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PSYC 345 Final Exam

Stereotyping, Prejudice, Discrimination

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Social identity o Part of our self-concept based on groups we belong to such as our nation, religion, politics, occupation, or other social affiliation Ethnic identity o Persons identification with racial or ethnic group Acculturation o Groups come to identify with and feel part of mainstream culture Social identity theory o Idea that a person derives self-concept and self-esteem from personal identity and accomplishments, also from status and accomplishments of various groups to which person belongs o Outgroup homogeneity effect  Tendency for people to assume that within group similarity is much stronger for outgroups that ingroups Ethnocentrism o Belief that one’s own groups are superior to all others o Aids survival by making people feel attached to own group and willing to work on group’s behalf Stereotypes o Summary impression of group, which person believes all members of the group share common trait o Overgeneralized, inaccurate, resistant to new information o Distort reality in 3 ways  Exaggerate differences between groups  Produce selective perceptions  Underestimate differences within stereotypes groups Prejudice o Hostile or negative attitude toward distinguishable group on basis of generalizations derived from faulty or incomplete information o Cognitive component  Stereotypes of set of beliefs about group o Behavioral  Discrimination o Emotional  Dislike of or active hostility toward the group Origins of prejudice o Psychological – inflating own self-wroth by disliking groups they see as inferior o Social – disliking others we feel closer to others who are like us

PSYC 345 Final Exam o Economic – legitimizes unequal economic treatment o Cultural and national – bonds people to their own ethnic or national group and its ways  Explicit vs. implicit attitude o Explicit  We are aware of them; shape our conscious decisions and actions; can be measured on self-report questionnaires o Implicit  Unaware of them; may influence behaviors in ways we don’t recognize; measured in indirect ways  Measuring implicit prejudice  Social distance o Potential behavioral expression of prejudice o Underlying idea of not getting too close, keeping a distance  Asses what people do when stressed or angry  Brain activity  Implicit association test  Stereotype attributions o Stereotyping is a particular type of attribution o When faced with ambiguity, people tend to make attributions consistent with prejudices o Ultimate attribution error  Tendency to make negative dispositional attributions about members of outgroup  Being a member of stigmatized group o Attributional ambiguity  Members of group may be uncertain if treatment they receive is due to them personally or result of group membership  Microaggression  Brief and common verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities  Communication hostile put downs toward minorities o Stereotype threat  Burden of doubt and anxiety one feels about performance due to negative stereotypes about group  Results in worsened performance and reduced motivation o The cost of concealment  Members of stigmatized groups throughout history have often felt compelled to hide true identity Justification of prejudice and ways of reducing  Self-fulfilling prophecies o Preconceptions about people influence behaviors in ways to elicit from them the very characteristics and behaviors that are expected  Blaming the victim

PSYC 345 Final Exam

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o Not easy for people who haven’t experienced prejudice to understand and be empathetic Sexism o Hostile sexism  Perceiving women as inferior, irrational, weak o Benevolent sexism  Positive, but characterized by attitudes of idealizing women in traditional female roles Homosexuality and prejudice o Seeing homosexuality as a choice allows us to feel justified in prejudice Obesity and prejudice o 25% of population considered medically obese o Interaction of metabolism and hormones keep people at weight their bodies are designed for – doesn’t increase tolerance for obese people  People tend to perceive weight as something people can control w/ diet and exercise  “I can feel better about disliking you, if your dislikeable traits are your fault” Justification o Prejudice requires energy and we are inclined to conserve mental energy o May be particularly attracted to information that justifies our prejudice and allows us to express o Key factor in justifying biases is whether we believe an individual has control over his or her own situation Reducing o Counter prejudice by reducing cognitive dissonance

Aggression

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Any intentional behavior aimed at doing harm, such as causing physical or psychological pain o Not the same as assertiveness Hostile aggression o Behavior intended to harm another, motivated by feelings of anger and hostility Instrumental aggression o Action intended to hurt another, but the hurting takes place as a means to some goal other than causing pain What motivates aggression? o Instincts – Freud  Eros – instincts toward life  Thanatos – instinct toward death, leading to aggressive actions

PSYC 345 Final Exam

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o Noble savage  Human beings, in natural state, are gentle creatures and that it is restrictive society that forces us to become hostile and aggressive Culture and aggression o Cultural variations in expression of aggression o Certain values, habitual ways of constructing self and others, make expression of aggression in one culture more violent than others Is aggression useful? o Survival of the fitness  Evolutionary value of aggression  Competitive culture  Conflict is necessary for excellence Retaliation o Expression of aggression leads to greater hostility o When we label someone a name, it’s easier to follow with behavior/statement that’s consistent with label (retaliation) o When retaliation is more severe than initial insult, its overkill  Tit for tat experiment  The pain we receive feels more intense than the pain we inflict Causes of aggression o Neurological and chemical causes  Amygdala  When stimulated, humans become violent  Testosterone  Prisoners, delinquents, law breakers all have higher levels of testosterone o Alcohol  Social disinhibited – if provoked more likely to respond with aggression  Disrupts the way we process information  Reduces ability to process social cues o Pain and discomfort o Frustration  Frustration is increased when interrupted while near goal completion  Relative deprivation – feeling that occurs when people notice someone is doing better than they are. Frustration originates from belief that they are being treated unfairly in some way o Rejection, exclusion, taunting  Negative effects Social learning and aggression o Can inhibit aggressive response o Inhibit when another’s actions against us seem unintentional o Bandura’s Bobo Doll studies Media violence

PSYC 345 Final Exam

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o Greater exposure to violence is related to more aggressive behavior when controlled for social class, intelligence, etc. o Why does media violence influence?  Weakens previously learned inhibition against violent behavior  May trigger imitation  Makes anger more available through priming Toward reduction of violence o Punishment of aggressive models  Less aggression if children saw aggressive person punished, compared to those who saw person reinforced o Or, best way to reduce aggression is to not show kids aggression at all o Rewarding alternative behavior patterns o Building empathy toward others  If dehumanizing another promotes aggression, then maybe empathy training can help reduce aggressive acts o Presence of nonaggressive models  Social cue of people being restrained an unaggressive I the same situation as you find yourself o Mindfulness and altruism  Practicing can make constructive responses natural and habitual

Intimate Relationships

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Why do we like? o Primary need to belong o Being liked and making good impression is deep concern to most people, especially during adolescence Stress, anxiety, and love o When people are physiologically aroused by one stimulus, emotional response to another stimulus is heightened o Experience of emotion = cognitive factors + stimulus inputs+ physiological factors o Misattribution of arousal due to other reasons Early development experiences o Children gain secure base by attaching to caregiver o Attachment is deep emotional bond infant develops with primary care taker Styles of attachment o 1. Secure  Encourages well-balanced relationship, primarily marked by low levels of anxiety and avoidance o 2. Insecure – avoidant and anxious-ambivalent

PSYC 345 Final Exam Partner is either too clingy due to overanxious concern about being loved or avoidant to prevent feelings of dependence Love looks and feels good o Physical attractiveness  Evolutionary reasons  Men’s attraction influenced by factors that reveal youth – sign of reproductive fitness  Women’s attraction directed toward signs of resources and strength – sign of raising offspring o Liking, attraction, and love  Familiarity and similarity  Being exposed to an object, idea, or person causes you to like it more  Attractiveness along with similarity of attractiveness is best predictor of liking  Assortative mating  People tend to be attracted to a partner with similar level of attractiveness to themselves  Physical and chemical attractiveness  People rate symmetrical faces as attractive  Scent and attraction – pheromones Birds of a feather flock together o Perceived similarity enable social validation of our beliefs. If we like someone, we tend to believe that they share important attitudes with us o If someone likes us, we are more likely to like them  Dual self-fulfilling prophecies The anticipation of rejection o Can have major impact on intellectual performance o When people anticipate social rejection, it has potential drawbacks for perceptions related to self and others Gain-loss theory of attraction o Gain  Increases in positive behavior from another person will lead us to like that individual more than if we were constantly rewarded by the behavior from that person o Loss  Increase in negative behavior from another person will lead us to dislike that individual more than if we were given a steady diet of negative behaviors from that person o Implications  Negative act toward long term partner harms more compared to one good act 

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PSYC 345 Final Exam Positive behavior from a stranger has more impact than a positive one from a long term partner Exchange relationships o People involved are concerned about making sure that some sort of equity is achieved so that there is fairness in the distribution of the wards and costs to each of the partners  People on the short end are angry or depressed  People on the long end feel guilty Communal relationship o Neither of the partners keeping score o Person is inclined to give self in response to the others need and will readily receive the same kind of care when self is feeling needy Love and intimacy o Passionate love  Strong emotions, sexual desire, intense preoccupation with the beloved  More rapid than gradual, intensity cools over time o Companionate love  Milder, more stable experienced marked by mutual trust, dependability, and warmth  Lasts longer and deepens over time Triangle theory of love o Passion – euphoria and sexual excitement o Intimacy – free to talk about anything, feeling close and understood o Commitment – loyalty, needed to be with the other person Authenticity in relationships o Ability to give up trying to make a good impression and begin to reveal honest things about ourselves o Authentic communication is associated with higher level of marital satisfaction Characteristics of effective communication o Importance of immediacy  Express anger directly, not shouting or accusing  Stating feelings and grievances clearly o Feelings vs. judgments  Being open and not hurting can be tricky  Concentrate on expressing feelings and not interrupting what you think another person thinks or feels  Ego-protection (not expressing feelings) leads to ineffective communication and lack of understanding Communication and consummate love o Attainable through straight talk  Clear statement of person’s feelings, concern without accusing, blaming, judging, the other person  Encouraging authentic communication 

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PSYC 345 Final Exam Helping and Prosocial behavior

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Altruism o Unselfish behavior that benefits another person but does not benefit the helper, often involves some personal cost to the helper Prosocial behavior o Range of actions intended to benefit one or more people o Involves  Helping, sharing, comforting, cooperating o Altruism may involve a subset of prosocial actions but..  Prosocial behavior may not be motivated by altruism  Altruistic motivations may not always lead to prosocial behavior Empathy-altruism hypothesis o Empathy is the ability to share the feelings of others and understand their situations o Other oriented emotions, related to the welfare of others, motivates altruism  Compassion, empathy, tenderness Motivations underlying altruism o Reduce one’s own empathetic arousal o Avoid punishment and judgment of others o Conformity o Social reward o Self-reward of doing the right thing Latane’s 5 step model of helping o Notice o Interpret o Responsibility o Knowledge o Implement Cooperation o Essential to human functioning o Inclination to cooperate for common goals is almost a defining attribute of humans Paradigms used to study cooperation o Prisoner’s dilemma  People’s construal’s about others with whom they’re interacting are important determinate of whether people will cooperate  Personal motivations affect construal about others’ motivation  People become more competitive after being primed with words related to hostility o Ultimatum game

PSYC 345 Final Exam One participant is given resource to allocate between self and other person  Can allocate anyway – keep it all or divide  People living in cultures requiring high amounts of interdependence for survival allocate resources more fairly during game than people from other cultures o Tit for tat strategy  Strategy in prisoners dilemma in which the players first move is cooperative, players mimic the other persons behavior  Encourages cooperation because: cooperative, no envious, nonexplainable, forgiving, easy to read Dissent o Disagreement o Costs of dissenting and non-conformity  Not encouraged by most groups  Whistleblowers engage in altruism at much risk  Benefits are often at temporary cost to self but at permanent gain for bigger cause Explanations for altruism o Kin selection  Evolutionary favoring of genes that prompts individuals to help their relatives o Social exchange theory  We help others when the benefits to ourselves are likely to outweigh the costs o Reciprocal altruism  Act of helping others in hope that they help us Jen Science o Born to be good – hardwired to kindness as to compete and seek selfish goals o Jen ratio  Complex mixture of kindness, humanity, ad respect that transpires between people  Actions that bring the good in others / actions that brings the bad in others o Jen ratio and power of trust  Trust is direct consequence in nations with high Jen ratio  High Jen ratios in nations with citizens motivated in bringing the good in others, thriving Empathy to altruism o Emotional contagion  Rapid transmission of emotions and behaviors between people o Sympathetic concern 

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PSYC 345 Final Exam Concern about another person’s state followed by attempts of consolation o Empathetic perspective-taking  Capacity to take another person’s perspective, combined with emotional arousal o PAM = perception action mechanism 

Conflict and Peacemaking

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Conflict is a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas o Triggers destructive social process that has potential of producing undesirable outcomes Four pillars of the apocalypse // Gottman’s Predictors of Divorce o Criticism  Attacking partners character, usually with intent of making someone right and someone wrong o Contempt  Attacking partner’s self of sense with intention to insult of psychologically abuse him/her o Defensiveness  Seeing self as the victim, warding off perceived attack  Cross complaining – meeting your partners complaint with a complaint of your own, ignoring partner o Stonewalling  Withdrawing from relationship as way to avoid conflict  Conveys disapproval, distance, separation, disconnection Enemy perceptions o Mirror-image perceptions  As we see them is how they see us  Both sides demoralize each other leading to an unending cycle of hostility  Perceptions can turn in to self-fulfilling prophecies extending hostility o Based on conflict situation and have potential for change Social traps o When we harm our collective well-being by pursuing our personal interests Peacemaking o Feelings of prejudice, aggression, and conflict can be transformed in to attitudes to promote peach through  Contact  Work well when it is: noncompetitive, between parties of unequal status  Cooperation

PSYC 345 Final Exam Superordinate goals – shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation  Shared predicament have an unifying effect on people leading to more cooperation  Communication  When conflict between two parties is intense, a third party mediator is many times needed to facilitate communications  Ombudsman o A person who investigates complaints and tries to deal with problems fairly; resolves issues as a third unbiased party when something has been handled poorly  Conciliation  GRIT = graduated and reciprocated initiatives in tension reduction o Strategy designed to decrease international tensions  One side announces mutual interests followed by conciliatory acts; encourages reciprocity from other side Peacemaking in schools o Teaching conflict resolution and peacemaking strategies can help  Understand conflict as something solvable rather than a hurdle  Perceive conflict as an everyday expected encounter  Help practice conflict resolution strategies early in life o Adolescence is a relatively critical and malleable period to enable shaping of social and political ideologies o Peace education curricula for adolescents can ensure future peaceful adult citizens 

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Social Psychology as a Science: Part 2

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