1. Chapter 14 Overview Social perception Attraction
Conformity, obedience, and compliance
Group influence
Attitudes and attitude change
Prosocial behavior
Aggression
Prejudice and discrimination

2. Social Perception
Social psychology is the subfield that attempts to explain how the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others influences the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals
Confederate is a person who poses as a participant in an experiment but is actually assisting the experimenter
Naïve subject is a person who has agreed to participate in an experiment but is not aware that deception is being used to conceal its real purpose

3. Why are first impressions so important?
The primacy effect
An overall impression of another person is influenced more by the first information received about that person than by information that comes later
Once formed, an impression acts as a framework through which later information is interpreted

4. What is the difference between a situational attribution and a dispositional attribution?
An assignment of a cause to explain one’s own or another’s behavior
When we explain our own failures, we tend to make situational attributions
Attributing behavior to an external cause or factor related to a situation
When we explain other people’s failures, we are more likely to make dispositional attributions
Attributing behavior to an internal cause, such as a personality trait

5. What is the difference between a situational attribution and a dispositional attribution?
The tendency to attribute other people’s behavior to dispositional causes and our own to situational causes is referred to as the actor-observer bias
People generally attribute their successes to dispositional causes and their failures to situational causes
This is referred to as the self-serving bias

6. Attraction
Think about your friends. What makes you like, or even fall in love with, one person and ignore or react negatively to someone else?

7. What factors contribute to attraction?
Proximity
We tend to like and feel attracted to people who are frequently in our local environment
The mere-exposure effect
The tendency to feel more positively toward a stimulus as a result of repeated exposure to it
Reciprocity
We tend to like people who like us

8. What factors contribute to attraction?
People of all ages have a strong tendency to prefer physically attractive people
People who are physically attractive are also perceived as having other favorable qualities
This is known as the halo effect

9. How do psychologists explain romantic attraction and mating?
The matching hypothesis proposes that people choose mates who are similar to themselves in physical attractiveness and other attributes
Similarity attracts and is associated with marital success
Evolutionary psychologists argue that men and women prefer mates on the basis of what they can contribute to reproductive success
Men prefer young, attractive women
Women prefer men with resources and high status

10. How does Sternberg’s triangular theory of love account for the different kinds of romantic love?

11. Conformity, Obedience, and Compliance
Conformity is changing or adopting a behavior or an attitude in an effort to be consistent with the social norms of a group or the expectations of other people
Social norms are the attitudes and standards of behavior expected of members of a particular group

12. What did researchers find when they varied the circumstances of Milgram’s classic study of obedience?
Research participants (the “teachers”) believed that they were giving electric shocks to another participant (the “learner”)
Shock intensity increased each time the learner answered incorrectly
If the teacher hesitated, experimenter told him that he must continue
26 out of 40 participants (65%) continued to highest possible shock intensity: 450 volts
All 40 went up to at least 300 volts

13. What did researchers find when they varied the circumstances of Milgram’s classic study of obedience?
Nearly as many participants went all the way to 450 volts (48%) when the experiment was conducted at a run-down office building away from Yale University
But only 10% obeyed and gave maximum shock when they saw another person defy the experimenter and refuse to obey

14. What are three techniques used to gain compliance?
Foot-in-the-door technique
Gaining agreement to a small request first to make a person more likely to agree to a larger request later
Door-in-the-face technique
Making a large request, with the expectation that the person will refuse, to make the person more likely to comply with a smaller request later
Low-ball technique
Making an attractive initial offer to get a person to commit to an action, but then making the terms less favorable

15. Group Influence
Being part of a group often means giving up a bit of individuality, but the reward is the support and camaraderie of the group. Clearly we behave differently in a variety of ways when we are part of a group, small or large.

16. How does social facilitation affect performance?
Social facilitation is any positive or negative effect on performance that can be attributed to the presence of others
When others are present
Performance is usually enhanced on easy tasks and tasks at which we are skilled
Performance usually suffers on difficult tasks at which we are not skilled

17. What is social loafing, and what factors reduce it?
The tendency to put forth less effort when working with others than when working alone
Social loafing is common
When individual contributions to a group project cannot be identified
Among people who score low in achievement motivation
In individualistic societies

18. How do group polarization and groupthink influence decision making?
Occurs when, after discussion, group members shift to more extreme positions in the directions they were already leaning
Groupthink
Occurs when a group’s desire to maintain solidarity outweighs other considerations, a process that often leads to poor decisions

19. How do social roles influence individual behavior?
Social roles are socially defined behaviors considered appropriate for individuals occupying certain positions within a group
Social roles can shape behavior
In Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, participants’ behaviors were dramatically influenced by roles
“Guards” became heartless and sadistic
“Prisoners” became subservient
Identification with their roles led to deindividuation

20. Attitudes and Attitude Change
A relatively stable evaluation of a person, object, situation, or issue, along a continuum ranging from positive to negative

21. What are the three components of an attitude?

22. What is cognitive dissonance, and how can it be reduced?
An unpleasant state that can occur when people become aware of inconsistencies between their attitudes or between their attitudes and their behaviors
People usually try to reduce dissonance by changing their behavior, changing their attitudes, or explaining away the inconsistency or minimizing its importance

23. Methods of reducing cognitive dissonance

24. What are the elements of persuasion?
Persuasion is a deliberate attempt to influence the attitudes and/or behavior of another person
The four elements of persuasion are
The source of the communication
The audience
The message
The medium

25. What are the elements of persuasion?
Factors that make a source more persuasive include
Credibility
Attractiveness
Likeability
Audiences with low IQs tend to be more easily persuaded than those with low IQs

26. What are the elements of persuasion?
A one-sided message is usually most persuasive when the audience is not well-informed on an issue
A two-sided message is usually most persuasive when the audience is well-informed
Experimental studies suggest that television is the most effective medium through which to communicate a persuasive message

27. Prosocial Behavior
Behavior that benefits others, such as helping, cooperation, and sympathy

28. What motivates one person to help another?
Some helping behavior is motivated by altruism
Behavior that is aimed at helping another that requires self-sacrifice and is not performed for personal gain
We are more likely to help those in need
If we are in a committed relationship with them
Or if we perceive them to be similar to us
Cultural norms also influence helping behavior

29. What is the bystander effect, and why does it occur?
As the number of bystanders at an emergency increases, the probability that a victim will receive help decreases
Darley and Latané (1968): This results from diffusion of responsibility

30. Aggression
The intentional infliction of physical or psychological harm on others

31. What biological factors are thought to be related to aggression?
Twin studies and adoption studies indicate a genetic link for criminal behavior
Low arousal level of the autonomic nervous system is related to antisocial and violent behavior
A high level of testosterone is correlated with aggressive behavior in males

32. What biological factors are thought to be related to aggression?
Low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin is associated with violent behavior
Brain damage, alcohol abuse, and high levels of childhood lead exposure are also associated with aggressive behavior

33. What other factors contribute to aggression?
Frustration produces aggression
This is referred to as the frustration-aggression hypothesis
Aggression is often triggered by aversive conditions, such as pain, loud noise, and crowding
Belief in the superiority of one’s own group over other groups may lead to aggression toward others

34. According to social learning theory, what causes aggressive behavior?
Proposes that people acquire aggressive responses by observing aggressive models
The theory is supported by findings that people who were abused as children are more likely to be abusers as parents
Also, research provides overwhelming evidence of an association between TV violence and aggressive behavior by viewers

35. Prejudice and Discrimination
Prejudice consists of attitudes (usually negative) toward others based on their gender, religion, race, or membership in a particular group
Discrimination consists of behavior (usually negative) directed toward others based on their gender, religion, race, or membership in a particular group

36. What factors contribute to the development of prejudice and discrimination?
Realistic conflict theory
Proposes that prejudice can arise out of competition between groups for scarce resources
Prejudice can also be caused by people’s tendency to divide the world into distinct social categories
In-groups and out-groups
Social-cognitive theory
Proposes that prejudice is learned in the same way that other attitudes are– through modeling and reinforcement