AP Psychology (Chapter 10)

Study Guide - Social Behavior & Cognition

Be able to explain the mutual relation between attitudes and behavior. It is commonly recognized that attitudes affect behavior. For example, if one supports the military, she will not vote in support of funding cuts for the military. 1. Describe the foot-in-the-door technique and how it demonstrates the influence of behavior on attitudes. In the experiment, people were asked to put up a sign in their lawn, advocating driving safety. After a few days, they were asked again to put up a larger sign in their lawn. Those who accepted the initial request were more likely to accept the second. A possible explanation for this is that people who accepted the first request experience a change in self-perception: that they really care about the issue because they took the offer (no one forced me to, I must feel strongly about it). Later on, they were ready to play the part on a larger scale. Know how aspects of cognitive dissonance, including bringing ones own behavior into line with ones attitudes, can cause attitude change. In one example of cognitive dissonance, two participants were paid to lie to another person that a boring task was interesting. One was paid $20 dollars while the other was paid $1. The higher paid participant recalled the task as boring and and lied, but the lower paid said they enjoyed the task and in fact, told the truth. The lower paid participant, didnt want to consider himself as a casual liar (especially for just a buck) so he changed his perception of the task so he can believe he didnt lie. Be familiar with forced compliance and justification of effort in this regard. forced compliance-t he idea that authority or some other perceived higher ranking person can force an individual to say or perform acts that are against their better judgment. justification of effort- Another example is when someone perceives a goal as valuable (even if its not) if he spent a lot of effort and time to achieve it. 2. Define attitudes; summarize the factors that determine the degree to which attitudes predict behavior. Attitude is defined as a stable set of mental views and assessments about some idea. It involves both beliefs and emotions. There is evidence that attitudes do not predict ones behavior (ex: a hotel serving a Chinese couple during a time of Orientalracism, while marking on a report that they would not) . Some wonder whats the point of studying attitudes when they do not predict behaviors; however, perhaps depending

on how strongly the attitude toward something is may act as a better predictor of a behavior. 3. Distinguish implicit vs. explicit attitudes. Explicit attitudes are able to be controlled consciously (ex: through the act of filling out a survey). Implicit attitude is revealed indirectly. Some experiments have shown evidence of this. In one example, participants were asked to respond to whether a word was a pronoun or not ( he, she, it, all do, etc.). Before the pronouns, a stereotypical occupation of a man (doctor, mechanic) or a woman ( nurse, secretary) was shown. People had faster reaction times to the corresponding masculine or feminine pronoun. These results suggest that people tend to associate certain professions with certain genders, whether or not they want to. Know how priming and the IAT are used to probe implicit attitudes. In an example IAT test, people were primed by viewing a white or AfricanAmerican face. Afterwords, they were asked to respond to whether a word was positive or negative. Generally, positive word primed with a white face and an African face prime with a negative word had faster reaction times. Theses tests are considered to be accurate because those who explicitly show racism have scored more negatively on the IAT. Nevertheless, people who have degree of prejudice even if they dont want to think of themselves as so (contrasts their explicit beliefs). 4. What is the above-average effect, and what are some explanations for it? This states that people generally view themselves as above-average. For example: when asked if a person thinks he is a good driver, when he is a slow a careful driver, he will consider being slow and careful qualities of a good driver. On the other hand, someone who is a fast driver may think that being fast is a positive quality. Also, it is known that memory is selective. If a student is asked if she is a good-leader, she may conclude that she is by looking into her memory for occasions of when she has shown positive leadership qualities rather than negative ones. 5. Why are first impressions so important? First impressions set the framework of how we understand other qualities of a person. If one sets a good first impressions, the positive note seems to override many negatives that come after it, and vice versa. Know the role of schemas and implicit theories of personality in social cognition and impression formation. Schemas are sets of organzied expectaions aboutthe way different behaviors hang together. (ex: if someone is outgoing, we assume she is also talkative) Assuming

someone has one quality because she has another is known as implicit theories of personality. Schemas help us fill in the blanks in our perception of other people. We remember that extrovert as spirited and boisterous while introvert as shy and reserved. This suggests that social cognition, thinking about other people, works a lot like cognition in general. Our memory is guided by preconception. 6. What are stereotypes and what is the role of illusory correlation in maintaining inaccurate stereotypes? Making stereotypes is also the cost of using schematic thinking. After leaning a trait about one person, schemas can be over simplified and applied to the whole group. Once a stereotyoe is established in ones mind, whenever it occurs again, the stereotype is reinforced, making one imagine it always happens when there is really not correlation. This is illusory correlation. 7. What are situational and dispositional factors in causal attribution? Situational factor is asking if the action is appropriate for the enviornment Dispositional factor is asking if that person just smiles at everyone whether their action has no special meaning. Be able to evaluate the roles of situational and dispositional factors in judgments of other people. 8. What is the fundamental attribution error? It is a source of error or bias that comes from a tendency to ascribe peoples behavior to their nature and not their situation, despite reason to believe that the situation is playing a crucial role Why are people more inclined to make situational attributions about their own behavior, as opposed to the behavior of others? Supposedly, this is a consequence of how much we know about ourselves, relative to how much others know about us. The tendency to make dispositional attributions lessens when the person is a close friend instead of an acquaintance or stranger. 9. What is social cognition? Studying how people think of other people. Be able to describe Aschs experiment on the social basis of physical reality and to indicate its importance for understanding the social construction of the world.

10. What accounts for the effectiveness of persuasive communication? 1. The source of the message (someone who is or appears credible, versus someone with no credentials) or 2. The actual message The central route to persuasion, where we follow the message and consider its argument, often when we care about the issue. content + information is important, strong arguments prevail The peripheral route to persuasion not caring about the issue or are distracted, so the presentation of the information is more effective. Be familiar with the motivation to conform, including the avoidance of embarrassment. Be able to discuss the importance of a unanimous opinion vs. a judgment in which there is at least one dissenter in addition to the target participant. 11. What characterizes the authoritarian personality? Personality would be toward totalitarian dogma and thus toward blind obedience, prejudiced against various minority groups holding certain sentiments about authority, including a general belief that the world is best governed by a system of power and dominance in which each of us must submit those above us and show harshness to those below. Know Milgrams basic study on obedience. Know the importance of seeing oneself as anothers agent. Be familiar with how dehumanization, psychological distance, and gradual escalation (slippery slope) influence blind obedience. Be able illustrate these with examples from the Milgram experiments. Be able to contrast personality factors with situational factors as causes of blind obedience. Be able to describe the Zimbardo prisoner study as another example of situational factors causing normal persons to behave in a cruel manner. 12. Describe social loafing and social facilitation. Social Loafing is when individuals work as a group on a common task, all doing the same thing, they often generate less effort than they would if they worked alone.

Social Facilitation is when in the presence of others, people often do better on a task than we otherwise would, something that can be demonstrated with both physical tasks and mental ones 13. What is deindividuation? How does it influence crowd behavior? A state in which an individual in a group loses awareness of himself as a separate individual. It can influence the decisions and cruelty of a group forced to make a decision of how to act in a certain situation Know how to account for apparently irrational behavior by a crowd in terms of the rational behavior of the individuals in the crowd. 14. What is the prisoners dilemma? What are payoff matrices? prisoners dilemma - two prisoners, each of whom can confess or stay silent. 1.both stay silent - 1 year of jail for each 2. A confesses, B doesnt - A goes free, B gets 20 years 3. B confesses, A doesnt - B goes free, A gets 20 years 4. both confess - 8 years for both -payoff matrices - a chart that shows all possible results of different actions in a situation Know how the prisoners dilemma analysis can account for panic in crowds, for social dilemmas such as air pollution, and what strategies might produce cooperation. 15. Describe the difference between collectivist and individualist cultures. collectivist - many societies/cultures in Latin America, Asia and Africa. people are considered fundamentally interdependent and the emphasis is on obligations within ones family and immedate community. individualist - United States, Western Europe, Canada and Australia. people are viewed as independent, separable entities whose actions are driven by internal needs, desires and emotions. the empasis is on the ways a person can stand out through achieving private goals. How might cross-cultural studies provide a different perspective on social cognition? It allows for a unique perspective on many of the social psychological phenomena we have reviewed, with much of the relevant evidence coming from studies that have used participants from diverse cultures. Individualist, people are more likely to rate themselves above average in grades, memory, athletic ability, etc, while in collectivist this is considered to cause disharmony and so people from collectivist cultures show no self-serving bias