PSYC212 Notes - Dr. Jessica Barber\'s lectures on topics in Social Psychology, including prosocial PDF

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Dr. Jessica Barber's lectures on topics in Social Psychology, including prosocial behavior, prejudice reduction, conformity, the self, dual processing, and more....

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PSYC212 Notes Dr. Barber- Social psychologist   

Attitudes, political ideology, change and resistance process Intersection between politics and psychology, how people change their minds on ideology; how to persuade people Charlier Ferris- MS-6th year grad student, Hamann o Neural basis of memory retrieval, autobiographical memory o Supportive brain networks o Background in sociology and neuropsych

Get textbook- 10th better, 9 works overall but has a few changes that are behind Asynch work released on Friday night, due wednesday nights at midnight

Intro to Social Psych  

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Use to address real world problems What is social psych- scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined o Scientific- not just intuition/common sense Common sense and folk wisdom doesn’twork- birds of a feather flock together and opposites attract are contradictoryHindsight bias- “I knew it all along”, in reality, hindsight is 20/20; we don’t actually know shit lol o Was that move daring or stupid? o Whether that play was good or bad depends on outcome; you can say “what an idiot” if it ends badly; or “what a innovative genius” if it ends well Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors- ABC's of psych o Affect- emotional experience o Behavior- observable action/inaction o Cognition- thoughts, not just effortful thoughts, unconcious and automatic thoughts Influence of others o Real- changing thoughts feelings and behaviors based on who is around you o Imagined?- people mightn ot be present but still impact  What would my mom think rn? Influence your ABCs

----------------------8/27 Big thorny issues in (social) psych Outline  

Name that method review Replication

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Ethics deception Representativeness and diversity

Name that method answers 

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Cafeine experiment o Correlational- relationship between caffeine and stress; no manipulation or controls o Operationalized cffeein with amount of caffeine, and stress as daily hassles Phonebooth mood boost and helping randos experiment o Experiment- maniupate mood as DV, helping behavior is IV o Random assignment of conditions of IV (dime present or not) o DV- help or not help People gathering at sporty events and behaving a certain way o Observational o Only variable is one thing of crowd behavior, no manipulation o Starting point of unddrstanding crowd behavior better Gender, hard vs easy anagram; and self esteem o IV: type of anagram  Gender isn’t a meaningful variable, not studying gender effect, no regression on gender; important to study both men and women, but isn’t regression point of study- is a subject variable o DV: self esteem How easily people are persuaded, fees, persuasive message, rerate attitudes, compare men and women attitude changes o Correlational quasi experimental o predictor: gender (men vs women) o outcome: attitude change Wegmans subliminal messages about rice aroni in all stores o DV: change in sales o Correlational- quasi experimental o Predictor: Subliminal messge Before and after o DV: sales

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What is true? Needa replicate it and repeat and see true power of effect Do original findings hold up? o Direct- trying to recreate the research and results o Conceptual- extending the research and seeing how much external validity a theory has Replication crisis- common in social psychology o 2015 study published in Science journal o Attempted direct replications of 100 famous and established studies in fields like social psych o Working with knowledge and help of original researcherso only 36% of original studies met significance threshold (p value) in direct replication

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Calls into question findings of original studies Maybe had type 1 errors (false positive) in first study; or maybe the second study is a type 2 error (false negative) Maybe not generalizable to other people other than that one specific group People wanted to proliferate cool novel findings without replicating them and seeing their true validity Social psych experiments did the worst in replication But social psychologists are now taking more steps to test validity and reliability of their experimentts; not just jumping to conclusions

Treating participants ethically? 

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Historical context o Biomedical research- tuskegee syphilis study- had cures developed but witheld them from certain individuals for the sake of seeing how disease would affect them long term o Social/behavioral: milgram, zimbardo Role of IRB o INDEPENDENT review- take out of hands of the researchers who don’t have objective view o Utilitarian perspective- costs vs benefits Deception o Prevent particpants from knowing true study purpose- being quiet about hypothesis vs blatantly lying about what is happening are both deception o Condederates o False feedback o Presenting 2 related studies as unrelated o Why controversial? - some say lying and deceit are wrong no matter what o Undesirable consequences- creating a group of suspicious participants that never believe anything they are told; no such thing as a naïve participant anymore; not behaving in natural way; erosion of trust Informed concent (beginning) o Voluntary agreeingto paticapate, after learning enough to make knowledgeable decision  risks o Debriefing (end)  Dehoax- reveal true purpose  Desen sitize- return to psych basline- if you put people in negative state bring them back to normal Representativeness o Restricted samples  People from different cultures, backgrounds, identities react differently; cant generalize conclusions from just looking at one narrow group o Lack of diversity among scholars o How do we make things better?  Putting together research teams with diverse individuals

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Organizations and conferences dedicated to diversity in science; promote and empower diversity

QUEST 1 NEXT WEEK- chap 1-2; half hour to complete; tuesday midnight to wednesday midnight; open book and open note

----------------Social Cognition asynch 

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What is social cognition?- how we perceive, interpret, remember, and use social info to make judgements o Not just conscious thought; includes whole process of stream Outline o Dual process of social cognition- two ways thinking works  Kahneman video- explaining system 1 vs 2, hot and cold cognition, automatic vs effortful  Discussion board Types of automatic processing o Schemas- video o Heuristics - video How automatic processing impacts us- how schemas affect this o Self fulfilling prophecy- read o Memory- loftus- how memory can be distorted or fabricated by social and personal experience o Priming- read Cultural variation in social cognition- how does it different when looking at different cultures o Masuda article and questions

Kahnemen- thinking- fast and slow     

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System 1- fast, system 2- slow 1- automatic, 2+2--> 4, mother--> emotion; automatic, no control, most work done in 1 2- slower, effortful, deliberate, control self, thoughts, complicated computations People usually think they’re in system 2 but are actually in s1; we feel we have reasons for why we do things, but in reality we do it automatically or for reasons we’re not aware of, but when asked why we did it we’ll list some reasons; but the reasons r not usual;ly the true cause of actions Bad decisions- think you made a deliberation o But depends on skill- quick thinking chess player is automatic and can make good decisions; but world is more complicated than chess board Sometimes system 2 and slowing down has advnatages- can see things that system 1 can’t People often make mistakes in s1, even if aware they’re in s1 they can’t help themselves Cognitive illusions- have an error, people tell you it’s an error, better self tells you it’s an error, but it still feels right

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Psychopaths telling you soething crazy, but it might feel right cuz the person has great charisma, trusting people that are wrong even tho they are warned the person is crazy; something very compelling, the feeling that he was right was stronger than the warnings S1 operates in cognitive ease; S2 is cognitive strain Easy path S1- mistake prone o More impulsive- and impulses can be wrong; make mistakes; follow first impression, first impressions often wrong; emotional o If you slow down and use S2 can avoid some mistakes Gut is not right 90% of time- trained chess player gut can be right; but other situatinos like investments- gut is usually not right

Schemas 

What comes to your mind when you think of autumn? Have a lot of ideas and words and imagesour minds are good at linking concepts together; indiviudal beliefs and associations linked with umbrella concept; useful cuz we gotta have these links to know “what do I need to wear”

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Make inferences on how the day is gonna go based on what we know about the time of year

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Schema- mental frameworks that bundle knowledge together in an organized way

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Stored in memory- relying on things lready in memory, not new every time

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Help interpret world

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Make decisions more efficient and quick

Categories- file drawer, have a file for autumn and it contains all the info relevant to autumn See police- make assumptions about that person not bc of things you know about individual, but cuz of stuff you have associated with the group that person belongs to o Make judgements about situation, behavior changes, thoughts change, what you do and what you wanna do change Schemas about everything o Roles- mother o Groups (stereotypes)o Individuals- associations about a specific friend so you understand the person and predict what the person is gonna do o Situations- being in a work place vs a party o Self o Relatioships- what you expect from a relationship with SO vs coworker List a bunch of words related to one topic or schema- bunch of words related to sleep, but not the word “sleep” itself; then list words again and say whether those words were on list or not, will assume the word sleep is on the list, but not, just related to sleep, the schema of sleep; o don’t rememb er things as they happened, schemas help us fill in the blanks of memory, we get the gist of what happened, general ideas drive our memory more than individual words

Heuristics

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Make decisions everyday- sometimes we thin kabout the carefully, others use little info on the fly Heuristics are rules of thumb- cognitive tools that help us make quick decisions or judgements Short cuts of rules to make judgemens about world around us Just needa make a decision fast Reasonaing about the world Rate of violece in world in past 20 years vs past centure o Our heurostics make use of info in world to assume that the world is more violent today than ever before; but now we have less violence than ever before Availability heuristic- make heuristic based on examples that are readily available, so we assume that this evidence is true on a greater scale Anyone can place too much trust in mental short cuts Representativeness heuristic- assume an individual case is more representative than it really is o If you test positive for an illness, assume It’s super common Poltical issues- let heuristics stand in leiu of exhaustive research and details; important to be humble in light of our fallibilityk must recognize that the world is an uncertain place, needa listen to other’s thoughts and opinions

False memories- Loftus     

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Remembering things that didn’t happen or remebering them diffeently from how they actually occurred Show people simulated crime or accident, deliberately feed misinformation Might see car go through a yeild sign, then tell them it’s a stop sign They might adopt the info as their own memory and become convinced of it; will be confident and detailed about the fabricated memory Can plant entirely false memories into people through power of suggestion- convince people they wre lost in a shopping mall when they were 5 years old an d lost and scared and reunited with family Memory is malleable- doesn't work like video recording; process is much more complex Just cuz someone tells you something with a lot of detail, confidence, and emotion it doesn’t mean ti really happened

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Masuda and Nisbett o What’s the difference betw analytic and holistic  Analytic- looking at individual separate of context, attributes of the individual, less ambiguous  Holistic- taking account of context, pay attention to relationship between thing and environment, bigger picture and connections o Which stile more typical of western vs eastern  Analytic- western  Holistic- eastern o Main findings

1st study- give people little cartoons, japanese pay attention to object and also the environment, enhancment of memory when the background is the same, but when the background changes, recognize object worse; east asian part used context more to put objects in relation to background they were placed in, better at recalling info in context;  2nd study- eastern asian reaction time recognizing objects was faster and better than americans Implications  Japanese see more context and more of the world  How do we navigate around fundamental attribution error  Empathy and understading others better- using contextual factors and understanding culture to have a more open perspective, less judgemental  Think about fact that not all results generalize to all contexts and cultures, needa see how cognition works in other cultures  Use in conversations about parenting styles, expose children to others, cross cultural understandings of empathy 

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Perception and the social world 

Objective pay off has different utility based on expectation changes and social comparison

Naïve realism (Ross) “I see the world as it really is”- lol no you don’t, no one does, no one sees reality as it truly is; my values and opionions are objective truth, o if we share them that’s validation that I'm right o If others disagree- others are wrong, there’s something wrong with their perspective; if you don’t see things the way I do there’s something wrong with you  Uninformed- benefit of the doubt, maybe they don’t know any better; lemme educate you and explain this to you  Lazy/stupid- are you intellectually incapable of understanding this?  Biased Beirut Massacre study (Ross)- pro israeli and pro Arab students evaluated SAME news coverage Beirut Massacre o Do you think the media was biased in some way and to what extent?  Each group thinks that the media coverage is biased against their group; each group is defensive of self and people like them o Did knowledge help?- more informed or knowledgable participants, were they able to see through bias or understand the other side better?  Each group being informed felt even more confident about the beliefs they had; felt even stronger they were informed on the truth Important points o We only get to experience the world through our own eyes (expectations)  Confirmation bias- wishful thinking  Selective exposure- info we choose to engage with, curating a newsfeed to what you like already o

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Biased assimilation- how to make sense of incoming info, only rememebr things in line with expectations  Constructive memory- can literally make up memories based on suggestion We're largely unaware of our own biases o Bias blind spot- can see other’s biases but not our own; unintuitive and uncomfotable to acknowlege our own expectations and how that influences the lens through which we see the world 

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Dual process model (ask barber about how it feels kinda reductive) 

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System 2- cold cognition, controlled processing o Effortful, conscious, intentional, voluntary o Advanced math System 1: automatic processing, hot cognition, auto pilot o effortless, unconscious, unintentional, involuntary o Driving is a mix of hot and cold cognition o Navigating might be cold, or learning how to drive for the first time; but once you’re good at driving or know the routes, then it’s hot What two things must be present in order to employ controlled processing? o Motivation and ability to deliberate effortfully  High level math hard Might have the ability but not the motivation to exert that effort Might have the motivation to exert effort but not the ability and knowledge to do the math Cognitive load manipuation- take up a person’s cognitive capacity by doing multiple tasks o Say the alphabet backwards while reading a book; try to disentangle automatic and controlled processing; make people use automatic processing o Stroop test- have to dissociate color info from semantic info; slows them down  Easier to read words (automatic) than to say colors (controlled)  Stroop effect reduces if you’re bilingual or if you take off your glasses  

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Types of automatic thinking 

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Schemas o Word association to a umbrella word- see what words you associate with a word like “party, artist, chair” etc; see what words you have in this schema o Schemas- mental framework in which we organize knowledge and ideas by connecting them to eachother  Self, people, groups (stereotypes), events, etc o Different associations depending on who you ask, askng party to 2nd graders vs college students Heuristics- automatic processing in decision making and judgements, short cuts for judgements Benefits

Efficiency Meaning-making device While driving- there's insane amounts of stimuli and cognitive effort if you don’t have automatic processing; automatic procesing allows us to do all this shit o Helps in ambiguity- gray areas, navigate these things successfully; feel existentially that we understand what’s going on, to have coherence Drawbacks- use automatic proceses when we shouldn’t o Distortion o Overreliance o Persistence (subtyping)- they are sticky, hard to alter for an individual of a stereotyped group o Negative effects of stereotypes o Running on automatic processing when working with individuals of different groups Anchoring- giving a reference point of an estimate- guess relative to anchoring starting value; hard to make a big departure from value even if it’s completely arbitrary value Primingo Schemas made salient/accessible --> influence ABCs o Spreading activation- activation of one thought activates related thoughts  Ripple effect o Make something salient in mind- watch all the other related ABCs to salient primed object be ready to be retrieved o Subliminal priming- not actively noticed; can’t process consciously, not aware you encountered the stimulus o o o

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Political ad with “bearucrat” but subliminally flash the word “rat” really quickly; priming with the word “rat”, then associate political opponent and policies with rats; classical conditioning Supraliminal priming- above the threshold of conscious awareness  Scrambled sentence task- consciously engaged with the task of making sentences about family togetherness; primes your schema of family togetherness; then observe interactions with mother and see how it differs  Odors- Disgust sensitivity, see how people respond to rating out group members when sitting in a bad smelling room  Images- puppies Difference between sub and supra  Supra is conscious awareness  Sub is unconscious awareness For subliminal visual signals- stim has to be super fast milliseconds to not be conscious Not certain whether ...