Social Psychology

How ppl’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by others

Inferences abt ppl’s thoughts, beliefs, abilities, etc that we use to understand and eval others

Category-based inferences: inferences based on info abt the categories to which a person belongs (e.g. stereotyping) Target-based inferences: inferences based on info abt an indiv’s behavior

TRUE • We make social judgments abt ppl we don’t know well • Judgements can be made quickly and w some degree of accuracy • Ambady study – participants were accurate in prof evals after watching thin-slices

Schemas and stereotypes

• Type of category-based inference based on ppl’s category membership • Often inaccurate • Not necessarily bad, but can be – can lead to prejudice and discrimination

Prejudice: negative EVALUATION of another person based on their category membership Discrimination: negative BEHAVIOR TOWARDS another person based on their category membership

Contact w outside group – facilitates learning –> reduction in fear and anxiety

• A person perceives a stronger correlation btw things than there actually is • Minority groups and negative events are more attention-grabbing, and both combined are extra attention-grabbing –> skews perception of frequency • This can be one of the ways we form stereotypes

• 2 groups of hypothetical ppl, but A is twice as big as B • Same ratio of pos to neg statements given, BUT ppl tend to have more positive view of group A members than group B members –> indicates that number of exposures influences impression formation

Inference abt the CAUSE of a person’s behavior Situational attribution: we decide a person’s behavior was caused by a TEMPORARY aspect of the situation Dispositional attribution: we decide a person’s behavior was caused by a ROOTED tendency to act/think/feel a certain way

1) Consistency: does the person do this regularly? 2) Consensual: do most people do this? 3) Distinctive: does this person perform similar actions? Low consistency + high consensus + high distinctiveness –> situational High consistency + low consensus + low distinctiveness –> dispositional

• Dispositional attribution instead of a situational one – we assume they always act a certain way when it rlly was just circumstantial • Ppl usually don’t consider the situational causes bc they’re often invisible + situational attributions are difficult to make • Strength of error varies btw cultures and ppl

• Would “good” ppl do “bad” things if placed in a bad situation? • Started fine, but then guards started acting their role • Considered extremely extremely unethical today – experiment had to be cut short • Zimbardo claimed it as an example of the influence of social roles + how roles, even tho randomly assigned, made ppl do things they could have never imagined • Problems: original ad may have primed them to act a certain way (guard/prisoner dynamic)

• We make situational attributions for our own behaviors but dispositional attributions when others do the same thing • OFten occurs bc we have more info abt our own motives than others’

Ideally we’re rational thinkers but we rlly aren’t

We make decisions by determining how likely something is to happen and judging the value of the outcome

FREQUENCIES Frequency: the number of times smthn will occur in a given timeframe Probability: The likelihood of smthn occurring • Both adults and children naturally good at estimating freqs –> suggests it’s “natural” • Bad at thinking in terms of prob – more abstract/less familiar + it depends on how the problem is described

Mental shortcut (heuristic) where ppl rely on info most readily available to them

Mental shortcut (heuristic) where ppl estimate the probability of an event by comparing it to a known situation E.g. you assume someone has a cold if they have a cough and runny nose

Ppl think that 2 events are more likely to occur together than either indiv event

Ppl give different answers to the same problem depending on how the question is framed (e.g. 70% success rate vs 30% failure rate)

• Type of framing effect where ppl make decisions abt a situation on the basis of what they’ve alr invested into it • Occurs bc of risk aversion

Ppl tend to avoid losses more than they want to achieve gains