dynamic is response active or passive
your intent back destructive or constructive
ex. you are out to dinner and ate food om nom nom and
gives you desert menu, your partner calls you fat,
according to accommodation theory (gut response is to
repond destructively you hurt me I hurt you back) based
upon 2 dimensions
o active and descrictive yelling, showing
unhappiness, insulting them back (less
committed to each other)
o passive and destructive sulking, pouting,
silent treatment (less committed to eachother)
o active constructive voice behavior,
responding like why would you say that, thats
mean!
o passive constructive loyalty, grin and bear it.
(least effective)
once someone starts behaving destructively relationship
starts falling apart.
Theories of Love
o 1. Passionate vs, Companionate Love:
must touch them, highly charged passionate state, cant be without
them
passionate love is hard to maintain, year four of marriage
spark goes out
love is friendship, like to do same things together, feel secure together,
but not full of passion
doesnt seem to be compared to time spent in relationship, we
fit together very quickly or very slowly build it up, more
stability in relationship, tend to stay with each other longer
o 2. Sternbergs Triangle Theory of Love
Passion, Intimacy, Commitment
different types of love high on all three is ideal
might have relationship that could be love but is really a one night
stand (one passionate night)
less strong theory
o 3. Colors of Love (love styles)
eros passionate/ romantic
mania passionate love on steroids, ill kill myself if you leave me

pragma love as a laundry list of traits (blonde, lawyer, 2 kids, 6ft

fall)
ludus love as the thrill of the hunt, people who do this tend to be
winning someones esteem over, once they get the person to fall in
love with them they fall out of love and want to find someone else
agape giving, love thy neighbor, fall in love with someone to help
them (creepy)
storge companionate and friendship love
o 4. Love as Self-Expansion
taking on new experience, constantly growing
falling in love is a process of self-expansion at a couple level, you start
to take on their traits, do some of their activities, become larger, have
self-other overlap
research has found people who have report falling in love had
tremendous growth as how they described themselves.
related to all things that it should be related too, people who expand
more tend to be more faithful, more committed, more willing to
sacrifice, are happier, function as a couple better, most robust, best
love
IOS: Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale
start off as two separate circles, keep growing together and
together

EXAM 3 OVER
FINAL MATERIAL
4/23/12
Aggression: Variables Affecting
1. Physiological
o arousal (automatic nervous system)
linked to aggressive behavior, linked by fight or flight behaviors, if
you are threatened by a thing your flight or fight will kick in. as a
result aggressive behavior is a way we can get out of the situation.
when you give people epinephrine and put them in an aggressive
situation they will act more aggressively if not given drug
o pain, heat, noise
we respond to pain by lashing out ourselves
when we are hot, when it is hot out more violent crimes will happen
people tend to be more aggressive in cities or in loud settings
o alcohol and drugs
very much related, people under the influence will commit more
crimes
o testosterone

higher testosterone levels want more excitement, are in more exciting

jobs (firemen, policemen, extreme sports) higher testosterone people
will act more aggressively then people will low testosterone
2. Individual Level
o genetics
species bred for violence can get really aggressive mice
identical twin studies more highly correlated than fraternal twins, if
one twin is convinced of a crime the other identical twin is more likely
to commit a crime too, more than fraternal
o personality
type A, narcissism, low-empathy
type A high in need for achievement, driven for success,
tend to be more successful, more likely to be CEOs go getters,
have a lot more stress and tend to die younger. more
aggressive, physically and instrumentally (use to pass over
people)
people who are narcissist think they are superior to other
people and want other people to know they are the best, they
have a view of being better than other people prone to
aggressive behavior when they feel that people are not
recognizing their greatness they are most likely to behave
aggressively
empathy people who are low in empathy are more
aggressive because they do not feel the recompressions for
another person
Trait Aggressive some people have stability in aggressive as a trait
and some times its situational
o cognitive structures
aggressive schemas how we develop schemas based on situations
like if someone insults you, how things should happen. lots of
differences in this. violent video games in young kids; is this playing
contributing to different types of schemas being developed when in
certain situations. people who play video games tend to develop more
aggressive schemas or scripts in a certain situation
priming studies (weapons effect) people can be primed to act in
different aggressive ways based on aggressive schemas they have
developed. gun rack either measuring tool or gun. light turned green
and noticed what happened if person didnt go.. if there is no gun less
aggressive if there is a gun they act more aggressively
3. Group Level
o intergroup competition more aggressive in group than individual
deindividualtion
diffusion of responsibility
social identity
4. Situational

4/25/12

o social exclusion chat rooms either welcoming or really negative, in

negative situation people either shut down and feel powerless, or lash out back
at people
o frustration if you make people frustrated they are much more likely to
behave aggressively
o excitation-transfer sometimes there are situations that they are made
frustrated in that situations but they cant act frustrated in that situation. look at
next situation you are in, you act more aggressively in next one, frustration
that leads to aggressiveness will be transfer to next situation
o provocation-reciprocity if someone behaves aggressively to us we are
aggressive back towards them related to pain but even if you are not
emotionally hurt we are still more likely to act aggressively back
o normative approaches different situations have different norms on
aggressive behavior, never see a fight happen in church but you see fights
break out in bars
o crowding when people feel more crowded it leads to more aggressive
behavior, over stimulated
5. Learning
o operant conditions kids who are punished for aggressiveness they are less
likely to do it, kids who are rewarded are much more likely to do it
o social learning: Bobo doll studies, you see other children doing it or see other
people acting aggressive
o modeling
media effects imitation, not whether they are rewarded or punished
TV: little kids observing violent TV will act out the same
violence, how much you watch, over how many years ect.
video games
copycat crimes: when there is a highly publicized suicide of a
important figure there are more suicides in the same kind of
suicide (hanging or shooting yourself) rates of suicide didnt
rise but that type of killing yourself rose
General Affective Aggression Model (GAAM)
o all the things that contribute to aggression and how they work
o it is a DECISION
o it is a system of things acting upon each other
o Input variables
Person variables (narcissist, low empathy, aggressive personality, high
levels of testosterone, genetics)
Situation variables (when you get socially excluded, competition,
reciprocity effects)
o Present internal state
Cognition: (e.g. aggressive scripts, what schema is activated)
Affects (peoples states, state hostility)

 Arousal: (controlled vs. uncontrolled)

o Appraisal Processes:
Automatic Appraisals vs. Controlled Appraisals (cognitively think
about situation, how may I best behave crime of passion, happens
automatically)
Aggression: Reduction Approaches:
o Catharsis: Freud, unconscious drives; allowing someone to let out these drives
in socially acceptable manners (screaming in your pillow, boxing) does
catharsis lower aggression? some research shows it works, some research
shows it makes you more aggressive
o Learning/ Modeling:
learning: if you lower the rewards for aggression, people get fewer
things out of behaving aggressively and up the costs, people are less
likely to act aggressively
modeling: imitate behavior we see, teach 5th graders to be conflict
reducers, little kids that look up to 5th graders do the same behaviors
and act less aggressively
o Biofeedback: if you think about the GAAM model, how much emotion, how
much arousal a person is taught techniques to calm themselves down, not
act immediately, lower your heart rate, people who learn these biofeedback
techniques are less likely to behave aggressively (more likely to control
process)
o Competing Responses: if you use humor you can reduce aggressive behavior
o Norms Against: if you can establish strong norms against aggression you can
reduce aggressive behavior.
Helping Behavior:
Basic Differentiation:
o Prosocial versus Altruistic:
prosocial: when someone gives help for whatever reason (get reward,
are hero, avoid costs, they see someone else in the need for help) lot of
variables that cause people to help
altruistic: certain subset of population because of their personality
(empathy and levels of empathy) when they see someone in need of
help, they help regardless of anything else
debate whether this really exist
Theoretical Approaches:
o 1. Social Biological (Evolutionally Theory)
help to insure survival of genes
Kin selection: more help if genetically related
your children will help you
Reciprocity: help when can (at low cost) so can get help when needed
o 2. Social Norms:
Norm of Reciprocity

Social Responsibility: people should give help if they see that help is
needed (people follow this more in small towns)
Social Justice: when we are making decisions to help, we look and see
if they are deserving of help. (people follow more in big towns)

EXAM 1 OVER EXAM 2 MATERIAL

2/29/12
Attitudes: tendency to evaluate objects/issues favorably or
unfavorably
Components
1. Evaluation (affective): to think about things favorably or
unfavorably, whether you like it or dont like it, your emotional thoughts
2. Belief (cognitive): your set of beliefs about something
3. Behavior: some researchers think that behavior should be a
component of your attitude, what is a better way to measure something but
by your behavior? versus, other psychologists think that behavior isnt a
component, it is what is your outcome of your attitude, you use your
attitudes to predict your behavior.
very similar to schemas they are attitudes, structure and evaluation
issues apply
dynamic and changeable when they are new and when we are
younger, they become stable when we are older or when we have a lot of
knowledge of something. they become harder to change over time.
once we become comfortable with our attitude we ignore inconsistent
information and remember consistent things inline with our attitudes
keeps things stable
However, may have many beliefs but usually one overall feeling (which
can be tough to change).
Attitude Generation:
Experience: living in the world
Modeling: imitation, attitudes are handed down from parent to child
through modeling
Operant Conditioning: we are rewarded or punished from having our
attitudes, other people can affect our attitudes by their rewards or
punishments for what we believe.
Social Comparison: motivated, when we dont know what were
feeling or what our attitude is, motivated to compare to other people
Genetic Predisposition: research looking at identical twins and their
attitudes, more similarities in identical twins vs. fraternal twins
Functions of Attitudes:

1. Value Expression: summary of what we believe, what we like

what we dislike, they communicate who we are. we communicate a lot about
who we are when we express our attitudes
2. Provide Expectations: people know what to expect; how are we
going to behave, what we will be like in a situation.
3. Organization: attitudes similar to schemas part of organized
knowledge structure, they help us make shape of the world, how we think of
the world. some things are tied together and some things are not
4. Utilitarian: attitudes work to reward us, we benefit from our
attitudes
Attitude Measurement:
Direct: getting self-report, what is your attitude?
surveys
pros: easy, lots of people, quickly, use them to be a prediction or
representative sample
cons: bias, conscious bias normally happens when having negative or
positive views are unacceptable (race, porn, violence, ect.) unconscious
bias: people will not say 1 or 10 in a 1-10 scale, always respond 3-7, want
to stay in middle of scale, and this can be completely opposite too, people
only use 1 and 10 not 3-7. passive; not measuring anything dynamic such
as behavior
interviews
Types:
Likert: method of summated ratings uses 1-5 pt scales (agree
disagree, ect.) try and come up with as many beliefs of an attitude as they
can and you have to respond whether you agree or disagree with the beliefs,
tries to measure all of these beliefs and then makes a summarized
conclusion
goal: summated ratings you can establish a global evaluation with all
the information and all the agree vs. disagrees in the same belief.
Semantic Differential: uses ratings of opposite adjectives to rate the
attitude concept; pairs of adjectives (opposite adjectives) measure the
evaluated component NOT BELIEFS, looks to measure EMOTIONS your
thoughts on JUST Dallas based on your adjective words on Dallas (good vs.
bad) (easy vs. hard) (clean vs. dirty)
Indirect: people dont know their attitudes are being measured, often
used for measuring socially undesirable things; stereotypes, ect.
Physiological Measures
Head Movements: hook you up into a machine and want to measure
peoples heads movement when target slide comes on, people will subtly
nod or shake based on if they like it or not
Galvanic Skin Response: similar to lie machine, degree to which you
have response

Pupil Response:
Facial EMG: use different muscles to smile or to frown
Bogus Pipeline: fake lie detector test, give you questions that you
know the answer comes to, if you lie or if you tell the truth red or green light
comes on, then they ask questions about socially undesirable beliefs, if you
believe that this machine will tell you the truth about whether you are lying
or not; people are more wiling to admit if they think the machine works
Implicit Association Test: you think youre memorizing pairs of words,
but then they see how quickly you respond; if things are closely associated
in your mind (Lithuanian and lazy) you will click or respond very quickly vs.
if these things are not linked in your mind.
3/2/12
Attitudes and Behavior:
Do attitudes predict behavior at all?
1934 study of hotels and willingness to have Chinese stay
some hotels said no Chinese cant stay (amen)
man wrote to each hotel asking if he can stay with Chinese couple at
their hotel, no relationship between if they actually could stay and if when he
asked they could stay
1969 meta analysis of 31 attitude behavior studies: no relationship
tries to account of the variance in attitude and behavior no
relationship.
Characteristics associated with higher consistency:
1. Measurement relevance
attitude
behavior
specific
specific
general
general
Example: target behavior- using BC pills in the next 2 years
birth control: .08
BC pills: .32
using BC pills: .52
using BC pills in next 2 years: .57
2. Strength of Attitude
information more information attitude stronger
direct experience stronger attitudes; behavior flows from attitude
ex. not enough housing for incoming freshman, some freshman for 1 st
and a half months of school they lived in gym in cots.

behavior whether people would attend a protest rally over the issue
that people are living in the gym; measured peoples attitudes about the
situation and how strongly they feel about it. the people who were living in
the gym (some loved it some hated it) strength of the attitude was much
higher in the gym (loved, hated, middle) participation in protest rally
people who hated living in the gym, people who lived in the dorms
couldnt predict what their behavior would be (if they went to the rally or
not).
personal importance if it is effecting you directly
ex. peoples attitudes towards raising money for cancer research, their
attitudes (strengthen and predict your behavior more naturally) and
behavior become more correlated and predictable if they know someone with
cancer
3. Measurement Timing
closer in time you measure the behavior and measure the attitude
closer relationship and better can predict. if you measure an attitude too
soon it might not predict behavior not a very strong link.
Reasoned Action Model (Theory of Planned Behavior)
important components: if you want to be able to predict behavior;
their best predictor is their behavioral intentions
ex. what is your attitude about hamburgers? vs. are you going to eat a
hamburger today.
subjective norm: what other people are thinking about what you are
doing, if there are outside forces your attitude about something might not be
the same as to what you are doing (your behavior).
guys are more likely to be influenced by this
girls are less likely
behavioral control: whether you feel that you have control over if you
can control it, has a link to behavior and intention: if people have a greater
sense of behavioral control you will be better able to predict behavior no
matter how strong their attitude is.
Attitude Change Theories:
1. Learning Theories:
changes in attitude based on environment
historically came out of a backlash to psychoanalytic theory all
about the internal battle (id, ego, superego) and how it battles and changes
your behavior/attitude. LEARNING THEORY you can SEE these things, you
can measure them, ect.
classical conditioning (automatic responses):
Pavlov and his dogs
unconditioned response conditioned response

thing that was previously neutral gets paired enough times that it
produces a response
classical conditioning in humans:
reflex responses, sexual responses, fear responses
attitude changes something neutral (attitude) paired with something
that creates an automatic response after a while you will have an attitude
and an automatic response happen together
ex. movie Jaws took something previously neutral (music), first time
you saw shark music would be paired with it. (you will be afraid) later on in
movie, he can have just the music and then you freak out before anything
happens
ex. products that are neutral to you, paired with something that
creates an automatic response; beer ads with attractive model, automatic
response is to sexy model paired with beer; their hope is that when you
are buying beer, you see their beer and you go oooh because you were
previously conditioned to feel that way when you see that beer
operant conditioning (reinforcement)
looks at pattern of reinforcement of punishment and rewards
more likely to repeat behavior if paired with reward, less likely to
repeat behavior if paired with punishment
John Watson, B.F. Skinner
attitude changes your attitude preferences are the product of how
you get shaped by the reinforcement about people/situation around you
ex. at a university, there was a debate over whether to have a spring
fair in the week before finals, social psychologist wanted to see if he could
operant condition peoples attitudes toward the fair randomly called
students on campus asked a series of questions about having a spring fair
controlled condition: anytime they said something positive the caller
would respond uh huh
experiment condition: anytime they said something positive about the
spring fair the caller would respond good
able to track people they called down and measure attitude toward
spring fair, they found a huge difference. people who were reinforced with
good were much more likely to favor spring fair over the people who
received uh huh
social learning (observation)
seeing someone else reinforced or punished for their attitude can
change yours
2. Cognitive Motivation/Balance
a lot going on within our brains as well as the environment that will
also effect us and our attitude that learning theories ignores

cognitive dissonance theory: when your attitude and behavior dont

line up, or two attitude do not line up (dissonant) creates cognitive tension;
that you are motivated to reduce, to fix this tension; how do we reduce it?
alter our attitude to align with behavior and resolve tension
people who believed world was going to end on may 10th and the world
doesnt end, (creates psychological tension) people reacted by saying they
saved the world by telling everyone that the world was going to end.
1st study to pair operant conditioning and cognitive dissonance
theory hour long study about motor skills, you are waiting you get to a
table that has three boxes one filled with nuts and bolts, one filled with nuts,
one filled with bolts, you are required to sort them. you are done and
experimenter asks you to do him a favor and tell the next subject in the
waiting room how exciting and fun it was to do the task. for half the subjects
they were told I will pay you a dollar, for the other half the subjects were
told they would be paired 20 dollars tell the next subject. the guy to give
you your credit asks you how much you enjoyed the task, depending upon
how much you were paid you gave a different report on how exciting the
task was
results: people who were paid a dollar said they actually enjoyed it,
people who were paid 20 dollars said they didnt enjoy it
how are you going to resolve tension about lying? realizing they
were telling the truth to the next subject for a dollar (changed attitude to
match behavior)
operant conditioning would have said that 20 dollar people would have
said they liked it more
Other dissonance studies:
Initiation Study:
women subjects signed up for a group discussion, experimenters want
to make sure women are OK with doing discussion.
1st group: read 20 words that they had to read out loud to guy (words
like breast) easy initiation
2nd group: read sexually explicit stories to a male hard initiation
women were then allowed to listen in to discussion literally about
birds and bees, when you go down to get research credits, asked how
exciting was discussion, would they come back
women that were in 2nd group (hard initiation) want to come back next
week
women that were in 1st group (easy initiation) dont want to come back
this is because since you had to do this really hard task and you got
nothing no exciting group discussion, you had to change your attitude to
relieve tension
3/7/12
Eating Grasshoppers Study

sign up for study on taste perception, research assistant and takes

your questionnaire (he is either neutral or harsh to you) move on to taste
perception (would you be willing to eat a grasshopper? do him a favor) 98%
of people willing to do it, send off to get research credit, third party
administer asks how much you liked the fried grasshopper; people who guy
was a jerk to were much more likely to report that the grasshopper tasted
good, people who he was neutral to said theyd never want to eat them
again.
cognitive dissoance: guy was mean to you, he asked you to do him a
favor and you did it, why did you? because they tasted good!!! reduced
tension by changing attitude about the taste of the grasshopper
Marketing Study
housewives come in to small appliance store, want real people to test
them out and rate them 1-10 scale. took 2 items that women had rated
about a 7 and said to them you can take either one of these home. each
women took an appliance store. asked to come back again because they lost
their ratings, rate thing that they took home much higher than they did the
first time and the one they didnt take home much lower then the first time.
cognitive dissonance: since you took it home you know all the things you
love about it, something you didnt take home you think of all the bad things
about it
balance theory
talking about relationship between three things, structure of these
things; if they are positively or negatively related. if you multiply all these
things together and there is a negative number you want to change it to be
positive
ex. me, my girlfriend, my girlfriends roommate
me + my girlfriend + her roommate me
(multiply them and it comes out negative)
either girlfriend will change her thoughts on me, or of her roommate
doesnt make a prediction about which link is going to change, just
saying that there will be a change in one link
reactance
when a person feels like something is being taken away unfairly (that
someone is trying to alter your attitude) it motivates you to want it or like it
even more (reverse psychology)
something is being taken away from me unfairly and makes me want it
even more
3. Persuasion Approaches
cognitive response vs. heuristic responses work
Message Learning Approach:
Source Factors

attractiveness more likely to be persuaded because they are good

looking
credibility person can be trusted, they are an expert
power people of higher status are more persuasive
Recipient Factors
intelligence higher intelligence harder to persuade (but opinion or
attitude will stay if you can change theirs), lower intelligence easier to
persuade (more likely to flip flop back between attitudes or opinions)
esteem higher esteem harder to persuade, lower esteem easier to
persuade
Message Factors
comprehensibility is the argument understandable, more likely to be
persuaded if they can understand it
number of arguments if you have more reasons as to why you
should change attitude or opinion the more persuasive argument is
fear arousal elicit fear better persuaded
Medium Factors
print vs. video when subjects have to read arguments they are
more likely to be convinced vs. watching a passive video
face to face vs. media face to face is more effective than video or
commercials.
HOW DOES THIS DO THIS?
Cognitive Response Theory:
what matters is nature of response to message, if they have active
thoughts that are positive to the message they are more likely to be
convinced. however if they have a negative response they are more likely to
not be convinced
controlled processing
Heuristic Approach:
what matters is heuristic activated; if you see someone is attractive
the halo effect heuristic will be activated and you will be convinced by them.
if you see someone as an expert you will be more convinced because you
think they know more than you
automatic processing
maybe they are both right? Elaboration Likelihood Model
going to be two different routes to attitude change by persuasion
going to be things that keep us in central route processing
how motivated you are to pay attention to arguments?
motivated stay
not motivated? leave
ability to process information?
too complicated? leave

able to understand? stay

central route processing (controlled)
is this person making a good argument?
peripheral route processing (automatic)
focusing on if person is attractive, if commercial is funny, ect
3/9/12
Social Influence
1. Conformity
changing ones beliefs or behavior to be consistent with group
standards
Social comparison can play a big role
1. Normative Social Influence: Desire to be liked, to fit in, to belong to
the group
2. Informative Social Influence: Desire to be right, you think other
people know what is the correct behavior, you act the way they do because
you think they know how to behave
Early conformity study: Sherifs Autokinetic Effect
put people in groups of three in a darkened room, flash a small light
on a wall that is stationary, asked to look at the light and say how far its
moving
each person would say it out loud how far its moving, found that a
norm would develop. people would first say very different things then their
answers would become very similar
The Asch Line Study
confederates and subject which line is the same length? everyone is
given the false answer, you change your answer to match everyone else
72% of people changed their answer, gave the same wrong answer at least
once
Conformity is Reduced if:
1. Social Support: at least one other person gives the right answer
2. Someone gives an even worse answer than the majorities (could be
wrong but it is different from everyone elses)
3. The response is given privately
Conformity increases if:
1. No social support
one person doing it wont conform
more than one more likely to
2. Group attractiveness
how much do you want to be a part of this group?
a lot very likely to conform
not at all not going to conform
3. Status effects: medium status people conform more

low status Im at the bottom I dont give a fuck

high status Im always right so Im going to do whatever I want
middle status if I conform I could increase my position, if I dont I
might lose my position
4. Social Comparison Effects come into play
when motivated to compare ourselves
Johnny Rocco Studies:
5 people have the same attitudes and 1 who doesnt about crime
put them in a room and make a group decision about Johnny Rocco
and what to do with him
once people figured out 5 were the same and 1 was different, they all
ganged up on him; didnt talk to each other just tried to change the one
persons belief
85% of the time that person moved to the majority (if it was a
subject)
if it was a confederate the majority would kick the person out (social
exclusion)
then they added two people in minority
the rates to which they moved to the majority reduced
2. Compliance
doing what we are asked to do even if we prefer not to
mindless conformity: the use of heuristics
a rule of thumb a schema
automatic processing
Langer Study: A placebo reason (Can I use the copier now because
I have to make copies?) increase compliance over no reason, and almost as
much as a real reason, (because Im in a rush)
Associations with Positive Mood:
flattery works complimented, more likely to do something
wine and dine (restrictions on lobbyists)
Norm of Reciprocity
one of the strongest norms in human nature if someone does
something for us we feel an obligation to do something for them in return
(an equal thing)
as its own strategy: soda study, Hare Krishnas

sign up for a study on personality (told that there is 2 20 minute

sessions back to back with 10 minutes in between) you and one other
subject in study (confederate) both fill out personality surveys, 10 minute
break, during the break the confederate gets up and leaves and either come
back with 2 sodas or comes back empty handed. second study over with;
confederate asks you if you could donate to his foundation, buy raffle tickets
that are 5 dollars results: if the guy bought you a 50 cent soda you are
significantly likely to buy a raffle ticket.
we feel obligated to do something in return
we will do the first thing we can do to pay someone back
Hare Krishnas took flower or not, took promotional literature, gave
them money
if you took the flower you were more likely to spend more time with
them and more likely to give them money
people threw out the flowers after they were out of sight
Hare Krishnas knew this and took and reused flowers
door in face: zoo study, Watergate
negotiation study, you have a target behavior (you want the person to
do this behavior) instead of asking for that behavior you ask for something
much much higher, and when the door is slammed in your face, you go down
a level and then they will do that level
zoo study: college students were approached and asked if they would
be willing to be a mentor for a troubled youth, it would only take 6 hours a
week for 10 weeks. when they said no, then asked again if they would go to
the zoo on Saturday for 2 hours and chaperone children. other students
were just asked to chaperone at the zoo
results 1st group were much more likely to go to the zoo than
second group because they feel more obligated since person came down a
level for me
Watergate: instead of the yacht and women and sexual shit, they
asked to break into Watergate people said yes
Thats not all: Cupcake study, free giveaways
throwing something in for free (sales and infomercial technique)
the notion of someone throwing something in for free makes people
more likely to go along with it
people set up a baked good sale
1st group: 1 dollar a cupcake and a cookie
2nd group: 1 dollar a cupcake and we will throw in a cookie for free
results people were more likely to spend the dollar if they got a
cookie for free (norm of reciprocity and people feel like they are getting a
deal).
Commitment:

get you to commit to something you would not have done in the first
place
foot in the door: drive safe study
you get someone to do something small for you to begin with and it
will make them more likely to do something larger later on
drive safe study: two neighborhoods in suburban area that were very
very similar; 1st neighborhood: put big ugly sign in yard for safe driving, 2nd
neighborhood: would you be willing to sign a petition that says youre in
favor of driving safe
results if you are in 2nd neighborhood and signed petition you were
more likely to put sign up when asked 2 weeks later
low balling: 7 am study, car sales, heating oil study
low balling/bait and switch gets you committed on a course of action
because it makes you think youre going on one thing but then dramatically
changes and youre still willing to go along with it
car sales you come in with all your knowledge and car salesman
said he doesnt have the one you want but does have the same one 50 miles
away, you come back the next day and then you find out they sold the car.
but you can have the car you test drove for x amount more because it has a
moon roof and leather seats and ect you are more likely to go along with
this
7 am study: people more likely to go if they commit to doing the study
even though they didnt know it was at 7 am on a Saturday
Law of Scarcity:
one time deal, time is running out, limited time offer
one time deal
more willing to go along with it, reactance (things are being kept away
from me unfairly)
3/14/12
3. Obedience
complying with a person or group perceived to be an authority
Obedience to Authority
Six Bases of Social Power
1. Rewards providing + outcome
tend to work better than coercion (positive outcomes more effective
than negative outcomes effecting behavior)
2. Coercion providing + outcome
not as effective as positive rewards
3. Expertise social knowledge
a person with special knowledge has a certain amount of authority
especially when that knowledge is needed, when you need the expertise the
person with the expertise has more power over us

4. Information message content

having information gives you power,
5. Referent Power identifying with other
people just want you to like them, (Candace) when they ask you to do
things you just do them because you want their acceptance and you want
them to like you
6. Legitimate Authority influencers right to make request
police man, judges, congress, fireman, ect. sometimes when we just
see a man in a security outfit that tells us to do something we just do it even
though we dont have to (put a quarter in the meter)
Milgrams Obedience Study: shocks
65% shocked the guy all the way through
easier to stop if you were side by side with another person
(confederate) and they stopped
easier to stop if the experimenter leaves the room and another
teacher gives you orders to continue
very easy to stop if you can pick your own level of shocks
obedience to authority is an ingrain norm that we are taught when we
are very young and taught to follow and be obedient to authority
3/16/12
Group Behavior:
1. Performance Behavior:
Social Facilitation: Arousal Enhances the Dominant Response (if youre
good at something you will be better with lots of people, if youre not then
youll be worse)
Maze Study: if the maze was easy people were faster putting their
pencil through the maze if someone was watching rather than by
themselves, if it was difficult they were worse with other people than by
themselves
Anagrams
Sports: good free throw shooters are better with people there, people
who are bad at it they do worse when people are there
Cockroaches: put in a maze
Yerkes-Dodson Model: optimal level of arousal for a certain task,
arousal can become too high or too low, any one person doing a certain task
will have a unique curve on how arousal will effect performance
Social Impact Theory: where arousal comes from
arousal = f (strength x immediacy x number)
strength: status, how much do you care about the people watching
you and their evaluation? or do you not care at all
immediacy: how much are you feeling the audiences presence? are
they right there? or far away?

number: more people = more arousal, increase in number but every

one more person has less effect as the number gets larger
having other people with you (in a group performance) makes you less
aroused (attention isnt 100% on you)
2. Intragroup Behavior:
Social Loafing: Many hands do NOT make light work
people in a group tend to work less hard, tend to loaf
Shouting: got people into lab, got cover story on what they were
doing, they were suppose to yell and you wanted to measure how loud the
output was. people yelled more loudly when they were by themselves rather
than if they were in a group of 3 or 6
Clapping: people clap more loudly when you are alone, then when you
are in a group
Sports: people work less hard in groups
Why:
diffusion of responsibility when you are doing a task by yourself you
are 100% responsible for your output, everyone knows it too. but when you
are in a group, the group output is only going to be measured as a group
you do not feel as responsible, responsibility is diffused among group
deindividuation when you feel that you cannot be identified
individually, it frees you up to act in ways you wouldnt normally act (could
be a good thing or a bad thing) (open up to a stranger) (more likely to act
selfishly) in a group project: people dont know how much work I am doing
free riding people think that I can ride on the back on other people
in the group, they are going to work hard so Im not going to because I dont
have to
Group Task Types Effecting Performance:
1. Additive: measured at the group level but everyone is included in
it, how loud can the whole group scream susceptible to social loafing
2. Compensatory: goal of the task is to be as accurate as possible,
and they are going to take the average of that accuracy as a measure of the
group, people do not social loaf as much because they are in controlled
processing, more motivated to do well because its accuracy test rather than
additive task
3. Disjunctive: group has to come up with one answer as a group,
normally as BEST as the best person in the group; if its a math question, if
they have one good person it doesnt matter what anyone else thinks.
however sometimes this person is not socially dominant and then they would
not be allowed to emerge their thoughts or ideas because they are held back
because of status reasons

4. Conjunctive: the task lends itself to groups performing at the

same time (crew). if you have one person who is out of rhythm, the group
will not do well but if everyone is working at the same time and working
together the group can do very well. you are as good as your WORST
member all it takes is one bad person for the group to fail
3. dfhdjs