Search for notes by fellow students, in your own course and all over the country.
Browse our notes for titles which look like what you need, you can preview any of the notes via a sample of the contents. After you're happy these are the notes you're after simply pop them into your shopping cart.
Title: Introduction to Social Psychology
Description: Notes from the Introduction to Social Psychology course at the University of Pittsburgh - in-depth and full of examples to illustrate psychological theories, and written in understandable terms
Description: Notes from the Introduction to Social Psychology course at the University of Pittsburgh - in-depth and full of examples to illustrate psychological theories, and written in understandable terms
Document Preview
Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above
Introduction to Social Psychology
1/6/15
• Tips:
o Exams: derives questions from lecture and textbook
o Lecture slides: posted online
• Social Psychology Focal Points:
o Why do we need a science of social psychology?
o What is social psychology?
o What distinguishes social psychology from other similar disciplines?
o What does social psychology study and how?
• Example questions:
o What makes us feel attracted to another person?
§ Physical proximity
o Why do some people help victims, while others appear to do nothing?
o What makes a good leader?
o What is happiness?
• Folk Wisdom/Contradictions
o Examples:
§ Absence makes the heart grow fonder
§ Out of sight, out of mind
o Common Sense Statements:
§ Contradict each other and coexist with their exact opposites
§ Full of biases
• Speed Dating
o One day before: “I would like a person who is intelligent, funny, and sincere
...
”
o A Month Later: “ I like an intelligent, funny, and sincere person
...
”
§ An imagined person: the police, your parents, or anyone not within
close physical proximity of you
...
g
...
12 hours)
• Example: Aggression
o Conceptual definition: hostile or violent behavior or attitudes toward another
o Operational definition: administering hot sauce to someone who does not like
spicy food
• Two Types of Research
o Correlational:
§ “The study of naturally occurring relationships among variables”
§ Researchers systematically measure the relation between two or more
variables
§ To what degree can one variable be predicted by the other?
• -‐1
...
0
§ Some hypotheses cannot practically or ethically be tested experimentally
• Example: gender of a person
§ Useful for establishing that two variables are associated
• But correlation is not causation
§ What Does It Mean?
• Does A cause B?
• Does B cause A?
o Experimental
§ With experiments, we overcome the shortcomings of correlational
designs
...
sad
• Overcomes the reverse directionality problem
• Types of Manipulations
o Between Groups
§ Each person experiences only one level of
independent variable
§ For example, participant either listens to jokes or
not
o Within Groups
§ Each person experiences each level of independent
variable
§ For example, if participant was tested one day in the
joke condition, and another day in the no joke
condition
§ Inferring Causality
• Through manipulation and random assignment…
o We can be confident that the only initial difference between
groups is on the Independent Variable
o Any subsequently observed differences must be caused by
the manipulated change in IV
§ Choosing a Method
• Why not always use an experiment?
o Not possible to randomly assign (e
...
, socioeconomic
status)
o Ethical considerations (e
...
smoking; risky sexual behavior)
o Culture of Honor
§ Unpackaging the findings:
• What aspect of southern culture led to differences in homicide
rate?
§
§
§
§
o Poverty?
o Hot climate?
o History with slavery?
Summary So Far
• The South is more violent than the non-‐South
• The usual explanations do not explain this violence
What is the impact of herding?
• Wealth is portable
o Cattle can be stolen
• Law is ineffective
o Frontier—no police protection
• Therefore, must keep up the appearance of strength
• “Honor:”
o Respect that prevents someone from being taken advantage
of
o Assumption of strength
• Key aspect of a culture of honor:
o Insults must be dealt with swiftly and violently
Survey (correlational)
• What should Fred do if a man…
• How would you feel about your friend if…
o Looks over Fred’s girlfriend and starts talking to her in a
suggestive way
o Insults Fred’s wife, implying that she has loose morals
o Tells others behind Fred’s back that Fred is a liar and a
cheat
o Sexually assaults 16 year old daughter
o Steals Fred’s wife
“Honor” Experiments
• Ss are white, non-‐Hispanic, non-‐Jewish male UMich students
o
...
5 are Southerners
o Average family income is $85K for Northerners, $95
...
g
...
g
...
Peripheral Traits
§ Solomon Asch (1946)
• Forming impression of others is more than adding together individual
information
o We form impression of the entire person based on the interaction
between different pieces of information
• Some pieces of information (central traits) are more important than others
(peripheral traits)
o Core: warmth and competence
• Heuristics
o “Mental shortcut” or “rule-of-thumb”
o Useful for living in a complex social world, but can lead to faulty beliefs and suboptimal
decisions
• Representativeness Heuristic
o The degree to which an event is similar in essential characteristics to its parent population
o Feminists seem to be the correct answer because they seem like representative of the
vivid description
• Availability Heuristic
o Are you more likely to be killed by a shark or a cow?
§ More people die from cows, but people are afraid of sharks
o Are you more afraid to drive or fly?
§ More people are afraid to fly than drive, even though flying is one of the safest
things to do
o Death by car accidents or death by strokes?
§ Do you live in fear of strokes?
• Availability Heuristic and Division of Labor
o Married students filled out a scale of what percentage of each job they vs
...
internal (personal)
o Internal attribution: behavior is caused by internal factors like personality, attitudes, etc
...
§ Etc
...
§ Etc
...
3 correlation between the attitudes and
attitude-relevant behavior
o When does behavior determine attitudes?
§ Self-perception theory
• Inferring our attitudes based on observations of our
behavior
o Initial ambiguity of attitude/feeling
o Behavior freely chosen
• If you’re smiling, you think things are funnier than
someone would if they were frowning
• Experiment: listen to tuition rates increase, forced to
nod/shake/still head, how do they feel about the
message
§ Self-presentation theory
• We behave a certain way to make a good
impression on others, and then express attitudes that
match those actions
• Female participants were told that they were going
to meet a man
o More desirable vs
...
modern women
§ Asked the women about their
traditional and modern views
§ Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance
o Tension experienced when holding two conflicting cognitions
§ Attitude
§ Belief
§ Behavior
o Leads to motivation to reduce the tension
o Dissonance reduction
§ Change action perception
• Denial
§ Change action
§ Change belief
o Experiment: induced compliance paradigm
§ Boring task
• Negative attitude
§ Behavior
• Lie: this task is interesting
§ Justification
• $1 (insufficient justification)
• $20 (sufficient justification)
o Effort justification
§ The more effort you put into something, the more inclined you are to like it
• You justify your actions
• Summary
o Where do attitudes come from?
§ Cognitive, affective, and behavioral sources
o How well do attitudes predict behavior? When?
o When and why does behavior determine attitudes?
§ Self-presentation theory
§ Cognitive dissonance theory
§ Self-perception theory
1/27/15
Conformity and Obedience
• What is conformity?
o Conformity
§ Submission or sensitivity?
§ Compliance or responsiveness?
• Social Norms
o Rules or guidelines in a group or culture about what behaviors are proper and
improper
o Implicit or explicit
§ Standing for national anthem
§ Leave a tip for waiters
§ Dress like everyone else
§ Wait our turns in lines
• Two Classic Conformity Studies
o Conformity: tendency to change perceptions, opinions, or behavior in ways that are
consistent with group norms
o Sherif’s auto-‐kinetic effect study
§ Participant in dark room shown a single point of light
§ “How far is it moving?”
§ Task: Estimate difference that light moves
• Difficult and ambiguous task
• Light is stationary but appears to move
• Do first task alone, then with other participants in the room
§ Eventually came to a consensus
•
•
•
•
•
o Asch’s line judgment study
§ What would happen if the answer was more obvious?
§ 6 confederates, 1 real participant
§ Confederates start out picking the right line
§ Then, confederates pick same, wrong line
• Repeated trials
§ DV: Will real participant conform?
§ About half the time, people conform sometimes, but not always
Would You Conform?
o Prompts us to consider the question, would you uphold your own beliefs when
others around you disagree strongly?
o How powerful is the situation?
Why do people conform?
o To be right: informational influence
§ We believe others are correct in their judgments
• Contestants on Price is Right
• Online reviews (e
...
, Rotten Tomatoes)
o To be liked or to fit in: Normative influence
§ We fear consequences of appearing deviant
• Dressing up
• Teenagers and fitting in
Sherif vs
...
make them scared
§ Big vs
...
Two-‐sided appeal
§ Primacy vs
...
Small Discrepancy
§ Big discrepancy
• Exercise for 60 minutes every day
• Works best if it is a credible source
o E
...
Message from physiology (or other) professor
§ Small discrepancy
• Exercise once or twice a week
• Works even if it is not a very credible source
o E
...
Message from a random person/friend
o One-‐sided vs
...
alone
o Simple tasks where the “dominant” or response is correct, increases:
o Overlearned
o Instinctual
o Automated
o Require no resources
o Performance heightened when person is a little anxious
o And decreases:
o Complex tasks where the answer is not obvious
o Novel
o Learned
o Controlled
o Require cognitive resources
o Performance suffers when person is a little anxious
o Expertise can make complex tasks simpler
o Others’ presence -‐> Arousal -‐> Strengthens dominant response
o Enhances easy behavior
o Impairs difficult behavior
o Why are we aroused in the presence of others?
o Evaluation apprehension
§ Explains why…
• People perform when partner is superior
o Driven by distraction
§ Explains why…
• Same effects are seen when flashing lights are present
o Mere presence
§ Explains why…
• Color preference are stronger in presence of others
• Animals show the effect
• If there are other people around, you exercise more and better
o Social Facilitations in the Real World
o Gyms
o Office buildings
o Choking based on Evaluation Apprehension
o If it’s a home game, you know these people are rooting for you, so you’ll do better
o Social Loafing
o Pull on a rope in a tug-‐of-‐war
§ IV: Alone or
• One person behind
• Two people behind
• Three people behind
§ DV: How hard people pull
• Adding one person decreased performance by 10%
• Adding two more people decreased by 17%
• Then it levels out
o Participants to make as much noise as possible, wearing blindfold
§ IV: Think on your own vs
...
Kristin; Tyrone vs
...
Modern Racism
• Old-‐fashioned racism: ascribing negative traits and opposing equal rights
Modern Racism
Discrimination against blacks is no longer a problem in North America
Blacks are getting too demanding in their push for equal rights
Over the past few years, the government and news media have shown more respect to
blacks than they deserve
Benevolent Sexism
• Your intentions are good, but you start with the idea that this person (or type of person)
needs help
Implicit and Explicit Prejudice
• Explicit prejudice is something we’re aware that we have and are able to articulate our
views
• Implicit prejudice can be negative associations toward a group that we don’t even know we
have, or aren’t willing to share
Prejudice or Stereotyping
2/19/15
Prejudice and Stereotyping
• Sources of Prejudice
o Social: unequal status, conformity, institutional
o Motivational
o Cognitive
• Motivational Sources
o Realistic group conflict theory
§ Prejudice arises when groups compete for scarce resources
§ Sherif et al
...
o Ratio of good to bad behaviors is exactly the same, but what differed is how much
exposure you had to each group
o When two rare events co-‐occur, it stands out to us
Cognitive Sources: Illusory Correlations
o The tendency for people to overestimate the link between variables that are only
slightly or not at all correlated
o Tend to overestimate the association between variables when they’re rare
Cognitive Sources: Confirmation Bias
o “White men can’t jump,” Stone et al
...
Blue eye students
§ Superior kids used it as a way of exerting power
§ Inferior kids came to believe this about themselves
§ Performance reflects self-‐esteem and value
Schelling Demonstration
o We can get strong segregation with a small bias
§ 2/8 neighbors to be of similar backgrounds
Prejudice and Self-‐Fulfilling Prophecies
o White interviewers rated black applicants worse than white applicants
...
Word, Zanna, & Cooper (1974)
o How adequate is the applicant for the job?
§ When white people were treated like the black people had been treated, they
performed worse in the job interview!
Stereotypes and Performance
o What is the effect of being negatively stereotyped on a task you’re asked to perform?
Stereotype Threat and Academic Achievement
o Stereotype…?
•
•
•
Steele and Aronson (1995)
o African-‐American and European-‐American Stanford Students
o Make racial stereotype of intelligence salient
§ Diagnostic of ability
§ Non-‐diagnostic (control)
o Can affect any group for which strong, well-‐known negative stereotypes are relevant
in particular settings
o One does not need to believe in a negative stereotype for it to have an effect
§ Elderly stereotype and memory performance
§ Women in STEM
§ Men in test of emotional intelligence
Stereotypes and Multiple Identities
o People have multiple identities…
§ Stereotypes sometimes clash
Shih, Pittinsky, and Ambady (1999)
o IV: Remind Asian-‐American women of either Asian roots or gender
§ When reminded of Asian identity—performed better than control
§ When reminded of female identity—performed worse than control
2/23/15
Aggression
•
•
•
•
•
Aggressive Acts
o Aggression: Behavior Intended to Harm Someone Physically or Psychologically
§ Insulting someone
§ Hitting others in a rage
§ In sports
Types of Aggression
o Instrumental -‐ inflicting harm to gain something valuable
§ Mugging
• Instrumental: gaining money
§ War between nations
• Instrumental: retrieving land, etc
...
Examples of Aggression
o Direct/Hostile: Angry driver yells obscenities at tailgater
o Indirect/Hostile: Upset tenant disparages landlord to neighbors
o Direct/Instrumental: Shoot somebody in order to obtain $1,000,000
o Indirect/Instrumental: Start rumor to break up relationship so you gain that partner
Sources of Aggression
o Instinctive/natural
§ Organisms who successfully aggress gian resources
§ Necessary for reproduction
§ Most violent age is 2 years old*
§ Evidence
• Less likely to aggress against kin
• Prevalence of aggression among animals suggests that it has some
survival value
o Biological
§ Theories
• Hormones contribute to aggression
o Testosterone
§ Positively correlated with aggression (bi-‐directional)
§ Elevated levels seen in people convicted of violent
crimes
§ Sex differences in aggression
• Gender and Aggression
o 85-‐90% of homicides are committed by men
o 90% of robberies are committed by men
o 80% of assaults are committed by men
o A Note On Testosterone and Aggression
§ There is a large body of work showing that with
domestic violence, women are about equally as likely to
use violence as men
§ There is a lot of evidence that women experience more
injuries compared to men with domestic violence
§ A testosterone dose leads to more aggression when
threatened
o Environmental Factors
§ Aggression increases due to physical pain or discomfort (Anderson, 2001)
§ During hotter times
• Increases in domestic violence (Hsiang et al
...
?
o Do you ever feel lonely when reading a book? Not really
...
• Why do we do this?
o It hurts to be rejected, so we conform
o We need connections
3/19/15
Genes, Culture, and Gender
• Why Are We The Way We Are?
o Evolution
o Culture
o Balance between fixed traits and flexibility
• How Biological Evolution Works
o Natural Selection
§ Individual variability in traits among members
§ Variability in traits associated with different survival rates
§ Traits are inherited
o Sexual Selection
§ Those who can attract the most healthy mates will have the most offspring
• Socialization
o The process by which a person learns a particular culture
o How the psychological change occurs
o This includes:
§ The motivation to form or change beliefs
§ The structure of the beliefs
§ And something else (he changed the slide too quickly)
o Schemas
§ Help you understand the world
o Changing Knowledge
§ New knowledge is required
§ Do you change and adapt your structures?
• Yes—when you are ready for change
• No—when you are uncomfortable with change
o Who do you trust for knowledge?
§ Childhood
• Parents are ultimate authority
§ Adolescence
• Peer group becomes important authority
§ The Self
• Gradually becomes trusted as an authority
§ Balance
• Different sources are trusted for different knowledge
o Education—Source of Socialization
§ Children with Educated Parents
• Hear more words per day
• Have their questions answered in a more elaborate way
• Are less likely to be instructed through physical means (e
...
pushing)
§ Example: Do you like to drink alcohol?
• Why?
o Evolution
o Culture
• Why do cultures differ?
o Causes of Cultural Variability
Proximal
• Direct and immediate relations
o I don’t like the taste, and I don’t drink things that taste badly
§ Distal
• Differences that lead to changes over time, often indirectly
o Develops over time
o Examples:
§ Spanish and Incans
• 1532 Battle of Cajamarca
o Spanish wants to conquer the Incans
§ Incans with 30,000 soldiers
§ Spanish had 168 soldiers
• 106 on foot, 62 on horses
o He won – How?
§ Tricked the Incans into thinking it was a meeting
§ Incans, instead of dressing for war, dressed to show off
§ Spanish overthrew the Incans, killing more than 2000
and capturing their leader
o “Hey, you can win him back if you give us your gold
...
2
§ What else is happening?
• Attractiveness
o People don’t all agree on who’s attractive
o People are trying to find that person who is uniquely valuable to them
o Not everybody’s chasing the same people
• Individual differences in the way you go about mating
o If you increase the pool, will people match slower or faster?
§ Should you rush?
§ Should you keep your options open?
§
3/26/15
• What influences attraction and why?
o Proximity
• Key predictions of overall life satisfaction
o Marriage and family life
§ Marriage partner helps them cope with life’s struggles
• Spouse does some things for you to help you out
• Thinks that one does for other people, makes them feel valuable and
useful
o Top 10% of happy people alive have one thing in common
They have good social relationships
• They’ve made those relationships meaningful, reliable, close, and
intimate
With whom do you find close relations?
o 270 MIT students randomly assigned to apartments within 17-‐building married
student housing complex
o With whom did they become friends?
§ 65% of friends mentioned were from the same building
Proximity
o The role of familiarity – Mere Exposure Effect
o What about social stimuli?
§ 4 confederates in classroom
o Limits to proximity
§ An accentuator:
• If person is disagreeable, proximity hurts
• If person is NOT disagreeable
...
7
§ Men:
• Jawline
• Broad forehead
• Moderately broad shoulders
§ What really matters is averageness
§
•
•
•
•
o Why do we care about physical attractiveness so much?
§ Evolutionary explanation beauty signals health preference is hard-‐wired and
adaptive
§ Average faces look more familiar to us
§ Stereotype: what is beautiful is good
o Hypothesis: treatment by others affects social skill
§ Pairs of men and women interact over phone
§ Physical attractiveness was manipulated (random assignment)
o Fake-‐attractive photo condition:
§ Women were more friendly and sociable
o Fake-‐unattractive photo condition:
§ Women were cold and boring
o Why? Men’s treatment
§ Fake-‐attractive photo condition: men were more sociable, warm, humorous,
and outgoing
The process: Behavioral Confirmation
o Develop social skill over time
§ Self-‐fulfilling prophecy: men expect beautiful woman to be sociable à treat
her warmly à behave according to beliefs
o Men and women are more similar than different
§ Both men and women highly value kindness and intelligence
§ Both men and women seek closeness and financial relationships extremely
important
Similarity
o Demographics
§ Age, ethnicity, culture, religion, education, etc
...
46)
§ Differences
• Sexual system
• Symmetry
• “Felt security” without physical contact
o New Typology
§ Avoidance vs
...
Model of Others
§ Low anxious, low avoidance
• Secure attachment
• Self, comfortable with intimacy and autonomy, trusting, constructive
attributions and behavior
• Can take risks, try new things, have an open mind
§ High anxious, low avoidance
• Preoccupied with relationships (intimate), overly seeks intimacy,
jealous, clingy, break-‐ups, engages in rumination
• Natalie Portman asking questions, insecure, but he loves her
§ Low anxious, high avoidance
• Secure self, not trusting, seeks independence and distance, casual sex,
break-‐ups
• Will in Good Will Hunting
§ High anxious, high avoidance
• Preoccupied with relationships (ruminates), not trusting, avoids
intimacy, break-‐ups
o Why Attachment Matters
§ Avoidance à
• Provide less support to partners (Simpson & Rholes)
• Less frequent intimate sexual activity (Brassard, Shaver, and Lussier),
but more casual sex (Schmitt, 2005)
• Attending more to alternative partners (DeWall et al
...
, 2011)
o Feels as though that relationship is too clingy or eager to
commit
§ Anxiety à
• Controlling, intrusive caregiving (Feeney & Collins, 2004)
• Sexual activity to avoid rejection, feel loved (Mikulincer & Shaver,
2007)
• Perceiving partners as inattentive, reluctant to commit (Kunce &
Shaver, 1994)
• Over-‐perceiving conflict in relationship (Campbell, Simpson, Boldry,
and Kasby, 2005)
o Feels as though that person is reluctant to commit
o Attachment Over Time
§ How we are treated as a child predicts our adult relationship
behavior/quality (Conger et al)
§ Longitudinal study (Zayas et al
...
• Infatuation with the person, can’t stop thinking about them, desire
them to be near you
o Combinations
§ Passion + Intimacy without Commitment = Romantic Love
• Summer love
§ Intimacy + Commitment = Companionate love
• Really like spending time with
§ Passion + Commitment = Fatuous Love
• Lacking
§ All three = Consummate Love
• Passion, motivated to see them, desire to be with them physically,
they know who you are and your experiences, and you have
commitment with this person
§ None = no love
o Which type of love?
§ The Notebook (young): romantic love
Romantic/Passionate Love
o Passionate love is cross-‐cultural and universal
o What is passionate love like?
§ Typical features include:
• Swift onset
• Relatively short duration (declines over time)
• Idealization of the beloved
• Cognitive preoccupation with (only) the beloved
o
o
o
o
• Intense emotions (often fluctuating)
• Sexual desire
§ Jerry Maguire
Love Over Time
§ Romantic love has a limited life-‐span
• 18-‐30 months (Hazan, 1999)
§ When relationships last, companionate love appears to be what lasts…
• Most common responses among couples married over 15 years when
asked why their marriages had lasted
o “My spouse is my best friend
...
”
• May be saying “I’ve felt passion for other people in life as well but I did
not feel this sense of commitment or intimacy as I do with this
person
...
g
...
”) (Tucker & Aron)
The Role of Novel, Arousing Activities
§ “Exciting,” novel activities (vs
...
Rusbult’s Investment Model
Why do relationships last?
• Satisfaction is not the most important predictor of relationship
stability
• MUCH more important: commitment
§ What is Commitment?
• Tendency to maintain a relationship, to feel psychologically attached
to it, for better or for worse (Rusbult)
• Satisfaction with relationship,
o Costs, rewards, comparison level
• Level of investment,
o Related to all the things you would lose with ending the
relationship
§ House, time with kids, shared friends, status, intimacy,
comfortability, etc
...
g
...
g
...
He found your name
on the class roster
§ “I don’t know
...
I know I can, but
sometimes I on’t feel like it, so most of the notes I have aren’t good to study
with
...
Egoism
o Altruistic motivation
§ Helping purely for the sake of providing benefit to another person
• They broke their hand, you give them notes
o Egoistic motivation
§ Helping in order to obtain rewards or avoid punishments
• They give you pizza, you give them notes
Group Membership
o We help in-‐group members because of
§ Identification and similarity (creates empathy)
§ Reciprocal altruism
o We help out-‐group members because of
§ Humanitarian values (others less fortunate)
Social Exclusion
o Social reconnection hypothesis
§ Social rejection decreased positive ratings and prosocial behavior towards
person who rejected them
• But the rejected was more likely to help others
How many times have you given blood in your lifetime?
o Novice: 0-‐3 times
§ Why did you give blood?
• It makes me feel good
• To help friend or relative
• Persuaded by others
o Expert: 3+ times
§ Why did you give blood?
• As a service to the community
• To help humanity
• Sense of duty
o As experience with blood donation increases, motivation often changes from novice
to experienced (E to A)
...
g
...
We often
see our social, economic, and political norms as good
§ This can lead to the acceptance of inequalities in society
• Can lead to victim blaming
o (Stereotypical Republican mindset)
o We don’t want to challenge the entire belief system or cultural
structure that exists
Dependence on the Government
§ If people don’t know a lot about an important issue (e
...
a conflict), what does
it make sense to do?
§ When people are exposed to problems that seem really complex, it makes
them feel helpless
• This makes them feel dependent on the government, leading them to
trust what the government tells them, and makes them avoid
information about the situation
Mass Action
§ 2001, due to Foot and Mouth disease, millions of cattle were being killed
• Until Phoenix, 12 day old cute calf made it to the news
§ 2002, a dog was stranded on an oil tanker – recuers spent tens of thousands
of dollars to get the dog off the tanker
2005, a sparrow knocked over 23,000 dominoes in a competition in the
Netherlands, and was shot
...
Once numbers get
large, we can no longer imagine, and so no longer feel others’ suffering in the same
way
o Has to become personal to feel empathy, and when it’s a large group, it’s hard to
become personal
§ The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic
• Joseph Stalin (allegedly)
o Which do you think would motivate people to donate more?
§ Food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than 3 million children
§ A 7-‐year old girl from Malawi Africa who suffers from… her life will be
changed for the better as a result of your financial gift…
Creating and Spreading Peace and Prosocial Behavior
o What can be done?
§ Can having power ever be good?
§ Recent research by Galinsky suggests yes!
§ Feeling powerful increases our tendency to act
§ When you combine high power with perspective taking, people seem to come
up with better
§ What can be done about social traps, like the prisoner’s dilemma and the
tragedy of the commons?
§ Consistent contributions (people who almost always contribute to the
common good)
• Often portrayed as irrational in economics and Game Theory
§ Do you start with the opinion that people should care for the greater good of
everyone and be cooperative… people say if you’re not, you hurt everybody?
§ We have a conflict between short-‐term (self) and long-‐term (world) goals
Consistent Contributors
o People who are consistently prosocial tend to get those results in return as well
o Groups with a consistent contributor contributed more
Apologies
o People often think that if they apologize, they are taking blame
o Apologies appear to lead to
§ Doctors getting sued less for malpractice (Robbennolt, 2009)
§ Drivers getting speeding tickets getting asked to pay less (Day & Ross)
§ Positive effects for groups who experienced historic injustices (as long as the
apology addressed their needs and concerns—reparations are sometimes
called for)
§
•
•
•
•
4/9/15
• 36 Questions to Bring You Closer Together
o You have person-‐specific stereotypes
More likely to talk to someone who reminds you of someone or something or
whom you have something in common with (e
...
shirt)
o Why don’t we talk to people on the bus?
§ Possible rejection
§ Fear of unpleasant conversations
o Conversations on the Bus
§ Most people were in a better mood
o How much time do you spend talking to people with conversations that mean
nothing?
§ A lot
• Small talk
o How do you make more friends?
§ Ask better questions, more questions, etc
Title: Introduction to Social Psychology
Description: Notes from the Introduction to Social Psychology course at the University of Pittsburgh - in-depth and full of examples to illustrate psychological theories, and written in understandable terms
Description: Notes from the Introduction to Social Psychology course at the University of Pittsburgh - in-depth and full of examples to illustrate psychological theories, and written in understandable terms