Social Psychology - Textbook Chapter Summaries PDF

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Social Psychology
Aronson, Wilson, Akert
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PSYC2100: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Chapter Summaries from Textbook CHAPTER ONE: METHODOLOGY A Brief History of Social Psychology  Social psychology can help you make sense of your own social world  The mere presence of another person enhances performance on a simple task  Individual effort decreases as group size increases  Behaviorism seeks to explain all of psychology in terms of learning principles such as rewards and punishment What Do Social Psychologists Do?  Social psychology features experiments and the scientific methods. It studies inner states and processes as well as behavior  Social psychology is concerned with the effect of other people on (mainly adult) human beings’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors  The ABC triad in social psychology stands for o Affect: how people feel inside (including emotion) o Behavior: what people do, their actions o Cognition: what people think about  Social psychology focuses especially on the power of situations Social Psychology’s Place in the World  Social psychology is both similar to and different from other social sciences  Anthropology is the study of human culture  Economics is the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services  History is the study of past events  Political science is the study of political organizations and institutions, especially governments  Sociology is the study of human societies and the groups that form those societies  Psychology is the study of human behavior. Several other areas of psychology are related to social psychology.  Biological psychology, physiological psychology and neuroscience focus on the brain, nervous system, and other aspects of the body  Clinical psychology focuses on abnormal behavior and disorders  Cognitive psychology is the basic study of thought processes  Developmental psychology focuses on how people chance across their lives, from conception and birth to old age and death  Personality psychology focuses on differences between individuals, as well as inner processes  What separates philosophy from psychology is psychology’s heavy reliance on the scientific method Why People Study Social Psychology  Social psychologists often find the topics they study to be intrinsically interesting

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Applied researchers study a specific practical problem usually outside the laboratory

How Do Social Psychologists Answer Their Own Questions?  To be a good social psychology researcher, it is helpful to be creative  Common sense can be mistaken  The scientific methods involves five basic steps o State a problem for study o Formulate a testable hypothesis (educated guess) as a tentative solution to the problem o Design a study to test the hypothesis and collect data o Communicate the study’s results  The independent variable is an observable event that causes a person in a experiment to do something o It has at least two levels, categories, types or groups  In a between-subjects design, participants are exposed to only one level of the independent variable; in a within-subjects design participants are exposed to all levels of the independent variable  A design that includes more than one independent variable or factor is called a factorial design  In a factorial design, a researcher can determine the effects of each individuals independent variable on the dependent variable (called main effects) as well as the joint effects of more than one independent variable on the dependent variable (called interaction effects)  The dependent variable is an observable behavior produced by a person in an experiment  An operational definition classifies theoretical variables in terms of observable operations, procedures, and measurements  For a theory to be scientific, it must be testable, so its theoretical constructs must be operationally defined  Two essential features of experiments are control and random assignment o Control: by exercising experimental control, the researcher tries to make sure that any differences observed on the dependent variable were caused by the independent variable and not by other factors o Random Assignment: Participants in an experiment must be randomly assigned to levels of the independent variable (assignment to groups is random if each participant has an equal chance of being in each group)  A confederate is someone who helps the researcher by pretending to be another participant  Experiments conducted in a real-world rather than a laboratory setting are called field experiments  Experimental realism refers to whether participants get so caught up in the procedures that they forget they are in an experiment (important for determining whether the results obtained in the experiment can be applied to the real world)  Mundane realism refers to whether the setting and research procedures physically resemble the real world

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In the correlational approach, the researcher does not try to control the variables or randomly assign participants to groups, but merely observes whether things go together A correlation gives the relationship or association between two variables When a correlation is positive, as one variable goes up the other variable also goes up When a correlation is negative, as one correlation increases the other decreases A correlation coefficient can range from +1.0 (a perfect positive correlation) to -1.0 (a perfect negative correlation) The main weaknesses of the correlational approach is it does not allow the researcher to conclude that changes in one variable caused changes in the other variable A sample is random if each person in the population has an equal chance of being selected The population is the total number of people or objects under consideration The margin of error is how much the results of a survey can be expected to deviate by chance alone A survey is reliable if it gives consisted results A survey is valid if it measures what it purports to measure Test-retest reliability measures how consistent a measure is over time Cronbach œ indicates whether the items in a measure are highly correlated Convergent validity exists if measures of similar constructs are highly correlated Divergent validity exists if measures of different constructs are not correlated Measurement validity refers to the ability of a measure to predict an outcome that should be related to the measure A measure has face validity if it appears to measure what it purports to measure

How Much of Social Psychology is True?  Because research builds on older research, science is self-correcting  Some psychological facts and principals are true for people everywhere. There are also cultural differences, and some of them are quite substantial and important. CHAPTER THREE: THE SELF What is the Self?  The three main parts of the self are: o Self knowledge/ self-concept o The interpersonal self or public self o The agent or executive function  The main purposes od the self include gaining social acceptance and playing social roles  People from individualistic cultures understand the self as interdependent (connected to others in a web of social relations), whereas people from collectivist cultures lean toward an independent self-construal (seeing the self as a separate, special or unique, self-contained unit).  Self-awareness is attention directed at the self, and usually involves evaluating the self

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Private self-awareness refers to attending to one’s inner states; public selfawareness means attending to how one is perceived by others Self-awareness is often unpleasant because people often compare themselves to high standards Being self-aware can make people behave better Human self-awareness is far more extensive and complex than what is found in any other species Self-awareness is vial for self-regulation and adopting others’ perspectives

Where Self-knowledge Comes From  The looking-glass self refers to the idea that we lean about ourselves from how others judge us  People often do not realize how their minds work  The over justification effect is the tendency for intrinsic motivation to diminish for activities that have become associated with external rewards  The phenomenal self or the working self-concept is the part of self-knowledge that is currently active in the person’s thoughts  Three motivations for wanting self-knowledge are: the appraisal motive, the selfenhancement motive and the consistency motive  Self-handicapping involves putting obstacles in the way of one’s own performance, so that if one fails, the failure can be blamed on the obstacle, and if no one succeeds, one looks especially competent Self and Information Processing  The self-reference effect refers to the finding that information bearing on the self is processed more thoroughly and more deeply, and hence remembered better, than other information  Self-concept is likely to change to be consistent with the public self, and with what people want to believe about themselves Self-Esteem, Self-Deception and Positive Illusions  In many important respects, non-depressed people see the world in a distorted, biased fashion, whereas depressed people can see reality more accurately  The self-serving bias leads people to claim credit for success but deny blame for failure  People with high self-esteem think they are great, but most people with low selfesteem think they are only mediocre (rather than awful)  People with low self-esteem do not want to fail, are uncertain about their selfknowledge, focus on self-protection rather than self-enhancement and are prone to emotional highs and lows  Basking in reflected glory refers to people’s tendency to want to associate with winners  High self-esteem feels good and fosters initiative but does not confer many advantages in an objective sense  The sociometer theory suggests that self-esteem is a measure of how socially acceptable you think you are

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High self-esteem and narcissism are associated with some negative qualities that pertain to relations with others such as prejudice and aggression Pursuing self-esteem as an end in itself can have harmful consequences

Self-Presentation  Most people are more concerned with looking good to others than with private self-esteem  Self-presentation is any behavior that seeks to convey some image of self or some information about the self to other people, or that seeks to make an impression on others  Nearly everyone strives for a good self-presentation as a way of obtaining social acceptance  Self-presentation is so important to people that they sometimes engage in risky or dangerous behavior in order to make a good impression What Makes Us Human?  What is special about human self begins with self-awareness and self-concept  The self is a vital and distinctively human tool for gaining social acceptance and for participating in culture CHAPTER FIVE: SOCIAL COGNITION What is Social Cognition?  The study of any sort of thinking by people about people and about social relationships  People think about other people more than any other topic, and probably more than about all other topics combined  The human mind is designed to participate in society, and this means its primary job is dealing with other people  People think about other people in order to be accepted by them or to compete with or avoid them  Cognitive Miser: refers to peoples reluctance to do much extra thinking  People generally prefer to conserve effort by relying on automatic modes of thought when they can  Knowledge structures are organized packets of information that are stored in memory  Schemas are knowledge structures that represent substantial information about a concept, its attributes, and its relationships to other concepts  A violation of expectancies sparks deliberate thinking  Scripts are knowledge structures that contain information about how people (or other objects) behave under varying circumstances; scripts define situations and guide behavior  At least 3 main types of goals guide how people think o Find the right answer to some problem or question o Reach a particular, preferred conclusion o Reach a pretty good answer or decision quickly

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In the Stroop effect, the automatic response is to say the word rather than the ink color The four elements that distinguish automatic from deliberate processes are intention, effort, control and efficiency Priming is the tendency for frequently relating activated concepts to become more accessible in memory Framing is how something is presented Trying to suppress a thought can have the paradoxical effect of increasing the though In the counter regulation or “what the heck” effect – dieters eat more if they believe they have already broken their diets, than if they are hungry

Attributions and Explanations: Why Did That Happen?  Attributions are the inferences people make about events in their lives  Internal, stable attributions involve ability: internal, unstable attributions involve effort, external stable attributions are the difficulty in the task, external unstable attributions involve luck  The self-serving bias suggests that people want to take credit for success but deny blame for failure  The actor/observer bias states that actors tend to make external attributions, observers make internal attributions  The fundamental attribution error (correspondence bias) refers to the finding that people have a bias to attribute another person’s behavior to internal or dispositional causes  A major attribution dimension is whether one believes another person’s behavior was intentional vs. accidental Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts  Heuristics are mental shortcuts or rules of thumb  The representativeness heuristic is the tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the extent to which it resembles the typical case  The availability heuristic is the tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event b y the ease with which relevant instances come to mind  The simulation heuristic is the tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the ease with which you can imagine (or mentally simulate) an event  The anchoring and adjustment heuristic suggests that when people estimate how frequent or likely an event is, they use a starting point (called an anchor) and then make adjustments up and down from this starting point Flawed or Clever Thinking  According to the standard view, the purpose of thinking was to discover the truth  Heuristic and automatic thinking was viewed as flawed and biased  According to the current view, thinking is for arguing and persuading others  Heuristics is not views as flawed and biased, indeed it often provides us with excellent answers

Errors and Biases  People may make cognitive errors because they are more concerned about arguing their point of view than about finding the truth  Information overload is the state of having too much information to make a decision or of having too much information to make a decision or remain informed about a topic  Estimation and shifting criteria can result in biased counts of sexual partners  People generally have access to two types of information o Statistical information from a large number of people o Case history information from a small number or people  People generally pay the most attention to case history information  Confirmation bias is the tendency to notice information that confirms one’s beliefs and to ignore information that disconfirms ones beliefs  An illusory correlation occurs when people overestimate the link between variables that are related only slightly or not at all o It can occur even after one exposure, called one-shot illusory correlations  The mass media contribute to illusory correlations by focusing on rare events  The base rate fallacy is the tendency to ignore or underuse base rate information and instead to be influenced by the distinctive features of the case being judged  The hot hand is the tendency for gamblers who get luck to think they have a “hot hand” and their luck will continue  The gambler’s fallacy is the tendency to believe that a particular chance event is affected by previous events and that chance events will “even out” in the short run  The false consensus effect describes the finding that people tend to underestimate the number or people who share their most prized characteristics and abilities  The theory perseverance proposes that once the mind draws a conclusion it tends to stick with that conclusion unless there is overwhelming evidence to change it  Polarization is the pattern of shifting toward more extreme opinions  Statistical regression (also called regression to the mean) refers to the statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behavior to return toward the average  One major evolutionary purpose of thinking is to decide how to respond when one’s goals are blocked  The belief that people can control totally chance situations is called the illusion of control  Counterfactual thinking involves imagining alternatives to past or present factual events or circumstances  Upward counterfactuals posit alternatives that are better than actuality whereas downward counterfactuals posit alternatives that are worst than actuality  Regrets involve feeling sorry for misfortunes, limitations, loses, transgressions, shortcomings or mistakes  Regrets are feelings, whereas counterfactuals are thoughts Are People Really Stupid?  More often than not, heuristics provide the correct answers or al least answers that are good enough

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Relying less on memory, considering multiple alternatives, using meta-cognition, searching for disconformity information and using explicit decision rules are all techniques that can reduce cognitive errors

What Makes Us Human? Putting the Cultural Animal in Perspective  The remarkable power of human though creates both unique errors and unique capabilities to find the truth CHAPTER NINE: PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOUR What is Prosocial Behavior?  Prosocial behavior involves doing good for others or society; it builds relationships and allows society to function  Obeying rules, conforming to norms, cooperating and helping are all forms of prosocial behavior  Public circumstances generally promote prosocial behavior. That is, people behave better when others are watching and know who they are  Reciprocity is the obligation to return in kind what another has done for us  Equity means that each person receives benefits in proportion to what he or she did o Equality means that everyone gets the same amount, regardless of performance  A full sense of fairness, recognizing both under benefits and over benefits, is important in humans but probably absent in other animals. Cooperation, Forgiveness, Obedience, Conformity and Trust  Prisoner’s dilemma is a game that consists of tradeoffs between cooperation and competition  Zero-sum games are those in which the winnings and loosings add up to zero, so that one’s gain is another’s loss  If one member of a pair is not cooperative, then cooperation is typically doomed  Communication improves the chances of cooperation  Forgiveness helps repair relationships and provides health benefits to both the forgiver and the forgiven person  Forgiveness is more likely when the offense or hurt was minor and when the offending person apologizes o People who are religious are committed to the relationship and are not self-centered or narcissistic are more willing to forgive than other people  A majority of participants in Milgram’s experiments delivered extreme shocks to a screaming victim in obedience to an authority figure  Although mindless obedience can be bad, in most cases society is better off if people obey societal rules.  Conformity means going along with the crowd – it can be good or bad  Conformity and obedience can be prosocial behaviors, in that they make it easier to get along with others and for society to function

Why Do People Help Others?  The evolutionary theory of kin selection suggest that we prefer to help others who are related to us  Altruistic helping is motivated by empa...