Social psychology
The study of how people think/feel/behave in regard to others and how individual thought is affected by others
Attributions
How people explain the causes of behavior 2 types: -internal/dispositional/personal -external/situational (Fritz Heiders big insight)
Fundamental attribution error
Tendency for observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate dispositional influences on others behaviors
-also called correspondence bias
Ex. Someone driving crazy and you don’t know why
Self-serving bias
People tend to make internal attributions for positive outcomes and blame negative outcomes on external causes Why? -self-esteem -our efforts -extends to in-groups
Attitude
General evaluations people hold in regard to themselves, others, objects, events, or ideas
-often influenced by beliefs
-for choosing favorable/unfavorable
Ex. Whether you like the president
Petty and Cacioppo
Said people do not always process communications in the same way
- Central and peripheral route to persuasion
- motivation+ability = route u take
- attitudes affect actions
Foot in the door technique
Start with small request and work up to big request
-actions affect attitudes (also role playing)
Cognitive dissonance theory
Three basic ideas:
-people are motivated to be consistent in their attitudes and behaviors
-behaving inconsistent with attitude leads to tension (this is cognitive dissonance)
-we are motivated to reduce dissonance by changing attitude or behavior
Ex. Patty Hearst or Boring study
How to reduce dissonance
- Convince self that behavior is consistent with attitude
- Minimize the importance of the inconsistency
- Change behavior(hardest)
- Add in consonant cognitions or subtract dissonant cognitions
- Change attitude
Chamaeleon affect
People mimic without knowing
- people mimic people they like more
- social influence is automatic
Three types of social influence
Conformity, compliance, and obedience
Conformity
A change in behavior or attitude brought about by a desire to follow the police or standards of others
Ex. Asch’s line judgement
-increases with group size(4), unamity, friends
-increase w easy tasks +low importance
-decrease with hard task and high importance
Compliance
Yielding to a direct, explicit appeal meant to produce certain behavior or agreement to a particular point of view
Obedience
A change in behavior due to commands of others
-Milgram’s shock study
Informational social influence
Using information of others to understand ambiguous situations
- to be accurate
- leads to private acceptance
- reason we conform
Normative social influence
Conformity for social approval
- to avoid conflict
- Norms
- leads to public compliance
- reason we conform
- aschs study
Influences on obedience
- Immediacy of victim
- Immediacy of authority
- Foot in door
- Responsibility passed on
- Trust of test
- Rebellious model
(Gender and type of pleas did not help)
Social facilitation
An increase in performance when in the presence of others (easy task)
Social inhibition
A decrease in performance when in the presence of others
Deinduviduation
Losing ones sense of personal identity, which makes it easier to behave in ways inconsistent with ones normal values
Reasons:
-makes people feel less accountable
-distracts from self values
Idea: being in a group or crowd undermines constraints of social norms
Stereotypes
A generalization about a group where characteristics are assigned to all members regardless of actual variation
Prejudice
Attitude towards a group of people based solely on the people
Ex. Racism
-can bias behavior
Discrimination
Unjustified negative behavior toward a member of a group bc of their membership
Social roots of predjudice
Belief in just world
Realistic group conflict-conflict bc of scarce resources
Ingroup and outgroup- favoring own group
-can be explicit or implicit(automatic)
Scapegoat theory
Theory that prejudice offers outlet for anger
-emotional root for prejudice
Categorization
Tendency to underestimate similarities in own group and overestimate similarities in other group
- out group homogeneity bias
- cognitive root for bias
Aggression
Behavior intended to harm another person who is motivated to avoid the harm 3 factors: -behavior -intention -victim avoiding
Peripheral vs central route persuasion
Peripheral- people are influenced by incidental cues; very quick (attractiveness)
Central-people focus on the arguments; occurs when people are already involved
Zimbardo
Ran studies for role playing affect
(Bad barrel not bad apples)
“Fear can create aggression which is blamed on out group”
Group think
The mode of thinking that occurs when desire for harmony overrides realistic shit
Compassionate love
Needs:
Equity:partner gets what they give
Self-disclosure: revealing intimate aspects
Social exchange theory
Theory our social behavior is an exchange process (maximize benefits and reduce cost)
Reprocity norm
People will help people who have helped them
Social trap
Conflicting parties pursue their own interest rather than the good of the group which causes destructive behavior
Mirror-image perception
Mutual views by conflicting groups, however, sees the other group as evil
Super ordinate goals
Shared goals that override group differences
GRIT
Strategy designed to reduce international tensions
Other Race affect
Tendency to recall faces of own race better
- 3-4 months
- own age bias too
Personality
Pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting
Freud
- the psychoanalytic perspective of personality
- ids, ego, superego (personality structure)
- psychosexual stages
- childhood sexuality and unconscious motives influence personality
- human personality is from conflict between impulses
Ids
Unconscious psychic energy strives to satisfy basic drives to survive, reproduce, and aggress (pleasure principle)
-unconscious mind
Ego
Seeks to gratify the ids impulses in realistic ways that bring long term pleasure (reality principle)(3)
- mostly conscious
- makes peace between ids and superego
Superego
Forces ego to consider the real and ideal
- how we should behave
- 5-6
- guilt
- outside awareness but accessible
Erogenous zones
Pleasure sensitive areas
Psychosexual stages
Oral- 0-18 months, pleasure centers on the mouth
Anal-18-36 months bowel and bladder elimination
Phallic- 3-6 years, pleasure zone is the genitals
Latency- 6-puberty, a phase of dormant sexual feelings
Genital- maturation of sexual interests
Defense mechanisms
The egos protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
- regression, re-pression, reaction formation, projection, rationalization, displacement, and denial
- indirect and unconscious
Regression
Leads an individual faced with anxiety to retreat to a more infantile psychosexual stage
Repression
Vanishes anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from conscious
-underlies all other defense mechanisms
Reaction formation
Causes the ego to unconsciously switch unacceptable impulses into their opposites
Ex. Expresses purity when anxiety about sex
Projection
Leads people to disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to another
Rationalization
Offers self justifying exclamations and place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one’s actions
Displacement
Shifts sexual/aggressive impulses toward it as more acceptable or less threatening object or person
-outlet
Adler
- neofreudian
- believed in childhood tensions, however, these tensions were social and not sexual
- Child struggles with an inferiority complex during growth and strives for superiority
Horney
Neofreudian
- believed in social aspects like Adler
- countered freuds assumption of women’s weak super ego and penis envy
Projective tests
Provides window into the unconscious by asking test takers to describe an ambiguous stimulus
- Thermatic perception test
- ink blot (not valid or reliable
False consensus effect
Tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors
-Freud
Terror management theory
Enhance self-esteem to counter our anxiety about our own morality
Free association
Method of exploring the unconscious mind where a person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind
Oedipus complex
A boys sexual desires for Mother and hatred for father
-Electra complex for girls
Identification
Freud
Children incorporate parents values into super egos
Fixation
Freud
Lingering focus of pleasure seeking energies an early stage where conflicts were unresolved (oral, Anal, or phallic)
Manifest and latent content
Manifest is remembered content of dreams. Latent is censored expression of unconscious wishes.
Collective unconscious
Concept of shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces of our own species (Jung)
Maslow’s Self actualizing pyramid
- Physiological needs
- Safety needs
- Belongingness needs
- Self-esteem needs
- Self actualization needs
- Self transcendence needs
The humanistic perspective
- focused on our inner capacity is for growth
- maslow’s pyramid
- rogers perspective
- central feature: self-concept
- vague, selfish, and naive
Carl Rogers person centered perspective
Genuineness, acceptance, and empathy or the three things we need to grow mofo
Unconditional positive regard
An attitude of grace, an attitude that values us even knowing our feelings
-free of being spontaneous without fearing losing others esteem
The trait perspective
Peoples characteristic behaviors and conscious motives
- Allport
- describe traits not explain them
Factor analysis
Round pie chart (kinda) with four main personalities
- genetically influenced
- stable and extroverts
Personality inventory
A questionnaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors
- used to assess traits
- MMPI
The big five factors of assessing traits
Openness Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism -stabilizes with age -50% heretability -brain structure and culture matter -can predict behaviors
The social cognitive perspective
- Bandura
- personality shaped by the interactions between people traits, environments, and behaviors
- reciprocal determinism
- personal control
Self actualization
- Maslow
- Motivation to fill potential
Self efficacy
Sense of competence and effectiveness
Narcissism
Excessive self-love and self absorbtion
trephination
- old school way of getting rid of disorders
- “releases dempons”
- burr holes
Pinel
said madness was not demons but a sickness caused by stress and inhumane conditions
-treatment was focusing on relieving stress
the medical model
concept that diseases, including psych disorders, have physical causes that can be diagnosed and treated
generalized anxiety disorder
anxiety disorder where a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic system arousal
- cognitive and physical symptoms
- over exaggerating
panic disorder
anxiety disorder marked by brief unpredictable episodes of intense dread
- terror
- chest pain
- choking
phobias
anxiety disorder marked by persistent irrational fear and avoidance of some shit
OCD
anxiety disorder marked by unwanted repetitive thought and actions
- common for teens
- genetic
compulsive hoarding
inability or unwillingness to discard large quantities of objects that cover living areas of the home and cause distress
PTSD
an anxiety disorder marked by haunting memories, social withdrawl, jumping anxiety, and insomnia that lingers for weeks after traumatic experience
- any age
- greater emotional distress= higher risk
- genetic
- smaller amygdala
fear conditioning
when associations form between neutral stimuli and fearful events
-simulus generalization and reinforcement
anxiety disorder causes
- fear conditioning
- observational learning
- cognition
- natural selection
- genes
- brain
major depressive disorders
mood disorder where a person experiences 2+ weeks of feelings of worthlessness
- common cold of psych disorders
- women twice as likely
- increasing
social cognitive perspective of depression
explanatory style: to what we attribute bad events and failures in life
schizophrenia
delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and actions
- viruses during pregnancy
- small thalamus + cortex
- out of sync neurons
- dopamine
delusions vs. disturbed perceptions
delusions- bizarre beliefs
disturbed perceptions- hallucinations
dissociative disorder
conscious awareness becomes separated from previous thoughts, memories, and feelings
dissociative identity disorder
rare condition where a person exhibits 2+ distinct alternating
personality disorders
inflexible and enduring behavior patterns that impair social functioning
antisocial personality disorder
a personality disorder in which the person exhibits a lack of conscience for wrongdoing
- tendency for aggression
- small amygdala + less active frontal lobe
- typically male
- obsterical complications and childhood poverty
agoraphobia
fear of situations of not escaping when anxiety strikes
rumination
compulsive fretting and overthinking
state-dependent memory
mood depending on experiences recalled
chronic vs acute schizophrenia
chronic- episodes keep getting longer and more frequent
acute- and age after traumatic event
fugue state
sudden loss of memory or change in identity
autokinetic
dot moving in room