Psych 201 Exam #2 notes PDF

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Notes for Social attribution, emotion, attitudes behavior rationalization, persuasion, and social influence...

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Chapter 5: Social Attribution 5.1: From Acts to Dispositions - Attribution theory: The general term for theories about how people explain the causes of the events that they observe - Causal attribution occurs when we link an event to a cause, such as inferring that a personality trait is responsible for a particular behavior (e.g., a person cuts you off while driving is a jerk). Explanatory Style - Explanatory style - A person’s habitual way of explaining events Three dimensions: 1. Internal/external 2. Stable/unstable 3. Global/specific Internal

External

Im ugly

he/she was in a bad mood

Stable

Unstable

Im ugly

It wasn't my best pickup line

Global

Specific

Im ugly

This one person doesn't like me

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An internal cause implicates the self, whereas an external cause does not. A stable cause implies that things will never change, whereas an unstable cause implies that things may improve. A global cause is something that affects many areas of life, while a specific cause applies to only a few.

Pessimistic Explanatory Style - Pessimistic explanatory style - Internal, Stable, Global (for negative events) - “It’s my fault, I can’t change it, and it happens with everything.” - People who regularly see negative events this way tend to be depressed/anxious; they have a weak sense of control, and give up easily. Attribution of Controllability

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If we attribute failure to something we can control, we may persevere more (Anderson, 1991; Anderson & Deuser, 1993) Helpful in an academic setting: - Believing that we have control over events that we previously thought were out of our control can lead to better academic performance, greater productivity (Dweck, 1975; Forsterling, 1985).

Gender and Attributional Style - Boys and girls use different attributional styles - Boys: Failures due to lack of effort - Girls: Failures due to lack of ability - Patterns (and whatever causes them) are reinforced in school; teachers critique boys and girls differently - Boys: Nonintellectual factors - Girls: Intellectual factors

5.2 Processes of Causal Attribution - Kurt Lewin: The behavior of people is a function of the field of forces in which they find themselves - Internal attributions(dispositional) - External attributions (situational) - B = f(P, E); behavior is a function of the person and environment

Causal Attribution - The type of attributions that you make for behavior influence how you respond to the person or situation

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For example...(is it P or E)? - Why did you get a bad grade on that test? - Why did you get turned down for that date? Does everyone tend to interpret situations similarly?

Attribution and Covariation - Covariation principle: Behavior should be attributed to potential causes that co-occur with the behavior (Kelley, 1973) 1) Consensus - Do most people do this in the situation? 2) Distinctiveness - Does the target person only do this in this particular situation? 3) Consistency - Does the target person do this all of the time in this situation, or was this a one-time occurrence? Imagining Alternatives - The judgements we make aren’t always based on what actually happened; sometimes it’s based on what we imagine would/could have happened. - Consider Milgram's experiment: you might imagine you were the type to resist the experimenter, thus making a causal inference. - Discounting principle: Less weight is given to a particular cause of behavior if there are alternative causes present - Ex: Job Interview - Is the interviewee being pleasant because of who s/he is, or because it’s a job interview? - Augmentation principle: Greater weight is given to a particular cause of behavior if there are other potential causes that would normally produce the opposite outcome - Ex: You learn that a person just ran a marathon…a person had previously had a stroke and had been completely paralyzed the year before. Your perception changes from generally impressed to extreme admiration and awe.

Jones, Davis, & Gergen (1961)

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Out-of-role behavior is more informative than in-role behavior The applicant may have acted extroverted because - They’re an extrovert - They knew the interviewer wanted an extrovert Simply can’t be sure!

The Influence of What Almost Happened - Would the same thing have happened if the circumstances had been a little different? - Counterfactual thoughts: Thoughts of what might have, could have, or should have happened “if only” something had been done differently - Emotional amplification: Emotional reactions to counterfactual thinking increase depending on how easy it is to imagine the alternative - Emotional amplification example: Silver medal syndrome - Participants watched tapes of the 1992 Summer Olympics - Rated athletes’ happiness after finishing their event and when on the medal podium - Silver medalists seemed less happy than bronze medalists Imagine there was an airplane crash in a remote region of Alaska. Suppose someone actually survived the crash, and started hiking towards safety. On average, people recommended compensating the family $162,000 more for case B. A) 75 miles away from the nearest town, they died of exposure. B) ½ mile away from the nearest town, they died of exposure.

5.3 Errors & Biases in Attribution - Self-serving attributional bias: the tendency to attribute failures to external causes and successes to internal causes (Carver et al., 1980; Green et al., 1982)

- This usually occurs because people want to maintain a positive image of themselves Think for a moment... - The last time you got an A, was it because you were smart or because the test was easy? - The last time you got a C, was it because you weren’t smart or because the test was hard or unfair? Fundamental Attribution Error - The tendency to attribute a person’s behavior to personality while ignoring situational causes - B = f(P, E) - People tend to overweight P - People tend to underweight E EXAMPLE: Jones & Harris (1967) - Participants were given an essay to read (pro-Castro or anti-Castro) - Half of the participants were told that the writer of each essay freely chose the topic, while the other half were told that the stance was assigned and that the writer had no choice in what to write about Causes of FAE: (1) Motivation - Just world hypothesis: a belief that people get what they deserve in life (Lambert et al., 1999). - Victims of natural disasters, rape, domestic abuse often blamed for their problems (Abrams et al., 2013; Bell et al., 1994). - In some cultures, children who are sexually abused thought to be sexual abusers in past lives (Woolger, 1988). - The more evenly distributed a nation’s wealth is, the less its citizens believe in the just world hypothesis Causes of FAE: (2) Perceptual Salience - Other people are usually much more attention-grabbing than the context or the situation (Lassiter et al., 2002; Robinson & McArthur, 1982). Causes of FAE: (3) Attribution & Cognition - Perceptual salience makes sense…but what about, for example, the Castro Essay Study? - Dual Process Model - Automatic vs. Controlled (Gilbert, 1989; 2002) - We make an initial, automatic dispositional attribution - We characterize the person based on the behavior - Upon reflection, we take what we know about the situation and adjust the dispositional inference

The Actor-Observer Difference - So far we’ve talked about the FAE from mostly observer perspectives - A difference in attribution based on who is making the causal assessment (the actorobserver difference): - The actor (more likely to make situational attributions) - The observer (more likely to make dispositional attributions) - Participants asked to explain why they chose their major, why their best friend chose their major - Explaining their own major: Gave specifics about the major - Explaining their best friend’s major: Gave specifics about the person (Nisbett, et al. 1973) 5.4 Culture & Causal Attribution - The social factors that are usually background noise for Westerners are more salient for those from Eastern cultures (Hedden et al., 2000; Schwarz & Nisbett, 2000). - American attributions are less influenced by consensus information (recall covariation principle) than Korean attributions. - Westerners are more likely to think of themselves independently: personal goals, attributes, preferences vs. non-westerners. Cultural Differences in Attending to Context - When describing this scene, individualists were more likely to mention the focal objects, while collectivists described the scene as a whole. Culture and FAE - Jones & Harris (1976; the Castro Essay study) does generalize across cultures. - China (Krull et al., 1996) - Korea (Choi & Nisbett, 1998) - Japan (Kitayama & Masuda, 1997) - However, non-westerners are more likely to notice situational factors and are less likely to make dispositional inferences in the first place. Priming Culture - The effects of culture can be manipulated - For people who are connected to both individualistic and collectivistic cultures (e.g., residents of Hong Kong; Asian Americans) attribution styles may change depending on the cultural context (Hong, Chiu & Kung, 1997).

Social Class and Attributions - Eastern/Western is not the only cultural distinction that shows differences in FAE - Social class (SES): The amount of wealth, education, and occupational prestige that someone has. - Social class differences mimic cultural differences

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High SES individuals are often highly independent Low SES individuals are often highly interdependent

Low SES people are more likely to cite situational causes for events Example: “What is driving the recent spike in US economic inequality?” Low SES: “Lack of equal educational opportunities.” High SES: “Lack of effort.”

Low SES people are more sensitive to context by the faces around it (like in interdependent cultures) Low SES people have to be more interdependent! (Kraus, Piff, & Keltner, 2009)

Chapter 6: Emotion 6.1: Characterizing Emotion - Emotions - Brief, specific psychological and physiological responses that help humans meet goals, many of which are social (p. 196) - They are different from moods and emotional disorders

Components of Emotions - We construe situations in our environment according to their relation to our current goals through a process known as appraisal - Primary appraisal is when people make fast, automatic considerations of whether something makes them feel pleasant or unpleasant (e.g., liking or disliking something). - Secondary appraisal is more deliberative, whereby our initial pleasant/unpleasant feelings are transformed into more specific emotions such as fear, anger, sympathy, etc. - Appraisal processes initiate emotions. Once under way, they involve… - physiological responses (e.g. blushing, goosebumps) - expressive behavior (e.g., facial expressions) - subjective feelings (the experience of an emotion described with words/narratives) - action tendencies (e.g., feeling anger motivates behavior for justice; feeling afraid motivates behavior to fight or flee) 6.2: Emotional Expression Darwin’s 3 Hypotheses (1) Universality: All humans have the same facial muscles and express emotions similarly across cultures. There are six universal emotions 1. Happiness 2. Surprise 3. Sadness 4. Anger 5. Disgust 6. Fear (2) Our expressions are similar to other primates/mammals -

Facial expressions of anger resemble threat displays and attack posturing used by other mammals Human embarrassment expressions resemble “appeasement displays” shown in other social mammals (Keltner & Buswell, 1997), which signals remorse for social transgressions (Miller et al., 1992; 1996)

(3) Emotions are encoded, and not learned - People who are blind from birth show the same expressions as sighted people (Tracy & Robins, 2004; 2007) Fake vs. Real Smiles NON-DUCHENNE (Fake) - Muscle that surrounds the eye does not contract - Corners of mouth raised, but not equally on both sides DUCHENNE (Felt/Real) - Muscle that surrounds the eye contracts; causes the upper cheek to raise, and a pouch

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under the lower eyelid Both lip corners are pulled upward equally

Cultural Specificity of Emotion - Emotional expressions are not the same across all cultures (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002) - Emotion accents: Culturally specific ways of expressing a particular emotion - Example: In India, embarrassment is shown by biting the tongue (Haidt & Keltner, 1999) - Focal emotions: Emotions that are especially common in a given culture - Mexico: Pride - Tibet: Kindness - Brazil: Affectionate - Interdependent cultures (e.g., China): Shame and embarrassment - Insults to the family or sexual slurs are more evocative in honor cultures (Rodriguez et al., 2000; 2004) - China: 113 words for shame and embarrassment (vs. 25 in the US) Cultural Specificity of Emotions - Display rules: Cultural rules that govern how, when, and to whom people express emotion (Ekman & Friesen, 1969) - De-intensify: e.g., suppressing a laugh when a friend does something stupid - Intensify: e.g., you act really happy when getting a present you don’t like, so you don’t offend the giver - Mask: e.g., you feel sad but smile to avoid showing sadness - Neutralize: e.g., you hide an expression with a poker face 6.3: Emotions and Social Relationships Promoting Commitment Emotions promote commitment via: 1. signaling (e.g., expressing concern) 2. motivation (e.g., guilt → apologize)

Knowing our place in groups - Emotions are central to our affiliative tendencies. - We rely heavily on emotional expressions to signal status in hierarchies - Fraternities, sororities, political or recreational teams all leave us with a sense of hierarchy. - We attribute more status to angry people (Knutson, 1996; Tiedens, 2001). Emotional Intelligence - Emotional intelligence – the ability to express, recognize, and use emotions well within social interactions (p. 212) - Argued that EQ is as important as IQ in predicting success at work & in personal lives

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(Goleman, 1995) High EQ is beneficial at all ages of life (Brackett et al., 2011; Mayer et al., 2008).

6.4: Emotions and Social Cognition Emotions Influence Perception - We perceive events in ways that are consistent with the emotions we feel (Niedenthal & Sutterlund, 1994). - Writing about an experience that made them angry (vs. disgust, vs. sadness) increased their perceptions of neutral objects as weapons (Baumann & DeSteno, 2010). Broaden-and-Build Hypothesis (Fredrickson, 1998): - Positive emotions broaden our thoughts and actions by - Enabling more creative thought patterns. - Helping us build emotional and intellectual resources. - Increases in intellectual resources build social resources - Friendships & social networks. Emotions Influence Moral Judgement - Our emotions are powerful moral thermometers - Social intuitionist model of moral judgement (Haidt, 2001): People have automatic emotional reactions to moral situations which guide moral reasoning - First, people experience automatic emotional reactions - Second, people can use deliberative processes (cost/benefit assessment, causal attributions, norms) Moral foundations theory (Jonathan Haidt) - we assess the morality of a behavior based on 5 dimensions… 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

harm/care fairness/cheating loyalty/betrayal authority/subversion purity/degradation

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Extreme liberals rely extremely on 1) and 2) Extreme conservatives rely moderately on all 5

6.5: Happiness - Two components (Diener, 2000) - Life satisfaction – how well you think your life is going - Well being – tendency to experience more positive emotions than negatives ones

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Importance - Happy marriages last longer (Gottman, 1993) - Happy people are more creative and perform better at work - Happy people live longer (Danner et al., 2001)

Affective Forecasting (Gilbert et al., 1998) Why are we so bad at affective forecasting? - Immune Neglect: Tendency to underestimate our resilience during negative life events - Painful and difficult experiences are often less upsetting than we expect them to be - Focalism: Tendency to focus on only one aspect of an experience or event when trying to predict future emotions - Even if one “bad thing” or “good thing” happens, there are still plenty of other things going on in your life that influence your happiness Pursuing Happiness - Age and gender are relatively unimportant - Some evidence that older people are more happy (Carstensen, 2011). - Money? Only up to a certain point (Diener, 2000) - More money makes you happier, until you hit about $75,000 (Deaton & Kahneman, 2010) - Social relationships are the most powerful sources of happiness (Deaton & Kahneman, 2010) Recalling Our Happy Moments 1. Peak: The moment of maximum intensity E.g., The funniest moment of a movie, the highlight of your trip to the beach 2. End: The last moment of an experience E.g., The ending of a movie, the last few moments of your trip to the beach 3. Duration Neglect: Length of emotional experience has very little influence on our overall evaluation of the experience (Fredrickson & Kahneman,1999)

Chapter 7: Attitudes, Behavior, & Rationalization 7.1 Components & Measurement of Attitudes Attitude: an evaluation of an object along a negative or positive dimension: it includes three core components 1. affect (emotion) 2. behavior (the tendency to approach or avoid the object) 3. cognition (thoughts and knowledge) Example: starbucks coffee (attitude object) - Affect : i love it

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Behavior: I drink it every day Cognition: It wakes me up

The ABC’s are not always in line: Example: starbucks coffee (attitude object) - Affect : i love it (+) - Behavior: I drink it every day (+) - Cognition: It gives me insomnia (-) Measuring Attitudes - Explicit Methods - Attitudes are most commonly assessed with simple self-report measures. A popular method is a Likert scale in which participants are asked to rate an attitude object (e.g., dogs) with anchors on both ends 1 = extremely loveable to 7 = extremely unloveable. PROS - Easy to write the questions and tailor to a specific attitude object - Easy to administer CONS - Prone to social desirability bias → want to conform to society standards - May not capture everything we want (E.g., How accessible an attitude is)

Measuring Attitudes - Implicit Methods - Implicit methods involve things other than self-reports - Response latency – “How good of a president would Ronald Reagan be?” - Strong predictor of voting behavior (Fazio & Williams, 1986) - Implicit attitude measure (e.g., IAT) - Capture nonconscious attitudes – people’s immediate evaluative reaction they may or may not be aware of. Example: Measure of Implicit Racism PROS - Response time can indicate attitude accessibility - Less prone (but not completely immune) to social desirability bias CONS - More difficult to administer (time intensive, requires a computer) - They still do not tell the full story behind one’s attitudes 7.2 Predicting Behavior from Attitudes - Previous behavior towards a target contributes to current attitude - However, current attitudes can also cause future behavior

LaPiere (1934): - Traveled across the U.S. with a Chinese couple in the 1930s, when anti-Chinese prejudice was very high. - Contacted 250 restaurants to ask if they would serve Chinese customers, and 90% said that they would not. - However, when they actually visited these restaurants, they were only denied service at 1 of the 250 restaurants - LaPiere’s study shook up the landscape of attitude research: Sometimes expressed attitudes don’t predict actual behavior at all! Predicting Behavior from Attitudes

Attitude research has historically struggled to reliably predict behavior…Why? Five Reasons: 1. Other powerful determinants 2. Attitu...