Psychology 220

TT1 Lecture Notes

<Social Psychology> Social psychology- scientific study of the reciprocal influence

of the individual and his or her social environment. o A foothold in abstract theory and concrete practice

Psychology – outcome by chance or a real phenomenon Beliefs, feelings attitudes and emotions affect behaviors which

reflects on other people. This all occurs in the head (BAEF) Social psychology is not chemistry or physics, we traffic

probabilities, likelihood and correlations rather than absolute laws.

Variability of human behavior is possible to extract some basic patterns of the behavior.

Social psychology tests people’s intuition Social psychology isn’t hindsight biased Intuitions must be tested against empirical data, because

sometimes two opposing cliché’s may seem equally intuitive Case study

o Scenario: Rolling Cigars with 20 other peopleo Objective: will individual rolling increase the cigar output or

group worko Options: 1. More people, more competition therefore better

result 2. More people more anonymity, easier for the person to perform worse

o Results: relied on social facilitation <Social Facilitation>

Triplett- fishing reel experiment, who reels faster? Individual effort or with others present – triplett affect wasn’t successful

Zajonc stated presence of others increases arousal- which works by energizing a dominant response

Arousal energizes human and all other living organisms and facilitates the dominant response. Arousal activates the thoughts and motor responses that are the most practiced

Dominant response- the behavior that comes most quickly and easily given a particular stimulus - +ve are for the better, -ve for the worse – the thought that’s on the top of your head

On a well learned task, the dominant response is the correct response

On a poorly learned task, the dominant response is likely to be correct

According to Zajonc: an audience should improve your performance on tasks that are easy for someone and hamper your performance on tasks that are more difficult

When audience is blind folded, social facilitation exists, audience reacts (evaluated), Cottrell: evaluation apprehension, this way only works with a certain threat to the audience

Case Study (Barron- distraction conflict)o Scenario: coach roaches in an easy and a hard maze o Objective: to see if audience can hurt or not hurt the

behavior – with the independent variables of: easy/hard- presence of other cockroaches – which claims as an evidence of social facilitation

o Result: with an easy maze, with audience, the cockroaches performed better, but for the hard maze, with audience they performed worse

Comparison of social facilitation theories o Zajonc

Is it social? Yes Is mere presence sufficient? Yes

o Cottrel Is it social? Yes Is mere presence sufficient? No

o Barron Is it social? No Is mere presence sufficient? Yes

Arousal is active aka this can be cooled Larger the group, diminishing of the return

<Social Loafing> The whole is less than the sum of the parts Social loafing occurs initially with two possible explanations

o Groups less coordinatedo People try less hard in groups

Latane: screaming in a room experiment as a team/individual o With one people, 82% o 5 other, 74%

6 things that reduces social loafing are: identifiability, importance of task, own efforts necessary for successful outcome, threat of punishment for poor performance, small group, group cohesiveness

Social compensation- collective effort model o Big tradeoff: effort is fatiguing but success is desired.

People seek to optimize the ratio between their input and the groups output

<Group Decision Making> Group polarization effect- group discussion amplifies initial

group inclination, whether risky or conservative 3 things create group polarization

o Greater number of arguments in favor of one position

o Informational influence may solidify ideas that used to be vague

o Social categorization: clear boundaries drawn between Ingroup and Outgroup

Group polarization also appeared in laboratory situations: this is done when the participants opinions are not told ingroup and out group can cause this

Group think- an excessive tendency which is suboptimal to seek agreement among group members

Group think likely when: similar backgrounds, isolated (influences of media), strong leader, lacking systematic decision making procedures, and high stress

Eight symptoms [pluralistic inheritance]: illusion of vulnerability, collective efforts to rationalize, unquestioned belief in group’s inherent morality, stereotyped view of enemy leaders as weak or stupid, direct pressure on dissenters to comply with the group, self censorship of deviations from group consensus, shared illusions of unanimity, emergence of self appointed mind guards to screen the group from adverse information

<Group performance vs. Individual Performance> Additive Task (Steiner): product is sum of all members

contributions o Result: Groups>Individuals

Conjunctive Task: product is determined by individual with worst performance

o Result: Groups <Individuals Disjunctive Task: product is determined by individual with best

performace o Result: Mixed

<Brainstorming> Mullen et all stated brainstorming isn’t a good idea and its

only ½ as effectiveo This was because due to

Production blocking (we are so preoccupied) Free riding (social loafing) Evaluation apprehension (controls model of social

affiliation) Performance matching (group standards)

But brainstorming is enjoyable and is a morale booster, hence our sense seem like it’s a fact

<Conformity> Sherif’s Basic Finding of Autokinetic effect: divergent but groups

eventually converged (power of the norm), wheter its settled, people go with the group norm, group norm can be maintained arbitrarily

Conformity can be explained in two different reasons: o Informational

Useful consensus info Taking norm as an input from one’s consensus

o Normative Conforming due to fear of rejection

Informational influence- the group adds additional information beyond what is provided by your senses

Normative influence- fear of being ostracized by the group Informational- tends to yield true (persuation) private

acceptance of majority view Normative- tends to yield superficial, public acceptance of

majority view o Driving force

Group size, awareness of norm (high possibility of pluralistic ignorance), moderates the effect

Case Study (Princeton Drinking Study) o Student’s thoughts on their alcohol range was significantly

lower compared to what they have told the others to be o This showed that men were bigger conformist than women

when it comes to binge drinking o The lesson: people want to conform to the norm, but

sometimes they mis identify the norm and engage in misguided conformity

Misguided Conformity- nonexistent conformity <Obedience to Authority>

Authority- the power to influence or control based on social norms, traditions, values and rules that prescribe that one has the right to such power

Refer back to the Milgram data o No gender differences were present in this study, “are we

closet nazzi’s?”o Refer to the graph from class

Legitimacy immediacy personal response Refer back to milgram and the holocaust

<Altruism> Is there such thing as true altruism?

o People help because: learning, arousal, norm Modeling and persuasion

Behaviorism- helping is the by-product of the individual’s conditioning history. “altruism” Vs. “prosocial behavior”

Arousal Model- arousal labeling that arousal with a particular emotion the label that’s generated is cued by situational features

o Cialdini et al, found that people are less likely to help someone if immediately before the opportunity to help they receive praise or money or if people are led to believe that helping does not improve mood- aka Cialdini didn’t believe in shit like altruism

Empathy-altruism hypothesis (Batson)- negative state relief does occur, but so can perspective taking, which leads to empathic concern, there are individual differences: for a certain subset of subjects receiving rewards before the helping opportunity did not diminish their likelihood of helping

Batson believes in altruism – upon arrival, PS told that upcoming study involves people’s task performance under unpleasant

Refer to the Batson Experiment Graph o Perception that someone can lead to perspective taking

empathy reduces other’s OR can lead to not PT personal Recue own

Extrinsic motivation isn’t a good motivation <By Stander Inactions>

5 steps- noticing, interpreting, diffusion of responsibility, determining course of action, providing help

Smaller the group the higher chance it was for the bystander effect to decrease aka people helped more

Social responsibility norm- people are supposed to help others who are needy or dependent

Equity/reciprocity norm- people will help those who have helped them

Most of the time the norm of reciprocity and the norm of justice

Whom do we help?o People who are attractiveo Likeability o Simialrity o Closeness

Lecture Notes

Stimulus Behavior Social cognition: Stimulus Cognitive, affective, Behavior

Motivational mechanisms Mind information processor – how far can we push this

analogy?? What are the building blocks of social thought? Social cognition (borrowing heavily from cognitive psychology)

has become the dominant paradigm in social psych in the past 20 years.

Concept: A unit of knowledge (usually about a category)o One of the building blocks that has been isolated, its also

one way to extract meaning of our world – this is also considered as a schema

o These are not accurate – example of this would be stereotype

Concepts do…o Reduce the amount of processing we need to do

when there is too much information available.o Add information when there is too little available.o Guide attention, interpretation.

Human Beings are “cognitive namer” Results of Bransford & Johnson (1973): when a concept is

given, it is easier to understand o # Of ideas recalled when there are… [Encoding vs.

Retrieval] No instructions: 2.8 Washing clothes (before reading): 5.8 this also

boosted memory because it occurred while encoding information

Washing clothes (after reading): 2.7o Bottom line: Category guides your interpretation and aids

in comprehension. Different concepts applied to the same stimulus input can lead to

dramatically different interpretations & behavior:o E.g., features of a house from the perspective of

homebuyer vs. burglar.o E.g., Man crying (did a loved one die or did he win the

lottery?o Ambiguous behavior of African-American vs. Caucasian

person. Duncan (1976):

o White subjects watched videotape of two men in a discussion. The discussion gets heated. They begin shouting. One man shoves the other.

o At this point, the tape is stopped, and subjects are asked to characterize what just happened.

What subjects didn’t know: There were two versions of the tape: in one the “shover” was Black, in the other, “shover” was White.

o Bottom line: Incoming information is assimilated into the concept that is activated.

There are severe costs of using concepts and social categories (stereotypes, “lazy” thinking).

There are also clear benefits: solidify/reify ambiguous information & conserve cognitive resources.

Macrae, Milne, & Bodenhausen (1994). o Procedures: Participants asked to read information about

several social targets presented on a computer screen while at the same time listening to an audiotape playing completely unrelated material. Either “John” then list of traits (3 seconds each) or “John-skinhead” “John-artist” “John-doctor” then traits. 10 traits presented – five were stereotype consistent (“aggressive” “creative” “caring”). 5 traits were neutral. In headphones, someone reading a passage about the geography and economy of Indonesia (something no one would have prior knowledge about).

o DV’s: Cued recall task-each target name written on top of paper and they were to recall and correctly attribute as many traits as they could. Also: Given a written quiz about Indonesia to test whether they were listening to the passage.

o Results: Subjects for whom a stereotype was provided recalled twice as many traits as those without:

Consistent: Sterotype present 4.42 & Stereotype Absent 2.08

Neutral: Sterotype present 1.83 & Stereotype Absent 1.33

If stereotypes represent a useful means for economizing cognition, then those for whom a stereotype was activated should have more resources available for the listening task. DV: questions answered correctly:

o Present: 8.75 > Absent: 6.66 Concept is often a shortcut to an understanding – Human mind is

limited WHAT ARE THE PRINCIPLES OF CONCEPT ACTIVATION? What variables make a concept more likely to be activated?

o Salience & accessibility Sublimely primal disambiguates ambiguous statements Temporary accessibility: some thing that can be primed Chronic accessibility personality related Temporary vs. chronic accessibility. In principle they work the

same… “Accessibility doesn’t care where it comes from.” -T. Higgins

Stereotypes also influence how we understand different traits. Stereotypes can influence how we understand other stereotypes.

E.g, “Harvard-educated carpenter.” Bruner & Postman (1948)—poor vs. rich children asked to

estimate (by drawing) the size of a quarter.

o Results: Poor kids drew much bigger circles (measured by their diameters).

Is Colin Fenton famous?o Jacoby et al. (1989):

Subjects merely pronounced list of 40 nonfamous names. Either immediately afterwards or 24 hours later, subjects asked to determine from a large list of names (that included the previous, pronounced words) who was famous and who was not.

o Results: More errors in the nonfamousfamous direction for pronounced words.

Encoding is after the delay only How incoming information is encoded: Hamilton, Katz & Leier

(1980). o subjects read 30 behaviors describing a target person. Half

explicitly told to “form an impression” half told to memorize the list of behaviors. After a delay, recall as many behaviors as possible.

o WHICH GROUP DISPLAYED BETTER MEMORY FOR THE BEHAVIORS?

o Counterintuitive results were shown because in the impression set condition you’re thinking about “why”

Related to chunking- when information has structure it is easier to remember

Asch (1946): Are there lawful principles that govern the formation of impressions about people?

o Asch’s approach: Make models that are simpler, yet reflective of messy real life. (e.g., trait list paradigm) Elegant control and manipulation. From one study to the next, he made minute changes in the paradigm and eventually certain regularities or “laws” were uncovered.

o Asch’s insight: In impression formation, the whole is different from the sum of the parts.

Impressions are coherent. Impressions are “concepts.” Evidence: The primacy effect. Impressions, once formed, have a life of their own: People are

able to remember their impression of someone long after the specific behaviors are long forgotten (Carlson, 1980).

Because impressions are somewhat independent of the actual “evidence,” they are difficult to overturn.

Two ways of forming an impression: On-line (as its happening) vs. memory-based.

o Hastie & Park (1986): Randomly assigned subjects to either on-line or

memory-based conditions.

“On-line” subjects told to form their impression as they went, updating as they go along. “Memory-based” only asked for their impression after reading the sentences.

Ordered mattered for online participants because you have to “update” – huge primacy effect

Found that subjects who had viewed the exact same sentences reached very different judgments of the target. For the mem-based subjects, judgment correlated with recall, for online, judgment not correlated with recall. Can you explain why? For online, order mattered, for mem-based order didn’t matter. Can you explain why? Impressions are hard to forget whereas behaviors are easy to forge

How do people handle unexpected information about someone?

o Logically, there are three possibilities: More attention and scrutiny to unexpected info Less attention and scrutiny to unexpected info

No more or less attention and scrutiny to unexpected info

Hastie and Kumar (1979)o Told participants that a certain person was intelligent. o Then they presented participants with a list of behaviors

performed by the person, an equal amount of intelligent behaviors (“won a chess tournament”), unintelligent behaviors (“made the same mistake three times”) and behaviors that had nothing to do with intelligence (“took the elevator to the third floor”).

o After a long delay they asked participants to recall as many behaviors as they could.

o Results: Irrelevant: 4.2 < Consistent 5.0 < Inconsistent 5.9

Why? Yet people clearly sometimes prefer consistent info, too – in accord with “assimilation to a concept” idea!

So when do people devote more cog resources to consistent and when to inconsistent?

o Stangor & McMillan (1992): GOAL Accurate Impression incongruency effect Good enough impression congruency effect

WHY? Plaks et al. (2001): IMPLICIT THEORIES: o ENTITY – congruency effecto INCREMENTAL – incongruency effect

o Another variable that predicts congruency vs. incongruency: familiarity

STANGOR & RUBLE (1989)o Ps read behavioral descriptions of members of 2 college

fraternities, one frat mostly extraverted, one mostly introverted. Beforehand, ½ of Ps saw a presentation containing 30 behaviors performed by one of the frats. All Ps saw a presentation of 60 behaviors by both frats (30 each). Later memory recall task.

o Results: congruent information- we measure these beliefs through questions

The Rationality Assumption: o Are people truly rational actors?o Human decision-making often deviates from what a

computer would do, but these deviations themselves are typically not random, but instead are lawful.

o Pioneers of research of human’s lawful no rationality: o Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.

THE REPRESENTATIVE HEURISTIC: people judge accordingly to probability

People often judge the likelihood of an event based on prototypicality.

Tversky & Kahneman: People drastically under-use base rates in their decision-making.

Example: Jack is a 45-year-old man. He is married and has 4 children. He is generally conservative, careful and ambitious. He shows no interest in political and social issues and spends most of his free time on his many hobbies which include home carpentry, sailing and mathematical puzzles. Is Jack a lawyer or an engineer?

Half of the subjects told that the sample consisted of 70 e’s and 30 l’s, half told 30 e’sand 70 l’s.

A related heuristic fallacy – the “conjunction fallacy.”o Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright.

She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Which of the following is more probable?:

(a) L is a bank teller (b) L is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement.

o One reason why the RH is so pervasive is that people don’t understand the difference between big and small numbers.

Factors that can improve people’s probability judgments:o Hi knowledge of the domain in question.

o More simply, clearly stated (Ginossar & Trope, 1987 turned lawyer/engineer problem into a fun and engaging card game and improved subjects’ performance.)

o When choices are more clearly distinguished (hospital problem with 45 and 2 births per day – rather than 45 and 15).

o Hi self-relevanceo Contextual cues – increasing the salience of chance factors

THE AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC (should be called the “accessibility heuristic”): Outcomes that more quickly and readily pop into mind are thought to occur more frequently.

o For example: “In the English language are there more words that start with the letter R or have R as the third letter?”

Correct answer: Ease of retrieval is assumed to reflect that actual state of affairs (“I can think of R-starting words more easily because there probably are more R-starting words.”). But in reality, the ease of retrieval is often unrelated to what’s actually “out there” in the world.

One manifestation of AH: Egocentric biases.o Example: Who does more housework? (Ross & Sicoly

found that husbands’ and wives’ estimates add up to greater than 100%)

What variables contribute to AH? A key variable: salience. Taylor & Fiske (1975), Arrangement of room: Subjects 1 and 2

only saw back of D1’s head, but saw D2 in full view. Subjects 3 and 4 only saw back of D2’s head but saw D1 in full view.

o All subjects asked: “Who contributed more to the discussion?”

Results: D2 – egocentric - more readily and easily available ILLUSORY CORRELATION (Hamilton & Gifford, 1976)

o The results: Group A had a higher positive and negative effect compared to group B- this has been replicated hundreds of times- robust and repeatable

Why? Salience + AH: o The Group B-Negative cell has the least amount of

behaviors, i.e., it is the most rare occurrence of the four possibilities.

o Occurrences that are rare tend to leave a stronger impression.

o Events that leave a stronger impression tend to be easier to remember.

o Therefore: Because Group B-negative behaviors are easier to remember, people mistake that ease of retrieval

for fact and rate Group B overall more negatively than Group A

Salience accessibility easier to retrieve IC Salience and AH occurrence that are rare its more salient – more

clear on the positive Schwartz et al

o Extroversion and introversion study o Results: counteractive, people who came up with 3

reasons why they’re extraverted, they rated themselves higher than the ones who had to come up with, 10 reasons why they were extraverted

ANCHORING AND ADJUSTMENT HEURISTICo The heuristic: In the face of an uncertain estimation,

people will use any number provided, even if it’s arbitrary, to calibrate their scale. In other words, when people “anchor” on a certain figure, they fail to sufficiently adjust. Their metric is off: calibrated to the number they’re given.

BELIEF PERSEVERENCE (Anderson, Lepper, & Ross, 1980): once we decide to believe in something, we will tend to keep on believing it

HYPOTHESIS TESTING: Humans as “intuitive scientists.” We “test” our hypothesis against incoming “data.”

o Wason (1960): 3 7 D K- “Every card that has a D on one side has a 3 on the other side.” Which two cards do you have to turn over to verify the truth of this statement? Answer: 7 and D

o People focus on hypothesis confirmation, at the expense of hypothesis disconfirmation when both are needed.

o What improves performance on the Wason Task? Expertise.

Information-seeking bias: What kinds of questions do you ask? Snyder & Swann (1978):

o Half of the subjects were told that their task was to determine whether the person waiting in the other room was an extravert, half told introvert.

o Were allowed to select which questions to pose toward the other person from a pool of 26 questions: 11 extravert questions (e.g., “What would you do if you wanted to liven things up at a party?”), 11 introvert questions (e.g., “What factors make it hard for you to really open up to people?”) and 5 nondescript questions.

Snyder & Swann, Study 2:o Had subjects actually pose the questions they selected to a

real person.

o Each interview was taped. o Then separate sets of subjects (who were blind to the

hypotheses, of course) were asked to judge whether the person being interviewed was an introvert or an extravert.

SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY: when an originally false belief about a person leads to that person acting in accord with that belief (so that the belief no longer appears false).

AKA “The Pygmalion Effect”o Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968):

R & J led teachers to believe that some students in their classes were “late bloomers” – i.e., destined to show dramatic increases in IQ over the school year.

In fact, (and this is crucial!) these students had been selected at random.

Three steps to the SFP: perceivers must develop erroneous expectancy; perceivers’ expectancy must influence how they act toward targets; target must react to the perceiver’s behavior in a manner that confirms the original false expectancy.

How do “teachers” respond when they hold high vs. low expectancy of target?

o Warmer emotional support; more time and attention; provide more opportunities for target to perform and learn difficult material; clearer and more constructive feedback.

What are some moderators (i.e., what makes the effect more or less likely to happen)?

On the perceiver end…o (1) Perceiver’s goal: if goal is to form a

stable and predictable impression, more likely- if goal is to form an accurate impression, less likely;

o (2) Rigidity of perceivers’ belief: if highly rigid, more likely- if less rigid, less likely.

On the target end…o (1) Unclear self-concept (need others to

tell me what. I’m like—we’ve seen this notion before in social comparison), more likely- clear self-concept, less likely;

o (2) age (stronger among younger children than older – except: 7th grade (also a time of trying to figure out who you are, again).

On the situation end…o (1) new situations (another form of

unclarity)—(helps explain the 7th grade

blip, a transition to the new situation of junior high school).

Hindsight bias : “I knew it would happen all along.”o Knowledge of how an event ultimately turned out

influences your memory for your thoughts on the event before it happened. Is it really a bias in memory?

o (People may just say they knew it all along…without actually believing they knew it all along. If they actually believe they knew it all along…that’s very interesting: suggests that it is difficult to combat the hindsight bias.)

Attribution: Foundation for more complex human behavior (altruism, aggression) – we need steps!

Perception: objects or people o Phenomenology: one-to-one correspondence between

“what I see” and “what is out there” o The reality: Perception is not simple, involves many steps

and is often inaccurate (thought is generally lawful). Unconscious Inferences:

o Unconscious inferences from built in assumptions “fill in the gaps”

o Without such assumptions, we would have a difficult time making sense of the world – but they can sometimes lead to mistakes, illusions

o Person perception is like object perception in some key ways, different in others

Heider and the Logical Attribution Approach o 1958- the inferential processes by which we understand

people based on their behavior/appearance are similar to how we understand objects based on their motion/ appearance

o They have basic principles of casual analysis o It describe what people should do if operating optimally o Accuracy is measured scientificallyo Research focused on development of rules and how people

follow/ do not follow Principles of Casual Inference

o Attribution is vital and pervasive o Behaviors express stable dispositions o Attribution extracts disposition from behavior o Attributions can be performed consciously or unconsciously

Attribution = causal analysis Behavior is the join product of temporary and enduring causes Behavior requires that an actor can and tries to do it • Capacity = ability + environment (e.g., throwing a frisbee into

the wind)

• Motivation = strategy + effort

• Attribution = “implicit algebra” that describes how these four factors combine to produce behavior. We “solve for the unknown.” – going beyond the identifying behavior to understanding the meaning of the behavior

• Subsequent Theorizing in the Logical/Attribution Tradition • Jones and Davis: people interested in isolating dispositional

properties that distinguish one person from another • Correspondent inference occurs when behavior is unsual

• Harold Kelley • The naïve scientist metaphor: ordinary people use the

same logical rules in their ordinary attributions that scientists use in testing hypotheses

• Kelley’s covariation Model • Naïve students: is the behavior distinctive, consistent and

is there consensus about the behavior • Real studnets: does X occur only in presence of Y and not

Z, Does X always occur in presence of Y, Do others replicate your finding

• The Discounting principle • When behavior covaries with more than one potential

cause observer has less confidence in either cause • The augmentation principle: when behavior covaries with a

situational factor that increases confidence in a particular cause

• BUT: although attribution theories describe the content of thought, they say very little about process - Cognitive revolution: interest in metnal processes like attention, encoding, retrieval

• Basic operating sequence: • Identification of behavior attribution of dispositions

integration into impression • Identification: behavior identified in terms of actor’s intentions

• Actors intentions are often ambiguous, although they rarely seem to be

• We are quick to make trait attributions due to: person, situation, anchoring and adjustment heuristic

• Prior behavior (additive) and current situation affects attribution • Gilbert: we might make automatic trait attributions but we are

capable of undoing them and making situation corrections • We are prevented from making situational corrections by

cognitive busyness • FAE: the tendency to over estimate the role of dispositional

causes and underestimate the role of situational causes in explaining an actor’s behavior

• Actor Observer Effect- people more likely to attribute their own bad behavior to situational causes and the bad behavior of others to dispositional factors (usually a trait). • Reverse is true: people attribute their own good behavior

to dispositional factors and the good behavior of others to situations

• When observing someone else, actor is figure, situation is ground • People have more examples in memory• GILBERT’S MODEL- controlled processing is required – required

more resources • (Mis)attribution and Emotion

• The prevalent intuition: Charging bear Fear• Schachter & Singer (1962) (had the nerve to argue- some of our

emotional resposnes are a result of a cognitive process): Step 1: ambiguous physiological arousal (heart rate, perspiration, stomach clenching, etc.) Step 2: attribution that explains the source of the arousal• RESULTS:

• Euphoric Confed- Drug Informed: No effects Drug uninformed: EuphoricPlacebo: No effects

• Anger Confed- Drug Informed: No effects Drug uninformed: Angry Placebo: No Effects

• There’s no ambiguity – you need to be aroused in order to feel

• Aron & Dutton (1974): The suspension bridge over Capilano River Canyon• Attractive female asking for help on a bridge vs safe stable

bridge – ppl on the wobbly bridge called the female more – misattribution of arousal

• CULTURE AND PERSON COGNITION• Overarching theme of cross-cultural research: FAE much

stronger in US (and Western Europe) than rest of world.• Miller (1984): US and Indian Hindu subjects asked to

explain numerous scenarios, e.g., “A university professor stole a student’s idea and presented it as his own.”• Results: Americans-dispositional answers

(“self-absorbed”)• Indians- “She was his student. She would have

not had the power to publish it on her own.” • (Thus the situation is what explained the

behavior to the Hindus.) • Morris & Peng (1994): Analyzed newspaper reports

of crimes in ordinary American newspapers and American, Chinese-language newspapers for

dispositional vs. situational explanations for the crime.

• Choi & Nisbett (1998): Replicated Jones & Harris (1967) paradigm with American vs. Korean subjects.• Results: Both Americans and Koreans

exhibited the typical lack of situational discounting BUT:

• In one additional condition of the study, situational information was made extra salient (described in more detail). • Results: Both Americans & Koreans now took

situational info into account…but K’s did significantly more.

• (Important control condition: A’s & K’s did not differ in their explanations for non-social events, e.g., a billiard ball bouncing off of a pool table cushion.)

• Knowles, Morris, Chiu, & Hong (1998): Replicated Gilbert, Pelham & Krull (1988) paradigm with American and Chinese subjects. • Results: Americans – Low Cog Load: situational

correction High Cog Load: Little situation correct Chinese- Low Cog Load: situational correction High Cog Load: situation correct

• Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet: Subjects: English-speaking Chinese (in H.K. & California) – i.e. all subjects were bicultural.• 1. Subjects randomly assigned to be surreptitiously primed

either with US symbols (Mickey Mouse, Capitol Building) or China symbols (Great Wall, a dragon).

• 2. All subjects asked to explain various scenarios (e.g., why a child misbehaved in class).

• Results: those subjects who were primed with American symbols they explained the symbols towards the disposition whereas when primed with Chinese symbol they explained the symbol towards the situation

• Subtle prime effects only work (work better) on bicultural subjects than unicultural subjects

• Activating a part of one’s identity seems to activate a way of thinking.

• AUTOMATICITY (has to occur automatically) • Schneider & Shiffrin (1977): Automatic processes: occur

outside of awareness, occur without intention (or, given an intention to begin, carry on without intention), are efficient (in terms of cognitive resources)

• Bargh (1990): Many activities start out controlled, but become automatized with practice.

• Implicit Association Test: Measures automatic associations, dependent variable: reaction time- pair 4 categories up in two different ways- you can’t control this

• Fazio et al.: Sequential priming• Prime (Black or White face)target word (positive or

negative)was the target word positive or negative? Results:

• Kawakami et al (2000): Just as practice causes stereotypes to be learned, practice can cause them to be unlearned.• Used classical conditioning to “unlearn” stereotypic

associations.• 1. Ps presented with photographs of Blacks and Whites

with stereotypic or nonstereotypic trait words presented underneath. 2. For Black-stereotypic and White-stereotypic combinations, Ps told to say “NO!” outloud. For Black-counterstereotypic and White-counterstereotypic combinations, told to say “YES!” outloud. (480 trials, approx. 45 min.) 3. Control condition: opposite instructions.

• DV: Stereotype Stroop task. (rationale: If you are processing stereotypic content very easily, it will be harder for you to inhibit that and name the color of the ink.)

• Results: It worked and effects lasted up to 24 hours. (SECONDARY MEASURE OF IMPLICIT ATTITUDE)

• BUT: Consider other, less intensive, less “brute force” methods: e.g., Jigsaw classroom, superordinate recategorization, cooperative interdependence) ALSO: Incremental Theory (Levy, Stroessner, & Dweck, 1998)

• If stereotyping is automatic…is it inevitable? Is discrimination legally acceptable?

• Devine (1989): Stereotyping has two components: Automatic activation and Controlled application

• Activation is largely automatic, application is largely controllable• Study 1 : Earlier in semester, subjects filled out Modern Racism

Scale. In experimental session, subjects (white only) asked to (anonymously and confidentially) write down all the components of the stereotype of African-Americans they could think of.

• Study 2: 1. Subjects stared at computer screen. Asked to report when flash appeared in corner. For ½ of subjects, the flash actually a subliminal prime (80 ms) of words stereotypically having to do with African-Americans (e.g., “athletic,” “jazz,” “Harlem”). Important: none of the words had to do with aggression. Subjects read passage about Donald (race unspecificed). Donald engaged in a series of behaviors that prior subjects rated as slightly hostile/aggressive (e.g., “Donald

demanded his money back from a store clerk immediately after a purchase.”Rated Donald on several trait scales. • Results: Rated Don more aggressive

• Stereotyping inevitable…outside of awareness?• Study 3: Asked subjects to write an essay simply describing their

honest thoughts about Af-Ams. Extensive measures taken to ensure anonymity. Essays content-analyzed for stereotypic content by blind coders.

• Devine: Important distinctions between: knowledge vs. belief- automatic vs. controlled

• Lepore and Brown’s 1997 critique: Devine didn’t just prime the category label “black”. She also used negative aspects of the stereotype such as “poor” and “lazy” as primes. So of course the negative stereotype was accessed given that it was primed directly. They repeated using Devine primes [e.g. Lazy] in one condition and a more general category prime [Black] in a second condition.

Type of Prime:Results: General Category Stereotypic traitsHi – prej more aggressive attribution more aggressive attribLo – prej no signif. diff more aggressive attrib

REMEMBER: Devine’s original primes lead to her results of no diff betw high/low prej subjects.

PLANT & DEVINE (1998, 2001): Distinction between internal and external motives to control prejudice and stereotypes.

o Internal Motive Scale =IMSo External Motive Scale=EMS

E.G. Items: “I attempt to act nonprejudiced towards blacks because it is personally important to me.” [versus—“…in order to avoid disapproval from others.”]

IMS and EMS are related to other prej scales and to measures of self presentation.

Predictions: Those who are High IMS will try to control prej regardless of scrutiny.

Those who are High EMS but Low IMS will only try to control prej in public or under scrutiny. These folks will also be most resentful and reactive regarding PC pressure to be nice.

Plant and Devine {1998} developed scale and test public private predictions.

Wegner: Ironic rebound effect: The more we try to suppress a thought, the more it plagues us.

o WHY? Accessibility and cognitive load

o Process model: Intentional (controlled) search for distracters - Automatic search for examples of unwanted target (metacognition)

o (BIG IRONY: In order to avoid something, you have to be constantly vigilant for its presence!)

“Early warning system” – thought that “looks at” our thought (metacognition- early warning systems).

Low cognitive load: process #1 and process #2 work together successfully.

High cognitive load: process #1 knocked out, but process #2 continues.

Result: hyperaccessibility of unwanted thought! Macrae, Bodenhausen, Milne, & Jetten (1994):

o PART 1 - asked subjects to imagine and write an essay about a typical day in the life of a skinhead. ½ told “avoid using stereotypes in your essay.”

o PART 2 – asked subjects to write a second essay about another skinhead. Freedom to write whatever they wanted

RESULTS: it can backfire when the guard is down which increases the stereotype

Stereotype threat: When individuals fear being reduced to the stereotype…leading to: anxiety, distraction, decline in performance.

o The Empirical Evidence: Steele & Aronson (1995) Black and White subjects at Stanford University

(highly selective) Took difficult standardized verbal test. (All subjects expected to do poorly.) self fulfilling prophecy

For some subjects: test introduced as a test of underlying intelligence, intellectual ability.

For others: test introduced as a laboratory problem-solving task unrelated to any real-world underlying ability.

DV: subjects’ score on test, statistically controlling for SAT score (Results) Not intelligence vs Intelligence

White 9.0 10.5SubjectsBlack 8.9 4.9Subjects

Spencer and colleagues (1999) : male and female good at math and felt that math was important to their identities.

o Gave a very difficult standardized math test, one that led all subjects to perform poorly.

o Before taking test, subjects given some background on the test: some subjects told that the test generally showed no gender differences (implying that the negative stereotype of women’s ability in math was not relevant to this particular test). Others told that the study did generally show gender differences.

o Results: Women performed worse than men only when they believed that the test typically yielded gender differences.

o Socialization effects this Frederickson and colleagues: Male and females asked to

evaluate and sample various consumer products. Among the products was an item of clothing that they were supposed to actually try on. For some participants that item of clothing was a crewneck sweater. For others: a bathing suit. As they were wearing that item of clothing, brought to a second room to take a challenging math test. In the room was a mirror. What results do you predict?

Results: Sweater Bathing Suit

Men 4.9 5.5

Women 4.0 2.4

(Evidence of Steele’s anxiety explanation: Women made to feel more anxiety about body – disrupted performance) body image anxiety is more prominent in females than males -White males can be made to experience stereotype threat. How?How ST impairs performance:

Inzlicht, McKay, & Aronson (2005): 1. Black and White Ps either had race made salient or not. 2. DV#1: normal Stroop color-naming task. DV#2: Squeezing a handgrip.

o Results: Only Black/race salient Ps (and not Blac/race not salient Ps) showed poorer performance on both tasks.

o Interpretation: Being the target of stigma is mentally and physically exhausting.

o One reason for hope: Incremental (vs. entity) theory of human intelligence

Sailent vs non sailent Currency of stereotypes