Based on the Prejudice lectures, lets assume most people have implicit biases (for example being implicitly biased against someone of a certain race, age, religion, sexu
Answer each question in 150 words using only the sources provided
1. Based on the Prejudice lectures, let’s assume most people have implicit biases (for example being implicitly biased against someone of a certain race, age, religion, sexual orientation, gender, etc.). Beyond the legal system and the workplace, what are some other areas of our lives in which implicit biases may cause problems? What might this bias look like in those situations and how could this problem be resolved?
2. In reference to the PowerPoint, Fiske and Taylor in 1991, found that people think more about people than any other subject. However, it was also mentioned that we do not like to think because it requires energy and effort. To tie into the lessons in the previous weeks is the natural urge to compare ourselves to other driven by how frequently we think of other people? Why would we spend some much time thinking about other people to the point of comparison if we don't even like to think?
Chapter 11
Attraction & Exclusion
Today’s Outline
Attraction
Belongingness
Similarity
Physical attractiveness
Reciprocity
Rejection
Causes of rejection
Effects of rejection
Loneliness
Attraction & Exclusion
As social animals, humans are, at their core, truly concerned with attraction and exclusion
Indeed the point of social psychology may be to understand why some are accepted and loved, while others are rejected
Take a moment to consider times in your life where you might have been afraid of romantic rejection or perhaps were seeking social acceptance with a new group of peers
Attraction & Exclusion
The need to belong is defined as the desire to form and maintain close, lasting relationships with some other individuals
Needing to belong is considered a fundamental drive or basic need of the human psyche
Warren Jones, “In two decades of studying loneliness, I have met many people who said they had no friends. I have never met any one who didn’t want to have any friends.”
Need to belong
From an evolutionary psychology perspective:
Attraction and acceptance are necessary for reproduction
Additionally, humans likely developed a herd mentality to increase our odds of survival
Consider all the ways we know our behavior changes in groups
Monkeys can recognize that any two monkeys may have an alliance, be forming one, or might be likely to fight
One theory is that the human brain developed more to keep track of a highly complex social world
Two components to belongingness
1. Regular, positive social interactions
Regular is key here, many of us have formed friendships but moved on to new situations in our life and lost regular contact with old friends
Positive is also key, hanging out with that person you always argue with doesn’t fill that social need
2. Stable relationship/friendship in which people share mutual concern for each other
Typically research has shown people want about 1-5 close friends
People are less concerned with casual friends/acquaintances
How bad for you is not belonging?
Belonging is called a need, not a want, perhaps for these reasons
Death rates from various diseases increase among people with no social connections (Lynch, 1979)
People who are alone have more mental and physical problems (Uchino, Cacioppo, & Kiecolt-Glaser, 1996)
Loneliness reduces the ability of the immune system to heal the body (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2005)
Attraction – Similarity, complementarity, & opposites
Which old saying turns out to be true, “Birds of a feather flock together” or “Opposites attract”
The research has pointed to birds of a feather being the clear winner
In any relationship ranging from acquaintance to lover, opposites are unlikely to stay connected in the long run
Typically, but not always, our friends are similar in age, race, education level, political leaning, economic status, etc.
Note this is kind of a bad thing too, as it can lead us to assume everyone shares the opinions of your social group
How often do you see people unfriend others on Facebook over political disagreements?
Attraction – Similarity, complementarity, & opposites
Similarity
We tend to like friends who do the same activities that we do
Some researchers have even suggested that when a romantic couple gets into a relationship, if their levels of physical attractiveness aren’t quite similar, they will be more likely to break up
Have couples who are in different physical leagues stuck out to you as unusual?
Attraction – Similarity, complementarity, & opposites
Indeed, matching
hypothesis has been
supported, couples
are more likely to break
up if there’s a difference
in physical attractiveness
(even serious couples)
Attractiveness & Attraction
Speaking of physical attractiveness, most of us would say ‘we know it when we see it,’ but how do researchers define and measure it?
For starters, which of these 3 faces is the most attractive?
Attractiveness & Attraction
I chose the middle one. According to research findings, most people would choose either the middle or the right photo
The left photo is the original
Attractiveness & Attraction
Facial symmetry
Symmetrical faces are almost always rated as more attractive
The more symmetrical, the better
The implication is that facial symmetry implies genetic fitness. Asymmetry is a sign of genetic imperfections
To demonstrate that genetics are the explanation behind this, researchers (Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999) took the t-shirts that men slept in and asked women to smell and rate their scent
Some of the men had clear genetic asymmetry, length of pinky fingers or ear lobes
Women preferred the smell of men with genetic symmetry
They especially preferred the symmetric men’s scent when
at the point in their period when reproduction was ideal
Attractiveness & Attraction
Facial symmetry continued
More research has used computer software to merge/combine faces
For example, people rate the attractiveness of two faces, and then the faces are combined, and they rate the composite of the previous two faces
People mostly like composite faces better
In fact, the more faces that one combines, the more people liked it
E.g. a 16-face facial composite is preferred over a 4-face composite
Symmetrical, or ‘averaged,’ faces are preferred
Consider how saying someone looks inbred is the opposite
Lack of genetic diversity causes issues and is unappealing
Attractiveness & Attraction
Alright, we’ve covered faces, what about bodies?
Attractiveness & Attraction
Studies by Singh (1993) measured male ratings of silhouettes of woman’s bodies
He manipulated the size of the waist (belly fat) and the size of the hips
He find found that a low waist to hip ration, like .7, was preferred. This matches the standard hourglass shape people talk about
A small effect was found for women preferring men with a .9 waist to hip ratio
Subsequent research found the male shoulder to waist ratio was much more important, e.g. a V-shape
Attractiveness & Attraction
Alright, but how does physical attractiveness stack up to other aspects of attractiveness (having things in common, warmth, career success, etc.)
It can be summed up by one of my favorite quotes from your textbook authors:
“The fancy theories about matchmaking and similarity and reciprocity couldn’t shine through the overwhelming preference for the best-looking partners”
Attractiveness & Attraction
Attractiveness predicts date satisfaction more than any other dimension
Relates back to the Halo Effect, which can also be called ‘what is beautiful is good effect’
People (presumably) have other good traits if they’re attractive
Attractiveness & Attraction
Hortacsu and Ariely (2006) found that women stated a preference for taller men
But that preference could be offset if the man made enough money
E.g. for a 5 foot 8 inch guy, he could get as many dates as a taller guy if he made roughly 150k more
E.g. a 5 foot 2 guy could keep up with taller guys if he made 277k more than them
However, other research has shown that while women state a preference for taller guys, they don’t find them more attractive once having met them (Sheppard & Strathman, 1989)
Similarly, short men don’t report having less dates than tall men
Attractiveness & Attraction
Beyond considering romantic or sexual partners, being good looking confers other benefits. Good looking people are more likely to:
Do better in job interviews
Receive more help from strangers during emergencies
Be more popular among their peers
This even applies to young children
Teachers like attractive kids better as well
Finally, even 3-month-old babies show a preference for staring longer at attractive faces
Attractiveness & Attraction
According to principles of behaviorism:
We like people and romantic partners when they praise or compliment us (feels good, so we have positive associations with them)
We also like people who do us favors. This can take the form of help, gifts, cooking food, etc.
The exception in both of those cases is when the favors or compliments are seen as manipulative
Attractiveness & Attraction
As we discussed in the social influence chapter, reciprocity has compelling effects
As such, when someone likes us, we are inclined to like them by default
One exception is when we don’t like someone back and don’t want to spend time with them
Can cause us to feel guilty and/or turn them away
Attractiveness & Attraction
Nonverbal reciprocity
Lakin & Chartrand (2005) found that participants liked confederates better who mimicked their behavior (giggling, putting one’s hand on one’s face, etc.) than those confederates who didn’t mimic
Try it out in your life! Just don’t make it too obvious ;p
Attractiveness & Attraction
A few final points about attraction
The ‘mere exposure effect’ (Ch. 7) applies to liking people too
Also called the propinquity effect, we like people that we encounter regularly
Makes us feel like our environment is stable and predictable
But like the mere exposure effect, if our initial response is dislike, disliking gets worse
Social allergy effect: a partner’s annoying habits get more annoying over time
Rejection
Rejection is a broad term, referring to being turned down for a date, being dumped, being fired, being kicked off of a team, not invited to an event with your usual friends, etc.
Ostracism is another word for it, being excluded, rejected, or ignored by others
Why does rejection occur?
What causes rejection
Reasons differ by context
Among children, other kids are rejected if they’re:
1. Aggressive
physically or verbally
2. Withdrawn
Often just by him/herself
3. Different/deviant
Just unlike peers in some way
What causes rejection
Among adults
Typically deviance
Just being too different from people around you
Shame on some level, because that stifles uniqueness
Bad apple
Making others of your group look bad
What causes rejection
Romantic Rejection
When turning people down, people often cite external reasons (too busy, not looking for a relationship, etc.)
But the reason is almost always internal (not attracted to person, don’t like them, etc.)
Those external answers are polite, but can lead to confusion
Rejected people can become a stalkers
There has also been a trend lately of men rejected by women to become violent and go on a shooting spree as a result
Psychological effects of rejection
The effects of rejection are uniformly bad
Pain
Illness
Depression
Suicidal thoughts
Life seeming pointless
Risky sexual behavior
People can develop rejection sensitivity
Reluctance to open up to new people for fear of being hurt
Psychological effects of rejection
Similar to shocking physical pain, sometimes the psychological response to an important rejection is numbness
The mental distress, anxiety, and sadness come later
Rejection makes people temporarily stupid, in terms of cognitive performance
Rejection also suppresses people’s ability to self-regulate or control their behavior
More likely to binge eat sweets
Behavioral effects of rejection
Less generous, cooperative, and helpful
More impulsive and destructive
Higher levels of aggression
Before shootings in the U.S. became so frequent, the narrative was that school shooters were often rejected outcasts
There may be some truth to that narrative, but it’s not always the case and it certainly doesn’t excuse shooting people
Loneliness
When we discuss lonely people, we mean chronically lonely, not temporarily because someone moved to a new city
Comparing lonely to non-lonely people defies a lot of the stereotypes about lonely people
There are no appreciable differences in attractiveness, intelligence, or general social skills between lonely and non-lonely people
But, lonely people do seem to do a bad job of detecting the emotional states of people they interact with
This may lead to friction in social relationships
Lonely people interact with others as often as non-lonely (quantity), but the interaction quality is poorer
Loneliness
Recommendations:
Someone who is often lonely should get a pet! They help a lot
Improve at monitoring emotional states
Continuing to attempt to form meaningful bonds with people
Live closer to family
,
Chapter 5
Social Cognition Part 2
Today’s outline
Findings about automated processing
Heuristics
Cognitive biases
Attributions
Fundamental attribution error
Social Cognition continued
Last class we discussed the theme of automated/non-conscious/peripheral processes vs controlled/conscious/central processes.
As you may recall seeing, another way to describe automated cognition is called ‘heuristics’
If you don’t know how that word is pronounced/sounds, click here and click on US https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/heuristic
Heuristics
Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts that the automated mind uses to help us make decisions quickly/easily
They can, however, also be prone to certain errors
Indeed, you may recognize the name Daniel Kahneman
He won the Nobel Prize for “having integrated insights from psychology into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty”
Representativeness Heuristic
‘The tendency to judge the frequency or likelihood of an event by the extent to which is resembles a typical case’
Which series of coin flips is more likely? (h = heads; t = tails)
HHHHH or
HTHTH
Most people say the second one, but in reality, the odds are the same
Representativeness Heuristic continued
What’s more healthy?
Turns out rats that were fed Lucky Charms grew and were fine, but rats fed 100% natural Quaker Oats Granola didn’t grow and died early in their life span
Granola seems healthier, but had tons of saturated fat
OR
Availability Heuristic
Were you more afraid to fly on your first airplane or to drive somewhere?
Most would say airplane
But the chances of dying in a car crash (1 in 5,000) are many many many times more likely than dying in an airplane (1 in 11 million)
Car crashes remain one of the leading causes of death, alongside heart attacks and cancer
Plane crashes, though, stand out because they’re rare and usually covered extensively in the news
Heuristics continued
A lot of the time, heuristics can help us make decisions
But often there’s a major flaw with our brain:
Information from base rates and statistics get overshadowed by biases, like the availability heuristic or representativeness heuristic
Also the gambler’s fallacy, which we’ll discuss shortly
Anchoring & adjustment heuristic
In estimating the likelihood or frequency of an event, if there’s a starting number present, people will anchor on to that and adjust either up or down
E.g. in a negotiation, if the company offered you 60k a year.
Anchoring & adjustment heuristic
Tversky and Kahneman (1974):
Spun a random 1-100 wheel in front of participants (the wheel was rigged to either land on 65 or 10)
Whichever it landed on, researchers would ask: “Is the percentage of African countries in the UN higher or lower than the # on the wheel?” Then, “What was the # of African countries?”
Participants who were anchored by the number 10%, estimated 25%, whereas those anchored by 65% estimated 45%.
This occurs even though participants see the wheel and believe it’s just random
Other cognitive biases
We already discussed confirmation bias in previous chapters, though the effect of that bias cannot be overstated
Conjunction fallacy
Let’s try this out
Linda is 31, single, outspoken, very bright. She majored in philosophy in college. As a student, she was deeply concerned with discrimination and other social issues, and she participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Which is more likely?
A. Linda is a bank teller
B. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement
Conjunction fallacy
Even though b. is tempting, the answer is a.
The odds of one event occurring (she’s a bank teller) is more likely than two separate events occurring together (bank teller and feminist)
People perceive an increase in accuracy as information gets more specific and tied to similar-seeming elements, but in fact, the opposite is true
E.g. not all bank tellers are feminists, and vice versa
Illusory correlation
When two rare things occur together, they stand out as correlated
This explains why some people have a bad view of minorities, because if the news reports on a minority member (rare) committing a crime (rare), that stands out
In one study, participants read about actions taken by people from two groups, Group A and Group B.
Group A has more members than Group B
Illusory correlation continued
Some of the actions taken by people in both groups were desirable (e.g. helped someone) or undesirable (e.g. lied to someone).
But the ratio of desirable to undesirable behaviors was the same for both groups
Nevertheless, after reading all of the stories, participants estimated that members from Group B. committed more undesirable acts than desirable ones
Base Rate Fallacy
As sample size increases, variability decreases
E.g. if you flip a coin 10 times, you might see HHHHTTHHHH, 8 out of 10 heads
But if you flipped 1000 coins, the chances of seeing 800/1000 heads is way lower
Some sports, then, are more likely to have flukes!
Any game with low scores, like
soccer; to reduce flukes, games should
have high scores and multiple matches
(e.g. best of 3)
Gambler’s Fallacy and Hot Hand
Say you flip a coin 9 times, and the result is all heads. Will the next one be:
A. Head
B. Tails
C. Heads or Tails are equally likely
What do you think the answer is?
Gambler’s Fallacy and Hot Hand
Hot hand players would believe good luck would continue and say A. Heads
Gambler’s Fallacy players would say a Tails is due and pick B. Tails
The answer is C.
The 10th flip is a discrete event, the prior events have no impact on the current flip
Researchers demonstrated this
by putting cameras above roulette
tables in Las Vegas Casinos
Gambler’s Fallacy and Hot Hand
If you play any kind of board games that include dice, you’ll catch yourself making either the Hot Hand or Gambler’s Fallacy very often
I know I do!
Gambler’s Fallacy and Hot Hand can be understood in the context of the representativeness heuristic
People expect strings of numbers to look average
These two fallacies could also play into the next bias…
Illusion of Control
People have an immensely strong desire to control everything
We come to believe we can control chance events
E.g. in past times, things like rain dances
More casino research has shown people who want high numbers roll dicer harder, and people who want low numbers roll dice softer
Similarly, with Gambler’s Fallacy and Hot Hand, it’s possible people are trying to reason around random chance by explaining in their mind why the next flip should be heads tails
Referring back to self-esteem, illusions of control are probably a mentally healthy thing to have
Magical thinking
Any assumptions that don’t hold up to scrutiny or fact
E.g. being afraid to wear a sweater that someone who has HIV/AIDS wore
It couldn’t be transmitted as such
Being afraid of eating a chocolate bug
Unrealistic contamination
We all get grossed out if we see a hair in our food or if a bug just landed in it
But in reality, nothing really happens from that ;p
Statistical Regression
Sir Francis Galton came up with it
Aka regression toward the mean
Streaks can happen in anything, sports, gambling, etc., but eventually, everything regresses back to whatever its mean is
This relates back to the base rate fallacy, as sample size increases, variability decreases
Counterfactual thinking
Imaging alternatives to past or present events, despite reality being set in stone
What if a different candidate won
What if you would have been on time for that date
Narrowly missing a subway train is something people find more aggravating than missing it by 5 minutes, even though there’s no real difference
Attributions
Attributions are an explanation of why something happened
Inferences we make to explain events in our life
E.g. Dylan said something mean because he’s a jerk
Earlier in the course we had discussed the ‘self-serving bias’
Where people attribute their success to internal characteristics (I’m smart, hard-working, etc.)
But attribute failures to external things (my boss just didn’t like me)
Let’s investigate another important bias…
Attributions
Fundamental attribution error (FAE)(aka correspondence bias):
tendency to attribute the actions of others to internal causes even if they are actually caused by external forces or circumstances (Jones & Nisbett)
e.g. Bob is late because he's a slacker (internal)
we don't assume it's due to traffic
This bias is one of the most
famous and important findings
in social psychology
Actor and Observer
Actor-observer bias: as observers, we attribute the behavior of others to their wants, motives, and personality traits (this is the fundamental attribution error), but as actors, we tend to find external explanations for our own behavior
Personalizing the Fundamental Attribution Error
Can you think of an example from your recent past where you evaluated someone's actions and made the fundamental attribution error?
in other words, you attributed their behavior to internal causes, even though you don't know for sure
Can you similarly think of an example where someone attributed YOUR behavior to an internal cause, when really the cause was external?
Personal Anecdote on FAE
I have a memory that stands out to me:
Junior year of college I had woken up after my first night back on campus and was going to head to my first class, animal behavior
The instructor was Dr. Yasukawa, who
was kind of intimidating and well-
regarded on campus, but I was excited
to take his class because he was the athletics
director and we had often played some sports
with students/faculty during ‘noon ball’ in
between classes during my pervious year/s
Personal Anecdote on FAE continued
So I woke up, took one look in the mirror, and saw that my eyes were super bloodshot
It looked like I was on drugs
In fact, it was because I had severe allergies from being in the Midwest (hay, pollen, ragweed, etc.)
Afterwards I got on allergy medication which stopped any such problems
I tried a few things to fix the problem, but ended up not being able to, and had to decide to just go to class, and was late at this point
I walked in and everyone was looking at me, classes were small at my college, only 20 people
Personal Anecdote on FAE continued
As I was heading to my seat, he said “Hi Jon, that’s your ‘one bite.’
Referring to animal behavior, as that was the course, and how dogs can kind of get away with one bite, but after that they get branded as trouble
I was so embarrassed!!! I apologized after class, but you can tell when someone doesn’t believe what happened
Personal Anecdote on FAE continued
He (the observer) assumed I was late because: I was just the kind of person who ran late, was disrespectful, or had been smoking, etc.
In reality, this was a perfect example of the FAE
He assumed internal causes for my lateness
I (the actor) knew, of course, that there was a clear, external cause
Monitor your own judgements of people, I’ve caught myself making the FAE many times
Factors Influencing Attributions
Discounting: downgrading internal causes as a way of explaining an individual’s behavior when a person’s actions seem to have strong external causes
e.g. athletes endorsing shaving cream
Consensus: degree to which people respond alike; implies that responses are externally caused
everyone is late….traffic
,
Chapter 5
Social Cognition Part 1
Today’s outline
Social cognition in general
Elaboration likelihood model
A model that explains two possible routes for processing information and making decisions
Controlled vs automatic processing
Knowledge structures
Schemas, scripts, priming, framing
Cognitive coherence
A model that explains how people make decisions in the real world
Development of social cognition
Behaviorism had been focused on observable actions and not internal states
But social psychologists contended that we can still measure/access thoughts, both directly and indirectly, using clever methodology
E.g. Measuring behavior after a discussion with someone of another race, in order to assess racist attitudes
Social cognition
Social Cognition: the study of any kind of thinking by people about people or social relationships
It’s a good thing social psychologists decided to look into social cognition because it turns out we think more about people than any other subject (Fiske & Taylor, 1991)
Social psychology
Do you like to think?
Humans have the largest prefrontal cortex of any animal, but…
Do humans like to think???
Turns out, no!
Conscious, rational thought requires a lot of energy and effort
Social cognition
Social psychologists developed the term ‘cognitive miser’ to describe human thought
Just as a miser doesn’t like to spend money and does so rarely, so do cognitive misers avoid thinking
*Notable exceptions:
When it comes to people’s favorite things (hobbies, sports, interests, etc.) people can and do readily think and devour knowledge
Some people do like to think in general, how do we know?
Need for cognition
Caccioppo & Petty (1982) developed a scale called Need for Cognition (NFC)
It measures the “tendency for an individual to engage in and enjoy effortful thinking”
Going back to persuasion from last lecture, someone’s NFC level is an audience (to whom) characteristic
Those high in NFC are more easily persuaded by strong arguments, but do not find weak arguments compelling
Example of strong argument: college students should have to take comprehensive exams at the end of senior year because that boosts starting salaries
Example of a weak argument: college students should have to take comprehensive exams because graduate students complained that because they have to, undergrads should too
Brief Note:
Before we continue, we are going to use a lot of terms in this chapter to mostly express the same things concerning the two different modes of thinking and the duplex mind:
Conscious vs. non-conscious
Central vs. peripheral
Systematic vs. heuristic
Controlled vs. automated
At different points we will use different terms, only because those were the terms the researchers used for their specific studies
But it’s important to recognize the themes and similarities
Elaboration Likelihood Model<
Collepals.com Plagiarism Free Papers
Are you looking for custom essay writing service or even dissertation writing services? Just request for our write my paper service, and we'll match you with the best essay writer in your subject! With an exceptional team of professional academic experts in a wide range of subjects, we can guarantee you an unrivaled quality of custom-written papers.
Get ZERO PLAGIARISM, HUMAN WRITTEN ESSAYS
Why Hire Collepals.com writers to do your paper?
Quality- We are experienced and have access to ample research materials.
We write plagiarism Free Content
Confidential- We never share or sell your personal information to third parties.
Support-Chat with us today! We are always waiting to answer all your questions.
All Rights Reserved Terms and Conditions
College pals.com Privacy Policy 2010-2018