Chapter 1

Social psych - scienti c study of feelings, thoughts, and behaviours of individuals in social
situations
-> focus on the power of situation

Milgrim’s study - administering shocks to the learner - increasing voltage- people hesitant but
continued to give shocks of increasingly high voltage - good people but the situation made them
do things they would not have

John Darley and Daniel Boston - theology student - deliver speech on good samaritan - some
were told to hurry some were told they had plenty of time : hurry- helped less

Fundamental attribution error - failure to recognise the in uence of situational factors dictating
one’s behaviour

Channel factors - circumstances that seem unimportant have great consequences for behaviour -
makes one path easier than the other - nudges

Gestalt psych - people perceive objects not by means of passive and unbiased way but by an
active often noncoscious way

Constural - how we interpret situations and behaviours and how we make inferences, often non
conscious, about the contexts and people we are encountering

Schemas - generalised knowledge about the physical and social world eg : norms

Automatic processing - implicit attitudes and beliefs - not consciously controlled / conscious
processing - explicit attitudes and beliefs that we are aware of, may become implicit over time

Non conscious factors a ect behaviour - more than we think

-> Implication : research should not just rely on verbal reports

There are intrinsic general propensities to develop grammatical languages

Naturalistic fallacy - that the way things are is they way it should be

Culture -> self conception, social interaction, perceptual and cognitive processes

Hispanic than asian America - familialism - interpersonal warmth, closeness and support
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 Class : working class, low SES -more interdependent, more interaction with family, conformity snd
obedience / middle class - personal uniqueness

Causes of interdependent vs independent - economics : shared venture like large scale

agriculture vs solitary ventures/ societies organised along the lines of extended families, tribes,
clans etc vs nuclear family

Societies become tighter when faced with threat - chronic food scarcity, natural disasters,
frequent invasions

Chapter 2

Hindsight bias - tendency to believe after learning about some outcome that you could have
predicted it

Dissonance theory - consistency of thoughts and behaviour

Participant observation - observing phenomenon at close range

Archival research - research that can be done from archives like police reports, articles, databases
etc

Another method -> surveys - written or interviews / imp = rep sample -> random sample not
convenience sample

Correlational vs experimental research / self selection - experimenter has no in uence over

variables

exp research -> too unethical therefore natural exp - naturally occurring phenomenon with di
conditions - can be used to compare ad suggest strong links /

external validity is not always critical to clarify general idea or theory / to ensure external validity -
eld exp

Internal validity - the manipulated variable, nothing else, in uenced DV

Measurement validity - correlation between measure and what outcome its supposed to measure

If results genuine or valid - replication must be possible

Basic science can be useful for applied science and vice versa

Chapter 6

In uence of attitudes in behaviour - weaker than expected, in uence of behaviour on attitudes -

strong than expected

Attitude - evaluation of an object along a positive-negative dimension / involves a ect -

emotions / involves cognitions - reinforce a person’s feelings - knowledge, feelings, memories,
images
-> also involves behaviour - when a ective evaluation takes place, it is connected to behavioural
tendency - approach/avoid (when attitudes are primed - more likely engage in behaviours
consistent with that attitude)
-> attitudes - activate motor cortex
-> Commonly measured - self report questionnaires - Likert scale ( 1-7)

Before we make sense of an object - amygdala engages in evolutions - negative evaluations

stronger than good
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 How to capture more complex attitudes ?
-> measuring accessibility of attitude - how readily it comes to mind / time person takes to
respond to an attitude Q : response latency - more quickly - stronger attitudes

-> Measure centrality - weightage of that belief to persons belief system / eg : strong beliefs about
abortion can mean consistent opinions on stem cell research and sex education

->Implicit attitudes measure - when people unwilling/unable to report true feelings - tap into
nonconscious attitudes eg : IAT, nonverbal signals

Attitude does not predict behaviour / attitudes compete with other determinants of behaviour /
Norms - weaken the relationship b/t attitudes and behaviour

Introspection can lead s to focus on the easy to identify reasons for liking/ disliking something,
deterring us away from the real reason - usually a ective attitudes / cognitive attitudes -
introspection -> real reasons

Attitudes expressed in general categories while attitude related behaviour assessed are more
speci c/ speci c attitudes - better predictor of speci c behaviour / general attitudes - general
behaviour

People’s attitude predicts behaviour - if particular situation ts the prototype / eg : if someone

dislikes gay men, they are showing prejudice if the person ts their description of a gay man

Behaviours a ect attitudes

- cognitive dissonance : divide between cog and behaviour - dissonance, aversive emotional
state is aroused - motivate to change attitudes to be consistent
-> rationalisation and distortions happen subconsciously before decision is made and
dissonance reduction also happens after

- E ort justi cation - pay a high price for something, we tend to evaluate it more positively like a
high price for a vacation - despited boring - convince yourself it is good to reduce dissonance
- Induced compliance - the behaviour they are forced does not comply with attitude - change
attitude - study creating dissonance

Dissonance occurs when our sense of self is implicated. This can be understood for when we
judge someone’s character based on behaviour. The conditions are as follows :

1- behaviour was freely chosen

2- Behaviour wasn’t su ciently justi ed
3- negative consequences
4- negative consequences for foreseeable

People cope with self a rmation - by reminding themselves of the other good qualities they have

East Asians - dissonance - when they think others are observing or are made to think of others
reaction

Bem’s self perception theory - people often look outward at their behaviour and the context in
which it happened and then infer what their attitudes are / caveat only in the case of : weak,
ambiguous, uninterpretable attitudes we infer from outsider view point
-> Acc to him, dissonance doesn’t occur- its rather rational inference

Whats more accurate ? Explicit and implicit measures have found arousal. Both theories play a
role / Dissonance reduction processes are activated when behaviour is inconsistent with
preexisting attitudes that are clear-cut and of some importance. Self-perception processes, in
contrast, are invoked when behaviour con icts with attitudes that are relatively vague or of less
importance / self perception - engage in imp attitudes as well
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 Attitudes, beliefs, or concepts are partly embodied in the physical movements associated with
those beliefs, attitudes or concepts

System justi cation theory - believing the world should be or is fair and seeing injustice leads to
ideological dissonance - praising the current system is easier than bringing about change

Terror management theory - what people do when faced with the anxiety when thinking of this
mortality
-> Achieve symbolic immortality by viewing themselves as connected to broader culture,
worldview, values
-> When death is salient - more strongly uphold values of the institutions its part of
-> Mortality salience - increases striving for self esteem

Chapter 7

Elaboration likelihood model - Dual processing of Persuasive appeals - some process it

mindlessly, others think deeply about it
-> Central route : rely on logic and strength of the arguments - reason through info procured from
their own exp and memories
-> Peripheral route : process relatively easy super cial elements eg : attractiveness of the person
communicating - not engaging in much thought

Which route will they engage in?

-> Motivation : personally relevant -> motivated -> central
-> Ability to engage in depth analysis -> central / tired -> peripheral

Imp - these variables are not tied to one persuasion route. For eg source expertise could serve as
an argument - people think careful -> central / source expertise could in uence the thoughts
through central route as well

For long lasting change - persuasion through central route / in uence unmotivated audience -
peripheral route

Source characteristics

1) attractiveness : attitude change from peripheral - when ppl don’t know much about it and no
personal relevance
2) Credibility : seem trustworthy and expert -> peripheral / strong arguments in favour of the
message -> central / sleeper e ect - messages from unreliable sources exert little in uence
but over time it has the potential to shift attitudes - because dissociate the message from the
source over time OR credible sources with weak message - content dissociated from source -
still persuasive
3) Certainty - people persuaded if the source is con dent

Message characteristics

1) message quality - high quality - persuasive to those with motivation and ability/ stronger -
appeal to audience’s core values, clear, logical, highlight the desirable consequences of taking
that action / conclusions explicit, arguments against counter arguments/ messages con ict
with self interest of the source
2) Vividness - colourful, interesting, memorable -> more e ective / can a ect judgment even
when content is atypical / central thesis needs to be vivid, not everything / identi able victim
e ect - people donate more if its for identi able victims but if the people are responsible for
the situations - negatively perceived
3) Fear - right kind of fear - not too much to disrupt thought that impedes longer lasting changes,
but enough to motivate them to change / messages persuasive when concrete info on steps
to take to tackle the source of fear

Audience characteristics
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 1) Need for cognition - higher need - stronger arguments, lower need - peripheral
2) Mood - good mood - more persuasive / mood of the audience = mood of the message ->
more persuasive
3) Age - young people are more persuasive
4) Knowing your audience - tailoring message to audience

Documenting the e ects of media - confounds

When they are presented with media that they are aware that large number of other people are
also listening to (shared attention) - process it more deeply -> central

Agenda control - media emphasis on certain topics shapes which topics people think are
important eg : left leaning ads about racial acceptance and diversity - might think race is a very
imp issue

Hostile media phenomenon - media is based against our now preferred causes / ppl believe they
see the world as is - naive realism thus news channel showing both sides tend to be labelled as
biased from both sides

False news spread faster - novelty and the emotions it elicits

People attend selectively to the information that conforms to their pre-existing beliefs
Also tend to evaluate information that conforms to this

Many persuasive messages fail - cant overcome audience’s previous commitments

When people publicly commit to an attitude - they are more resistant to counter-messages -
because we may loose face by changing

Thought polarisation hypothesis - extended thought about a particular issue leads to more
extreme opinions

More prior knowledge about the issue - resistant to persuasion - attitudes are xed

When attitudes morph into moral mandates people are resistant to persuasion, more motivated to
act on them, view it as objectively and universally true, more likely distance themselves from
people who don’t hold that opinion

Moral reframing - framing a position in terms of the moral values the target values - persuasion
tool

Attitude inoculation - exposing people to mild counterarguments against their position and
encouraging them to counter argue - makes them more resistant to later persuasion / you can
also inoculate ppl against misinformation - games that expose them to mild media techniques -
later they are able to resist

Chapter 8

Social in uence - the many ways people a ect each other

Conformity - changing ones attitudes or behaviour to the likes of the group

Compliance - person responds favourably to another’s request

Obedience - more powerful person demands and the less powerful person complies with that
demand
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 Conformity - some harmless , some harmful
-> bene ts - reduced con ict, smoothen human interaction, forgoes the need to expend energy
and calculate all possible moves
-> Nonconscious imitation of others but why? 1- seeing others behaviour, brings the behaviour to
our minds, more likely to exhibit that behaviour ( brain regions for perception and action are
overlapped ) 2- facilitate smooth interaction, nurturing social connection / ppl who have been
mimicked engage in prosocial behaviour to the one mimicking / we mimic when you want to be
a liated to the person and they are well liked
-> Some mimicry is asynchronous and some synchronous / study : synchronous actions with the
experimenter associated with liking the experimenter more / synchronous actions - trust each
other more

Sherif designed a study - how other people act as a frame of reference socially - used auto
kinetic illusion ( light appears moving in a dark room) - individual estimates of mov of light were
taken and together as a group - eventually individual judgements fused into group norm / IMP -
even tested again after a year, group norms in uenced their individual perception

Informational social in uence - reliance on other people’s comments and actions as an indication
to be proper and correct / more pronounced when we are uncertain

Asch conformity study - normative social in uence - the desire to avoid being criticised/
disapproved or shunned

Factors a ecting conformity pressure :

1) group size - more likely to conform to a big group but after 3-4 it starts to decline / why?
Informational social in uence - the validity of consensus holds when individual opinions are
congruent, but as the group size increases, each opinion is likely not independent / normative
in uence - being viewed as weird from 2 people is psychologically powerful than 14
2) Group unanimity - someone that breaks unanimity, doesn’t have to a rm the individuals
opinion - reduce information and normative in uence - reducing conformity
3) Anonymity - if we remain anonymous - normative in uence decreases - less conformity
(information -> internalisation, normative -> public acceptance more than private judgment)
4) Expertise - experts - information in uence - believe that they are right / status - normative
in uence -
5) Culture - interdependent cultures - susceptible to both kinds of in uences conform more
6) Tight and loose cultures - how strong and strict are the norms in a culture - tighter behaviour
constraints partly associated with fewer natural resources

Minority in uence - if its consistent and clear -> informational social in uence / cause majority to
systematically re-evaluate their opinion - in uence is small but stronger -> private acceptance

Compliance

-> Foot in the door technique - small request to which everyone complies and then making the
larger request - more likely going to comply as they do the small request they might think of
themselves as someone that does this sort of thing - consistency in self image

-> Informing them of the norm - when they have miscalculated it - surprising / pluralistic
ignorance - tendency to act in ways that goes against your beliefs because you think majority of
the people don’t share that belief

-> Static norm vs dynamic norms - people are more in uenced by trends. Eg : if 35% are
feminists - saying that would bring less change than saying that this number has risen up to 35%

-> Descriptive norms - what people are doing / prescriptive norm - what ppl should do / these
should not be in contradicting each other/ rather than saying little people vote, indicating how
many people that vote and the importance of voting (prescriptive) - better

-> Reciprocity - by doing something nice for the other person, they are more likely going to
comply - not doing that breaks a powerful social norm
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-> Door in the face technique - ask the person for a big request which they are going to refuse
and then ask the more modest favour that you’re really interested in. It would seem like you made
a concession and to reciprocate that, the person will also be compelled to make a concession- to
do the favour

-> Positive mood - more likely comply / mood colours how we interpret events / to sustain the
good mood / the favour cannot undermine the good feeling

-> Negative mood - guilty, some other sort of negative moods - increase compliance/ negative
state relief hypothesis - taking an action to bene t someone else esp for a good cause makes us
feel better / hunger reduces compliance

Obedience in Milgrim’s experiment - they got paid already, ful lling their end of the deal, believe
they are contributing to the advancement of science, normative in uence - complying with
experimenter
-> Not blind obedience - indecisive obedience as they tried to stop the exp and not comply with it
- case of exp - the exp wasn’t playing by the norms which led to uncertainty on what to do - we
are not good at disobeying then
-> Release from responsibility - exp - exp said ‘ I will take responsiblity’
-> Step-by-step involvement - didn’t administer large shocks immediately, incremental changes.
Why should this shock be too much and not the previous one be ?

Reactance theory - unpleasant state of arousal when they believe their free will is restricted
How to resist obedience ?
- Practice resisting
- Having an ally
- Waiting a bit before deciding to comply
Chapter 10

Stereotypes - belief that certain attributes are characteristic of members of particular groups -
thinking about the person not as an individual but members of the group - projecting beliefs of the
group on to the person

Prejudice - attitudinal and a ective response towards a group and its individual members -
negative or positive

Discrimination - favourable or unfavourable actions towards members of the group - unfair

treatment only based on group membership

Note : prejudice can arise without discrimination and discrimination can arise without
prejudice

Now there is di b/t what people think and feel and what they think they should think and feel/
some attitudes are also automatic and non conscious / con ict b/t abstract beliefs and gut level
reactions

Modern racism theory - white ppl explicitly reject racist and prejudiced beliefs and hold strong
egalitarian values but harbour unacknowledged negative feelings and attitudes towards other
racial group due to in-group favouritism and defending the status quo. They are egalitarian -
unless they sense a rationalisation even non conscious for discrimination
-> biased group need to expend more cognitive resources unmasking the subtle discrimination -
no cognitive resources left for other activities

Benevolent sexism - chivalrous ideology market by protectiveness and a ection to women who
conform to the conventional role / Ambivalent - consists of both positive and negative aspects ->
both resistant to change
-> Can be harmful or even worse than hostile sexism as the outgroup members are treated well
only if they conform to the image
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 -> Women - benevolent sexism - performed worse in cognitive tests - self doubt than hostile
sexism
-> Disarms the target and makes it easy to overlook their more hostile sexist beliefs
-> outgroup members treated with hostility if they deviate from the stereotype

Measuring attitudes about groups

-> surveys - asking them to match adjectives with certain groups or self report questionnaires but
disadvantage - may not report attitudes that they think they shouldn’t feel and some attitudes are
even non conscious, may not capture the depth of the belief

THUS
• Implicit association test (IAT) :
-> reveals subtle non conscious biases
->respond faster when the words are paired with things that con rm to the deep stereotypes and
prejudice
-> young and older ppl - favour young
-> white and some black people - favour white
-> How strongly predictive are the IAT scores? Correspondence b/t speci c attitudes measured
by IAT and the exact behaviour of interest ( better at predicting exact things than more general
thing like immigrants)

• Priming :
-> if shown a picture of something, you’ll recognise the word that you’ve associated with it more
quickly
-> ppl who aren’t sure they are prejudiced against black ppl - test still shows prejudice
-> A ective miss-attribution procedure (AMP) - how ppl evaluate the stimulus after a given prime
instead of how quickly / related to political attitudes, racial bias, personal habits like smoking and
drinking

The economic perspective

-> realistic group con ict theory : prejudice and discrimination arise from competition over limited
resources / pred : Pre and disc should rise under economic di culty
-> prejudice is usually perpetuated by groups that have the most to lose by the others gaining
-> Not just for material resources but over ideology and cultural supremacy
-> result : ethnocentrism - treating and stereotyping outgroup members that may go against moral
code and in group favouritism and loyalty intensi es

Robber’s cave experiment - the boys in camps divided into groups - competition one gains and
one looses - gets nothing / resulted in con ict and aggression
-> Reducing con ict - superordinate goal - goals that could be achieved by only working together
Takeways :
-> No background links necessary for intergroup con ict to arise - just they need to compete over
the same resources and someone will lose

The motivation perspective

-> The minimal group paradigm - making groups based on arbitrary processes and yet there is an
inclination in maximising the relative gain for the ingroup over the outgroup THAN maximising
absolute gain for the in-group

Social identity theory - our self-esteem comes not only from our personal identity and
accomplishments but also from the status and accomplishments of the various groups we belong
to
- as self esteem tied to the achievements of the group - tempted to boost the status an fortunes
of those in our group -> in group favouritism -> higher self esteem
- Ppl especially motivated to identify with the group and derive self esteem from the group
membership when their uncertain about their own beliefs and attitudes and values
- Basking in re ected glory - same occurs for sports team - incentive to identify with groups
when they do well but to distance ourselves from them when they lose
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Denigrating outgroup bolsters their self esteem - when their groups not themselves are under
threat - belittle outgroup
Case study : black doctor praises participants - see him as doctor when they belittle them - see
him as a black man

The cognitive perspective

-> ppl fall back on stereotypes when they lack energy
-> use of stereotypes - frees up cognitive resources until later
-> we are prone to illusory correlations and our brains over-represent distinctive events. Minority
groups are more distinct and if they exhibit bad behaviour its doubly remembered - stereotypes
as more likely going to engage in negative behaviour
-> paired distinctiveness - pairing of 2 distinct events that stand out because they occur together
-> we associate novel groups with rare attributes
-> ppl generalise behaviour that they already suspect group members having
-> Actions that are consistent with an existing stereotype are noticed, deemed signicant, and
remembered, whereas actions that are at variance with the stereotype may be ignored, dismissed,
or quickly forgotten
-> People might act with minority groups that encourage the very behaviour they expect to see
from these groups
-> people evaluate info that contradicts their stereotypes in a way that reduces its impact

Subtyping - not moved by discon rming evidence as those that act in such a manner (stereotype)
are brushed aside as exceptions

Pp described negative characteristics of in group members - concrete construal - less about the
person and negative characteristics of out group members abstract construal - more about the
person / opp for positive actions

Merely dividing a continuous distribution into 2 groups - see less variability within group and more
variability b/t groups
Study - assumed beliefs were similar to other in-group - arbitrary groups

Outgroup homogeneity e ect - members of the outgroup more homogenous - members of in-
group more varied
Why?
- more contact with in-group members
- Nature of interactions with in-group and outgroup members di / outgroup members rep the
group, in group is not

Own race identi cation bias - tendency for people to be better able to recognise and
distinguish faces from their own race than from other races.

Reactions to di groups of people are guided by more re exive actions, we can override
but not eliminate. / an unprejudiced person will employ more controlled cognitive
processes to discard or suppress them

Ppl engaged in more stereotypical association than stereotypical prejudice when

measuring automatic reactions

Study - pp made a mistake of shooting an unarmed target more if the person was black
than white - more pronounced if the setting was stereotypical

Reducing prejudice
-> prevailing norm favour outgroup tolerance helpful / sometimes met with resistance -
the beliefs come from the social groups which eventually guide their thinking back to the
old way
-> school reading programs inclusive of inter group relations
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 -> social media - criticism helps but only when its given by a member of a high status in
group member
-> cognitive and emotional training interventions eg : perspective taking

Contact hypothesis - di groups being more in contact with each other reduces prejudice
- not e ective
Contact is positive when these conditions are met :
1- groups need to have equal status
2- subordinate goal
3- community’s broader norm has to support inter group contact

people begin to see members of the outgroup as individuals rather than as stereotyped,
undi erentiated members of a social category, a process psychologists refer to as
personalization

Multiculturalism - views culture ethnicities as central to their identities, should be

acknowledged and maintained - better

Colourblindness - views colour and ethnicity as skin deep - needs to be downplayed and
ignored, everyone is a unique individual -> can lead to prejudice sometimes

greater support for color-blindness over multiculturalism is associated with stronger

ethnocentrism and greater ingroup favoritism - less likely to detect instances of racism

Multiculturalism - increase perspective taking, enhance support for pro diversity policies,
reduce anxiety over anticipated interracial interactions / White employees' support for
multiculturalism in their organization positively predicts psychological engagement on the
part of employees of color in the organization / participants from ethnic minority groups
have been shown to perform better when working with White participants who have been
primed with a multicultural compared with a color-blind perspective

Disadvantages : can elicit exclusion in white people, seen as identity threat / perpetuating
race essentialism racial group di are biologically based and xed / minority spotlight
e ect - minorities become salient / identity denial - ppl from underrepresented groups feel
precluded from embracing other group identities
-> framing this approach in an all inclusive manner - greater acceptance among majority
members

Diversity training - improves attitudes towards underrepresented women and white

people weren’t faced with as much prejudice to begin with - may decline with time
-> requiring majority members to attend may lead to alienations and become more
inclined to questions the competence of minority groups
-> minority members may start to question their competence due to diversity training
-> discriminatory claims - taken less seriously - as institutions can claim to already be
engaging in diversity training
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 Chapter 11

Social dominance theory - assumption that societies are inherently hierarchical - based
on age, gender and ‘arbitrary set’ which di ers from societies eg : ethnicity, religion etc

-> The social and psych structures that evolve to keep the hierarchy in place
1- individual discrimination - dominant groups act to preserve their advantage and keep
subordinate groups in their place
2- Institutional discrimination - laws and norms preserve the hierarchy
3- behavioural asymmetries - respect is shown to members of dominant group but not
subordinate groups - achievements are undermined for the subordinate groups by a self
ful lling prophecy

Great replacement theory - white people throughout Europe and US are being replaced
by non white

Social dominance orientation - scale to measure to what extent someone is oriented

toward preservation of hierarchies and status quo / higher = prejudiced attitudes towards
di groups / low = untroubled by institutional discrimination if they form legitimised myths
that make it reasonable to do so

Meritocracy - some people merit more than others - Social Dom - dominant groups use
their position to make it easier for other members to succeed and when subordinate
groups don’t - they don’t have what it takes

Just world hypothesis - ppl deserve what they get and Get what they deserve / when
someone get what they don’t outwards deserve like a good person getting cancer, we
attribute it to the person rather than chance - reduce anxiety

We believe more economic mobility than it actually is and meritocracy and just world ->
accept inequalities - can also be non conscious

Easier to believe in inequality - bottom - dehumanisation

-> those that we think are di like immigrants
-> strongly connected to your in-group and see it distinct to outgroups
-> see the world as chaotic and threatening

Stereotype content model - nature of stereotypes vary depending on how they rank in
dimensions of warmth and competence
Warmth - understand a person’s intentions key to survival
Competence - are they going to act on their kind intention?

High warmth and competence - liked low warmth low competence - contempt
Ambivalent : High warmth low competence - pitied low warmth high competence - envied

People survey - strong positive associations b/t competence and status , negative
association b/t competence and warmth / Immigrants - seen as warm- emigrated from a
country where its citizens are thought to be cooperative, competent - economically
successful in their own country
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Ppl tend to view working poor more favourably - rich are seen high in competence but
cold / more income inequality - view lower SES as incompetent / some poor seen high in
warmth

Politicians score low on warmth = seen as untrustworthy

Bias in law enforcement, bias in hiring, bias in attention - world does not pay attention to
marginalised groups/ actively turning attention away from them
-> people with multiple non dominant identities tend to be ignored

Mass media - more pictures of men’s faces, less woman - more of their bodies are shown
/ faces are seen as more competent

Invisibility of intersectional individuals - blessing - less resistance when they act in ways
contrary to a stereotype

Gender inequality - self ful lling - seeing more men in roles, boys nd it easier to imagine
and take steps to reach that [position

Language in uences what we think about and pay attention to

Attributional ambiguity - Would I have gotten pulled over if I was white? Did I get the
fellowship because I am Latino ? -> distressing / study - feedback from white students -
white students had no e ect - if black students received feedback and thought you the
student could see them - no enhancement of self esteem

Stereotype threat - fear that they will conform to the stereotypes - reduced performance /
more obvious threat - greater e ect -> increased arousal / reducing performance to avoid
failure rather than succeed

Cost of concealment - stress - monitoring necessary to conceal taxing / public vs private

self -> depressive symptoms

Increasing diversity in society -> increased wealth and innovation -> loess social trust

Dominant groups gauge progress - comparing where marginalised groups were in the
past and where they are now whereas Marg. groups -> where they are and where they
want to be

Marley hypothesis - dominant and marginalized groups' assessments tend to di er

because members of the dominant group generally know less about the history of
oppression and disadvantage su ered by the other groups

Dominant members - privileges - ask them about their luck rather than telling them -
otherwise they shall state their personal hardships

Avantages for dominant members comes in the absence of things rather than perks -
harder to identify - availability bias : attention to hurdles

Cross-group interactions can be challenging - di in political orientations, religious beliefs

etc - its rare to have interactions with outgroup members - this rarity can reinforce each
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 thinking the other don’t want to talk to them / historic and contemporary tensions might
play out in the conversation

Whites know they think of them as competent but want to come across as warm and
moral whereas marginalise groups want to come across as competent - diverging needs

Chapter 12

Group - a collection of individuals who’s relations to one another make them

interdependent to some degree - degrees can vary

Triplett - presence of other people enhance performance -> social facilitation

-> The other person doesn’t have to do be doing the same thing
-> Observed in other species - fundamental

Other studies - decline in performance in the presence of others - decline in memory,

maze learning, arithmetic

Zajnoc theory - mere presence of others facilitate performance on simple/ well learned
tasks but hikers performance on complex or novel tasks
1- presence of others -> arousal
2- arousal -> rigid -> more likely to do what we are automatically inclined to do (dominant
response)
3- Dominant response is the correct one for simple tasks and incorrect one for novel and
complex tasks

But is the arousal from the mere presence ?

Evaluation apprehension - concern for how you are evaluated by others / study -
performance was bad when evaluation took place

But mere presence still impacted performance, evaluation apprehension may amplify the
arousal

Social loa ng - tendency to put less e ort in group work where individual contributions
cannot be monitored

Even when stakes our high - decisions made by a group can be faulty to preserve social
harmony

Group think - Faulty thinking by members of highly cohesive groups in which the critical
scrutiny that should be devoted to the issues at hand is subverted by social pressures to
reach consensus.
-> groups may be overly con dent about their ideas, reject alternatives
-> groups under loads of stress - latch to illusory consensus
-> drive to nd consensus -> self censorship : withholding opinions

Group polarisation - group decisions tend to be more extreme than individual decisions
How does it happen ?
1- if someone is predisposed to an opinion, discussing with the group exposing them to a
lot of arguments in favour of it -> more extreme belief / does not have to be face to face/
simply reading other’s arguments enough
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2- most people think their higher than the average for the right things. Once they realise
they are average or below average, the desire to distinguish themselves -> showing that
they have more extreme opinions (social comparison ) (weaker)

Power - ability to control one’s own outcomes and others - intrinsically relational - varies
from groups, context etc

Social hierarchies - some have more power - people conform to it quickly as it provides
rules on how to allocate resources etc - provide a shred notion of how decisions are
made

People who feel control of their own life - less stress, better physical health, happiness
and greater agency

2 paths to power
1- virtue -> power
2- vices

Virtues were more e ective at gaining in uence than vices

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 Approach/inhibition theory : elevated power -> approach behaviours - care less about
how others evaluate them, more goal driven/ less power -> inhibited behaviours -more
careful when making decisions and restricted
-> high power ppl - more likely stereotype ppl, focused on personal goals, less accurate
judges of other’s emotions, reduced the ability to take the perspective of others
-> high power -> in ated sense of self - overcon dence in their abilities
-> less power -> less cognitive exibility and control
-> high power - immoral unethical behaviours

Power encourages us to exhibit our good and bad inclinations

When we are in groups - deinviduation

-> Anonymity + di usion of responsibility + arousal + sensory overload -> deindividuation

- diminished self evaluation and concern for how others evaluate you -> more responsive
to others -> impulsive actions
-> the impulsivity is liberating as ppl can get tired of adhering to the social norms

Self awareness theory : self awareness - more attention to how they would be evaluated
-> ppl made self aware - individuation - act more in line with their values

Spotlight e ect - ppl think they are being judged by others more than what is actually the
case

Chapter 3

Social self - what we now about ourselves from social interaction

Self understanding is a construal process

A lot of mental activities are non conscious for eg picking the thing we saw last and then
we consciously infer plausible explanations of why we chose what we chose yet there is a
widespread assumption that we are the experts of ourselves
-> study : reports of your close others are as accurate as ourselves in reporting the
behaviours we engage in
-> we have a good understand of our inner traits whereas others have a good
understanding of our overt behaviours

Self knowledge is stored in memory - self schemas - represent ppl’s beliefs and feelings
about themselves, both in general and in particular kinds of situations
- study : pp more attuned to information that align with their schemas and identify them
quicker

Socialising agents in uence peoples traits, preferences and abilities which they call their
own

Self knowledge is derived in part from re ected self appraisals, what you think others
think of us - we internalise it

Echo chambers - the re ected self appraisals a ect perceptions of other people who they
a rm it back to us
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 Re ected self appraisals and self appraisal- late adolescent more than early adolescence,
close friends more than acquaintances

Situationism - social self changes throughout situations

Working self concept - only a subset of a person’s vast self knowledge comes into mind
in given contexts - usually whats more relevant to the context

People tend to mention what makes them distinct -> self identity

Apparent paradox of malleability and continuity in the self :

-> despite working self concepts varying across situations, still core beliefs that come to
mind rst when they think of themselves
-> overall pool of self knowledge (SK) remains stable despite di dimensions shifting
through contexts
-> the working self may shift in patterns that are predictable and stable

Culture varies the social self and these lead to di emotions, motivations and perceptions
of the social world

Western culture - independent self construal : self autonomous, distinct, focus on

independence and internal causes of behaviour, conception of self in terms of traits that
are stable across time and social context

Other cultures - interdependent self construal - self is fundamentally connected to other

people, nd a place within community and ful l role, self is embedded in social
relationships, duties and roles, external focus

Westerners more likely to recall events where they are the centre of observation, asians
more so from the point of others

These construals can vary depending on socioeconomic class- Higher SES have the
privilege to assert freedom of expression, choice / Lower SES - more sensitive to the
social context - interdependent self construal

Men -> focus on their uniqueness and distinctness whereas females - interdependent self
construal / women - social characteristics and relationships, pick photos with other ppl,
more pathetic and accurate judges of other people’s emotions whereas men are attuned
to their internal responses, women - situational cues
Why? Because socialisation di the amplify biological proclivities and reinforce that such
as taking about emotions more with girls and gender segregated play

But interdependent self construals can be relational or collective eg : fav sports team,
larger social groups / men - collective

Social comparison theory - when there is no objective standard to compare traits with,
they gain information by comparing with others
-> tend to engage in downward social comparison - biased to compare ourselves with ppl
slightly inferior to us -> boost self esteem
-> for improving - upward social comparison
-> social media - constant companion - a ects us - may a ect self construal
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 Social identities - part of the sense of self derived from group memberships

Self stereotype - characterising the self in term soft traits, norms and values associated
salient/ meaningful social group

Self esteem - overall positive or negative evaluation of the self

Trait self esteem - person’s enduring level of self regard across time - remains stable

State self esteem - person’s dynamic and changeable self evaluations - momentary

Males - early to early adulthood - self esteem rise / female - decline

Contingencies of self worth - ppl’s self esteem rise and fall with successes or failures in
domains that are important to them

Getting self esteem from di erent areas -> avoid feeling devastated when one fails

Sociometer hypothesis - self esteem is not a gauge of one’s evaluations - a readout of ur

social standing
-> low self esteem provided info to attend to our social bonds

Independent cultures foster high levels of self esteem than interdependent cultures
Interdependent cultures - improve themselves to achieve collective goals
But exposure to west raises self esteem

How do such di in self construal arise ?

-> situationist approach - independent cultures create interactions that boost self esteem
-> americans praised more than Japanese people
-> Canadians worked longer on a second task if they had succeeded the rst time,
Japanese work harder if they had failed

Self enhancement - need to protect and boost positive attitude about yourself
Strategies :
-> engaging in self serving interpretations - mostly on ambiguous traits like creativity,
intelligence and less on unambiguous ones like height and weight.
-> If given a precise way to interpret these qualities, the e ect diminishes
-> Pppl tend to judge others on how they are on average whereas ppl tend to judge
themselves on how they are on their best day
-> Self a rmation theory - maintaining an overall positive image when something
happens tat threatens the image / a rm themselves in a domain unrelated to what was
negative
-> this minimises defensive and dangerous behaviours ppl exhibit when faced with threat
-> threats to self esteem - more likely put down stereotyped group

High self enhances - positive illusions - lower baselines for stress / people who rate
themselves more favourably than others do - are perceived by others as narcissistic ->
maladaptive and aggressive behaviours

Western have a positive illusion more than asians

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 Self veri cation theory - stable, subjectively accurate beliefs about ourselves rather than
invariably favourable ones
Ppl selectively attend to and recall information that is consistent with (and therefore
veri es) their views of themselves

Self enhancement - emotional responses to feedback about ourselves/ self veri cation -
cognitive assessments of how valid the feedback is

Self discrepancy theory - ppl holds beliefs about not only what they are actually like, but
who they would ideally like to be and who they ought to be
- ideal self : desires and hopes
- Ought self - duties and obligations

People regulate behaviour to close the gap b/t actual self and ideal and ought self
Discrepancies b’t actual and ideal self -> dejection / b/t actual and ought - frustration

Promotion focus - regulate behaviours to achieve ideal self / prevention focus - regulate
behaviour to achieve ought self
Study : when ppl are subtly prompted to think about their ideal self -> elevated mood ->
heightened sensitivity to positive emotions

Independent cultures - promotion focus and interdependent cultures - prevention focus -

more focus on negative consequences of their acton and how that a ect their relations

Temptation can be resisted by viewing the thing in a negative light, focusing on the
negative aspects -> shifting construal / focus on high level construal ( forest) and low level
construal ( trees) - appreciate the consequences long term
-> high level construal facilitate self control
smaller implementation intentions related to the same goal increases our likelihood of
goal attainment. And while the initial formation of an implementation intention reacts
controlled processing, once these intentions are formed, the behaviours they specify can
be automatically triggered by "i" cues in the environment.

Bringing goals to mind rst - temptation declines

Public self is concerned with self presentation : presenting the person we would like
others to believe /social self is a performance that aims to minting the impression of
ourselves in others minds

Self monitoring - monitoring one’s behaviour to t the demands of the current situation /
Self handicapping - engaging in self defeating behaviours to protect the public self eg :
not studying for an exam and failing, at least now you have an explanation of why you
failed

Online people present their o ine selves pretty accurately

-> may be driven by self veri cation motives
-> presentations of online self need to pass o ine scrutiny
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 Chapter 5

Emotions arise from construals or appraisals / how you construe the present environment
matters a lot for the emotions you likely feel

Ppls verbal account miss important in uences on their emotional exp.

Emotions involve shifts in physiology and expressive behaviour

-> Emotions are brief, seconds or minutes, arise in response to speci c events / moods
-> hours or days
-> Focus of emotions - intentional objects
-> Emotions help us interpret our surrounding circumstance, helps prioritise which events
to attend to, how much weight you give them, determine how you reason about them,
and in uence whether you view It as right or wrong
-> Also helps guide our actions eg ; anger -> actions that remedy justice
-> Emotions guide us through speci c circumstances and challenges we face, especially
socially

Evolutionary approach - emotions are adaptive reactions to survival threats and

opportunities involving patterns of expression and physiology - universal - similar
reactions cross culturally

Constructivist approach - culture a ects the kind of emotions we express, in uenced by

values, institutions and social practices

Darwin’s theory :
-> all humans use the same 30-40 facial muscles, thus ppl from all cultures will likely
communicate and perceive emotions in a similar manner
-> humans share an evolutionary history with mammals, recently primates, emotions
should share some similar features
-> blind people show emotions similar to those with sight because its evolutionarily
encoded

Elkan study - rst showed photos of emotions to asian ppl - corroborated universality of
emotions but they had been exposed to western media
Thus he went to the fore tribe and they were also able to match the emotions with pics of
facial expressions and in reverse American students were able to match emotions with
fore tribal expressions except for fear
-> 6 basic emotions - happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, disgust and anger
-> further studies for more emotions like amusement and irting found similarities cross
culturally

Embarrassment - cross species comparison - similar to other mammal’s appeasement

displays - function like apologies that lessens con icts and triggers a liation / humans -
embarrassment triggers remote for social transgressions, prompting forgiveness and
reconciliation
-> study : trust strangers that display sign of embarrassment rather than other or no
emotions

Study - blind and sighted athletes - pride and shame - similar expressions
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 Cultures vary in focal emotions - emotions that are common in the every day lives of the
culture and are expressed with greater frequency and intensity eg : shame and
embarrassment are more focal in interdependent cultures

A ective valuation theory - emotions that promote the cultural ideal will be valued and will
play a more prominent role in the social lives of the individual eg : US - excitement ->
independence and self expression, China - calmness -> social harmony

Emotional regulation - ways in which people modify their emotions to make themselves
feel better or t the present context
Strategies
1- reappraisal - rethink the reasons for their feelings
2- accept current circumstance to understand that emotions are eeting
3- suppression - minimising outward signs of emotion
-> Cultures vary in kinds of reg they do. Eg : interdependent cultures engage in more
suppression

Social functionalist theory - emotions and their accompanying patterns of experience,

expression, and physiology enable ppl to form, maintain and negotiate the relationships
that matter the most to them

Commitment problem - regularly sacri ce for others even when we don’t want to
Emotions help solve this :
-> expression of certain emotions signals our commitment to others wellbeing
-> emotions can make u act in ways that prioritise others wellbeing

Oxytocin strengthens commitment in long term familial relationships and friendships -

increase commitment and generosity towards own group, less favourable to the out-
group / can help couple constructively solve problems

Emotional mimicry - copying other’s emotions -> enhance collaborative performance,

greater cooperation

Touch enables smooth interaction - participants could reliably communicate love,

sympathy, and gratitude with brief tactile contact, emotions that convey commitment and
can provide rewarding experiences to others - may help ppl act collaboratively

Awe - signals collective identity / ppl feeling awe - describer themselves in terms of their
collective traits, feel embedded amongst stronger interconnected network

Emotions not only help us identify with certain groups but also nd our place and status
within them eg : pride leads people to acts that increase social standing, non verbal
display of pride - imitated and followed

Anger - signal dominance - acts that increase power and status

Malicious envy ( I want to pull the person down to my level )- when someone enjoys
unjusti ed status through their sel shness / benign envy ( I want to be in that person’s
level ) - someone deserves their ranking, encourages hardwork in those envying to reach
that same level
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 Emotions in uence perception - emotions the lenses through which we view the world,
perceive emotions in ways that are consistent with what we are feeling
-> fear can lead us to exaggerate danger around us
-> anger primes us to perceive threat and aggression
-> positive emotions prompt people to reason in ways that are creative and exible / eg :
negotiators - good mood - likely to reach optimal agreement incorporating the interests
from both sides

Broaden and build hypothesis - negative emotions focus our attention on narrow details
of what we are perceiving, positive emotions broadens our patterns of thinking in ways
that expand understanding and build social relationships
-> study ; ppl feeling positive rated themselves more similar to outgroup members,
focused on global arrangement rather than tiny details

Components of happiness :
-> overall life satisfaction
-> emotional well being : balance b/t positive and negative emotions

Happiness enables work - more productive, curious, energetic, stronger social

relationships / less physical pain, better sleep, fewer headaches / stronger cardiovascular
and immune system / may increase life expectancy

A ective forecasting - predicting what will make us happy : ppl are not the best at it
-> because immune neglect : ignore our ability to productively respond to stress and
other sources of unhappiness
-> focalism - tendency to focus on most central elements of signi cant events, failing to
consider how other aspects in uence our happiness

In uences on Recollection of pleasure :

-> peak moment of pleasure - we remember the best bit of the ice cream, the most
beautiful sunset
-> how you feel at the end
-> little to no impact - duration neglect - the duration doesn’t matter

How to be happy ?
1- being with other ppl
2- having money is helpful but only to a point
3- be grateful
4- better to give than receive
5- focus on experiences
6- try to increase awe

Chapter 13

Hostile aggression - behaviour motivated by feelings of anger or hostility - primary aim is

to to harm another person physically or psychologically

Instrumental aggression - behaviour intended to harm another person for motives other
than pure hostility eg : for status, acquire wealth
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 Hot weather - some causal in uence on aggression / hot weather makes ppl perceive
acts to be more aggressive
-> misattribution of arousal - hot weather -> increased arousal, when encountering
situations that prompt anger - attribute the increased arousal to the person or situation ->
anger and aggression

Lab studies - seems like exposure to violent media -> aggressive actions/ likely to lead to
aggression when the person identi es with the perpetrator of violence or ghts against
the ‘bad’ guys
Limitations :
-> applying shocks to the confederates may have little to do with real world violence like
assault and rape
-> only short term e ects, not longer term ones

Research yet to link video games with extreme aggressive behaviours like school
shooting
But
Playing video games may shift our thoughts and emotions in ways that might increase the
likelihood of less extreme forms of aggression
How does these game increase aggression?
1- Increase aggressive behaviours
2- reduce prosocial behaviours
3- increasing aggressive thoughts
4- increase aggressive emotions such as anger
5- increase blood pressure and heart rate

Social rejection -> engage in more anti social behaviours, social withdrawal, aggression
-> evolutionarily history - dependent on each other for survival and social rejection
activate the threat defence system - feelings of distress, physiological arousal, ght or
ight response - now we have evolved to a social species - so mere gossip, superior tone
of voice can activate the same system

Study : social rejection - activation of dorsal ACC -> defence system / can be curbed by
mindfulness techniques

Higher income inequality correlated with higher acts of aggression / feelings of social
rejection by those at the bottom, undermine feelings of trust - hampering the social fabric,
evolutionary - throws men at intense competitions for resources and mates

Nature - increased concentration, calm, greater happiness and goodwill for others /
bringing natural beauty to neighbourhoods can reduce violence

Anger leads to aggression - any unpleasant stimulus can trigger a ight tor ght response
-> anger -> construe the events accordingly -> aggression
Study : presence of gun made pp more aggressive only when they were angry

Dehumanisation - attribution of non human characteristics to people / easier to harm

someone when they are seen as less human
-> stronger loyalty to group - dehumanisation of outgroup members
-> feeling socially connected alone can make us dehumanise those di from us
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How to curb this? Creating a distance from anger eg : watching the moment from. A3rd
person perspective, referring to the person thats angry in a 3rd person way, seeing how
this event holds in a year or two

Culture of honours - ppl more sensitive to slights and insults

Why is the south more attached to honour ?
-> herders are more vulnerable than farmers as someone could steal their sheep etc, thus
they need a tough exterior

Rape prone cultures - high level of violence, frequent warfare, and emphasis on
masculinity, women not empowered

Violence against step children - need to increase inclusive tness - individuals own
survival + o spring who cary individual genes

Women - relational aggression - gossip, make alliances, socially exclude, spread

malicious rumours - more competition for mating amongst men than women therefore
women don’t need to be physically aggressive

Men - physical features, increases testosterone, cultural socialisation

Precious manhood hypothesis - many factors--competition, status contests, being the
target of male violence, worsening economic conditions, the loss of a job--can render a
man's gender identity relatively uncertain and more vulnerable
-> those with vulnerable manhoods - more prone to aggression

When misperception spread, people will construe the con ict as a ght b/t good and evil,
them being on the good side
-> ppl view the opposing group as more polarised and extreme

Reactive devaluation - to attach little value to to any o er made by the counterpart as

negotiation

Simple or complex rhetoric ? Depends on level of di erentiation and level of integration

Reducing con ict - allowing adversaries to communicate ( perspective taking ), making

both sides to actively imagine other people’s perspective

Restorative justices - conversations b/t perpetrators and victims

Chapter 14

Moral psych - judgments are guided by gut feelings and intuitions

Moral dumbfounding - insistence on moral conviction in the absence of reason

Social intuitionist model of moral judgement :

-> moral judgements are products of fast emotional intuitions which is followed by reason
to justify these moral conventions
-> areas related emotional processes activated when looking at moral dilemmas like the
footbridge prob ( push someone to save 5 lives?) but relatively impersonal dilemmas like
the trolley problem activates working memory and areas related to deliberate reasoning
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 Moral foundations theory - mora judgements are shaped by intuitions in 5 domains - blue
print in all cultures which is then shaped by economics, social and religious dimensions.
-> Care/harm foundation - triggered by vulnerability and pain which -> empathy ->
protecting the welfare of others, maybe at personal cost
-> Fairness/ reciprocity - triggers by unfair acts -> anger -> justice
-> ingroup loyalty - binds us to our social groups and invokes sense of group pride or
rage
-> Authority/ respect - honouring one’s place in hierarchies -> emotions such as shame,
envy and pride
-> Purity/sanctity - coding dangerous diseases contaminant, socially impure ideas ->
emotion : disgust

Emotions shape our initial sense of right and wrong and once the gut feelings are
underway - then deliberate reasoning is done to make the nal judgment

High feelings of disgust -> more immoral

Liberals - fairness and freedom was more common themes of morality / conservatives
authority, pureness, loyalty

Study - climate change 0 expressed in more care harm way but if it is put through the lens
of authority, purity - conservatives express pro environment beliefs

Altruism - prosocial behaviours that bene t others without regards to consequences for
oneself - arise from feelings of sympathy and compassion / don’t act on it much -
inhibited by feelings of self preservation

Motives for altruistic acts

1- sel sh - social reward - being esteemed by others in praise, award or recognition /
being esteemed by others - activates reward and safety areas of the brain -> can even
lead to competition where someone tries to one up the others to be the most esteemed

2- Sel sh - personal distress - motivated to help others to reduce own distress / when
seeing others distress- activates our pain regions - to reduce our now distress - we
alleviate the burdens of the person

3- Empathetic concern - seeing others in pain and imaging their perspective ->
compassion ( also fast and intuitive )

STUDY - pp in the high empathy condition volunteers to spent more hours with a lonely
person when no one would know their action

Chimpanzees demonstrate altruism / children as well / compassion is correlated with

activation of the vagus nerve -> vocal communication, eye contact and slowing of the
ight of ght response - activated when engaging in acts of altruism

Self reported measures of empathic concern - precept volunteerism / great deal of

su ering to help others if it provides them with a sense purpose / tendencies towards
volunteerism enhanced due to a sense of community
-> volunteering increases longevity
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 Situational determinants of altruism -

-> bystander e ect - bystander intervention decreases if there are a lot of people - due to
di usion of responsibility / presence of other people weakens the strength of
communication between brain areas involved in initiating action and understanding the
outcomes of action

-> victim need for help should be clear and unambiguous / ppl likely to help those that are
similar to them

Construal processes

-> No ambiguity, the person needs to be clear that other person needs help / ppl more
likely to help - vividly remember the events that lead to the victims distress / social
context - if everyone else is calm as dictated by social norms, they will think there is no
emergency as no one is responding

-> Bystanders less likely to fall to pluralistic ignorance if they get to see another ones
initial expression of concern

Rural areas -> increased empathetic concern -> altruistic behaviour / current urban or
rural context MATTERS more than your background
Why?
- overstimulation - narrowed attention otherwise too many inputs to attend to, miss ppl
in need of help
- More likely to encounter ppl who are similar to you in a rural area than a city - hence
the di
- More di usion of responsibility in cities
- Ppl in rural areas know you and can comment on your actions later - social reward

Lower SES give more / scarcity of resources -> more empathetically attuned to others to
help them build social relationships that help them through unpredictable and threatening
situations / wealthier ppl are more independent and less attuned

Religious priming increases prosocial behaviours / non religious secular ethical concepts
primed - increases prosocial behaviours / feeling of being watched - increases prosocial
behaviours

Evolutionary explanations of altruism

-> kin selection : ppl more likely to help their kin over strangers, but also those who are
similar to them like perhaps distant relatives before strangers ( genetic relatedness) /
identical twins help each other more than fraternal twins

How did cooperation evolve ?

- reciprocal altruism - helping others with the expectation that they would help them at
another time - reduced the likelihood of con ict, help overcome problems that arise
from scarce resources, constrain more dominant individuals

Expression of gratitude for altruistic acts - make people more likely to engage in altruistic
acts in the future
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 Likelihood of interacting with someone in the future increases - our acts of altruism
toward them increase

People’s reputation has an e ect on whether you cooperate or defect / reputation

spreads through gossip and groups that engage in that are more cooperative

The label we put on events - a ect construal -> a ect cooperation

Interdependence fosters collaboration

Tit for tat strategy best

- cooperative
- Not envious
- You cant be taken advantage of
- Easy for others to read so they may cooperate
- Forgiving - willing to cooperate after many rounds of defection

Chapter 4

Hurried judgments made about ppl similar to the longer more re ective judgements

Judgements when looking at someone’s face :

Positive negative judgments - if someone looks trustworthy or not
Power dimension if someone looks dominant, con dent or bashful

Adults with more masculine features - more dominant / baby features - naive submissive
- baby faced individuals receive more favourable treatment in court but taken less
seriously for ‘adult’ jobs

Important to determine the cause of actions - internal or external ?

Note : fame and money are external as its impersonal doesn’t say anything about
the person ( a lot of ppl like fame and wealth )

Covariation principle - trying to determine the causes internal or external, characteristic of

the person and applicable to nearly everyone, covary with what is being explained
Eg : consensus - if someone says they like their stats class and if nobody else likes it then
you’ll make internal attributions but if everyone liked it, you get less information about the
person
Eg : disntictiveness what the individual does in di situations - the more the reaction is
con ned to a particular situation - the less it says about the individual

High consensus and distinctiveness - situational attribution

Low consensus and distinctiveness - dispositional attribution

Another way we make judgments - to imagine what you would to in that situation - if the
outcome is di then you make judgements about the person

Discounting principle - con dence that a particular cause is responsible for the outcome
reduces if there are other plausible causes that can lead to the outcome
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 Counterfactual thinking - consideration of what might have, could have or should have
happened
Emotional ampli cation occurs when emotions are more intensely felt when the event
almost didn’t happen. For eg : loved one switches a ight last minute and plane crashes >
sticking with the assigned ight and it crashing
-> derive pain or joy from how easy it is to imagine the event not happening

Self serving attributional bias - attributing your failure to external reasons and your
success for internal reasons

Fundamental attribution error - why?

- those perpetually salient capture our attention, person is more salient than the
situational factors thus we attribute it to the person
- Actor-observer e ect : actor is immersed in the situation and needs to make sense of it
whereas the observer will try and make sense of the person

Study - americans better at absolute judgement without context, Japanese better at

relative judgement

Fundamental attribution error - westerners more prone to it then interdependent cultures /

asian cultures - less likely to make a dispositional inference in the rst place

Girls attribute their failures to lack of ability, boys attribute it to situational factors - ho they
are treated in classrooms reinforce the thinking

Primacy e ect - info presented at rst has the most impact, info is ambiguous / recency
e ect - info presented at last have the most impact, last item comes to mind more readily
( order e ects )

Order e ect is a pure framing e ect - the way the info is presented, including the order,
has an e ect on the way its processed and understood

Spin framing - varies the content of the info presented eg : if a company has higher
quality products than competitor, their message will shape consumers to think quality is
key

Everything can be looked at from a positive or negative light - negative/ positive framing
-negative info attracts more attention and greater psych impact, stronger response

Temporal frame : distant events are thought in abstract terms and nearby events are
thought in concrete term,
Why?
Construal level theory - temporal perspective for how it is looked at - a ects construals
Low level abstraction, concrete details or high level abstraction rich in meaning

Con rmation bias - seeking out information that matches their proposition rather than
contradicting it / info that contradicts the person is scrutinised and often discounted

Bottom up processing takes relevant stimuli from the outside world whereas top down
processing lters and interprets bottom up stimuli with their expectations and what they
already know -> schemas
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 Schemas in uence attention and memory / info that ts the pre-existing schemas are
readily remembered/ info more readily available as memory a ects how we construe new
information

Certain behaviour are elicited automatically when exposed to stimuli than bring in mind a
schema
Sibliminal schemas - a ect construal of new info

Which schemas are activated and applied ?

- the schemas activated recently are more readily available
- If schemas are activated more frequently, they will be used more often in the future
- Expectations prime the schemas, and it is applied at the slightest hint that it is relevant

Two systems to respond to stimuli : faster, automatic, through associations , parallel ->
Intuitions / slower, logical, based on rules and deduction, serially -> reason
Intuitive system performs mental operators called heuristics

Availability heuristic - judging the frequency or portability of that event by how easily it
comes to mind
- can lead to biased assessment of risk - what they hear often in the news more worried
- bad news bias in media - the world is more dangerous than it is
- Watching TV in uences people's beliefs about how dangerous things are "out there"
without a ecting their beliefs about whether they themselves will be victimised -
because personal stu drawn from correlations from their experience

Fluency - ease associated with processing info

-> common adages that rhyme are taken to be the truth, uent names - more famous,
in uences how di cult they perceive the task to be
-> feeling of dis uency while processing info - ppl think carefully before making
judgements

Representativeness heuristic - categorising something by how similar it is to the

conception of the typical member of that category
-> can blind us to sources of info like base rate info - knowledge of relative frequency of
members of a given category
-> a ects our inferences of cause, small e ects have small causes, big have big causes
etc
-> we may think not to eat chips as its greasy like oily face that cause acne

Illusory correlation - come from a mix of representativeness and availability heuristic

Regression e ect - statistical tendency, when any two variables are imperfectly
correlated, for extreme values of one of them to be associated with less extreme values of
the other

Chapter 9

Studying relationships require longitudinal studies to see the dynamic nature because the
conditions can be manipulated by researcher -> self selection : when pp choose the
conditions
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Relationships are a biological need :
->long term relationships facilitate reproduction and survival of o spring as they are
dependent on parents to survive.
->Friendships help non kind cooperation on survival related things
-> strong social relationships - increases the odds of survival- good health

Communal relationship - individuals feel a special responsibility for one another and
expect something long term - sense of onenesss, family like sharing of identity / give and
receive acc to the principle of need which is which person has the most pressing need at
a given time

Exchange relationship - trade based and short term - individuals feel no special
responsibility for another’s well being - giving and receiving happens on the basis of
equity and reciprocity eg : supervisor and employees

People tend to gravitate towards those that give them rewards - it doesn’t have to be
tangible, the person makes them feel good

Social exchange theory - humans want to max their own satisfaction, seek out rewards in
their interactions with others and are willing to pay certain costs to obtain the rewards -
reward > cost
- but if there are no interactions where rewards > cost - prefer interaction were cost>
reward by the smallest amount
- Comparison level - what ppl expect from relationships ( high/ low)
- Comparison level for alternatives - the outcomes people think they can get out of
alternative relationships ( more suitors - high comparison level )

Equity theory - ppl are motivated to pursue fairness in relationships - ppl get what they
put into it otherwise unfair
Note : it doesn’t have to be equal as someone can get more as long as they are putting in
more

Bowlby’s attachment styles - strange situation

Secure ppl receive support from their romantic partners

-> Attachments you form as a child shapes how you relate as an adult to your romantic
partners, children and friends
-> Attachment styles may persist due to self ful lling prophecy - negative events that
when ur an avoidant child may lead to negative expectations of other ppl’s availability,
thus don’t seek support
-> Attachment styles can change , exp within particular relationships can change
attachment orientations - di working models of attachment each person has

Why do you like the ppl you do?

1- Proximity :
-> functional distance - the in uence of layout of the space the encourage or discourages
contact b/t ppl -> facilitates friendships, more imp than physical distance
-> designing physical spaces to foster proximity b/t ppl - increase cross race friendships
-. Mere exposure e ect - the more you are exposed to something, the more you tend to
like it
->the more times pp saw a word, they thought it meant something good
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 -> out liking to something increased till about 35 encounters and then begins to decline -
doesn’t apply to auditory stimulus and things you disliked initially
-> But how does mere exposure e ect happen? The more you encounter something, the
easier it becomes to perceive and cog process -> uency -> we nd uency pleasurable
-> Another exp : repeated exposure to stimulus in the absence of negative
consequences, we associate it with something pleasant

2- Similarity
-> similarity of engaged couples - strong for physical characteristics and demographic
characteristics like social class and less for personality traits
-> interracial and interethnic couples - similar on personality - compensating the
dissimilarity in 1 dimension by seeking out greater similarity in another
-> Why does this matter? Consensual validation, more certain to be liked by ppl similar to
us, similar to us - more positive qualities

Complementarity - ppl with di characteristics should be attracted to each other

-> Status exchange hypothesis - romantic attraction increases when two individuals o er
each other elevated status where they themselves are lacking

Physical attractiveness
-> popular, more liked - attractive
-> Halo e ect - belief that ppl pleasant to look at have a host of positive qualities outside
of their physical appearance
-> Negative inferences - immodest and less likely to be good parents / attractive women -
materialistic and vain
->Independent cultures - attractiveness -> dominant and assertive / interdependent
culture - generous sensitive and empathetic
-> physical Attract. Matters more for women and gay men in terms of dating prospects,
job experience, popularity etc
-> Infants prefer to look at and toddlers prefer to play with attractive ppl
-> why? Because we prefer physical indicators that signify reproductive health to max
passing on genes
-> We prefer average faces

Women and men have di investments in o springs - women more selective with their
mates / men more likely to have a airs, greater no of sexual partners

a strong tendency for men to seek youth and beauty and to o er material resources and
for women to seek resources and accomplishment and to o er youth and beauty

Greater gender quality in society - women expressed less importance in potential mate’s
earnings

Companionate love - love expressed to friends and family members

Compassionate love - characterised by monitoring and responding to person’s need eg :
mother looking after child
Romantic love - intense sexual and emotional desire

Once the early passions fade, intimacy develops where they increasingly involve the
partners perspectives, characteristics etc in their self concept
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 Investment model of commitment - once partners have a romantic bond three
determinants make them more committed to each other - satisfaction, poor quality of
alternatives, investments in the relationship
- satisfaction -> ppl base their commitment more on expected future satisfaction than
current satisfaction
- Those that have invested a lot in relationships - more committed and less likely to
break up

These three constructs are theoretically independent but are correlated - because they
are related to perceived partner responsiveness

Commitment linked to longer lasting relationships - encourages behaviours that are good
for the relationships forgiveness and sacri ce

People from higher SES - marry later, children at later age, less likely to divorce

Neurotic ppl less happy in romantic relationships, more likely to divorce / ppl sensitive to
rejection, low self esteem - problems in intimate relationships
Lower SES - respond to chronically unstable environments by self preservation -
undermine relationships satisfaction

4 behaviours most harmful to relationships - criticism, stonewalling, defensiveness, and

contempt.

Dissatis ed couples make attributions about their partner in a negative light and positive
events to unstable causes that are unintended and sel sh / negative events - global
stable causes like they are sel sh
Link b’t lower marital satisfaction and attributions more robust with limited nancial
capital

Stronger romantics bonds :

-> give your partner constructive capitalisation - active engagement / asian cultures
engage in this less than west but both cultures bene t from it
-> being playful and doing novel, amusing joint tasks
-> idealise romantic partner

Lecture notes

Safety - unintentional event / security - intentional event

Shell - holding handrails instills a safety attitudes - useful when dangerous things happen

How do dangerous things happen ?

-> insu cient picture of risks
-> warning of safety systems ignored
-> didn’t learn enough from earlier incidents

Social environmental plays a role in safety

Mood - safety climate - attitudes around safety
Personality - safety culture - underlying norms and assumptions

Change environment to prevent con ict b/t safety and social norms
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 Interventions directed at safety awareness is e ective but short lived

Technology can steer behaviour by nudging and friction

Incidents happen by slowly drifting into it - someone stops doing a safety measure and
slowly that increases / normalisation of deviance - normalising actions that deviate from
safety

Workarounds - to overcome or minimise obstacles -> can cause hazards for eg by turning
of safety alarms

Evolution - risk of overgeneralising - naturalistic fallacy - tracing each behaviour back to

the evolutionary origin and believe this is how its done
Culturalistic fallacy - tracing each type of social behaviour to its cultural in uences

Behaviour - having an e ect in reality - goal oriented - adapting to the environment

Humans can not just adapt but change the environment

Ratchet e ect - Cultural development cant be reversed - each generation builds on the
previous generation and adds something new

Culture
Shared mental patterns
Condenses in Institutions, practices like rituals, artefacts like tools language

Western society
Biological maturation and society maturation do not go together

Environment dictates how the identity formation goes

Social media as identity construction - consequence - increased expressiveness,

tentativeness and social sensitivity

Complications with culture

-> in uences of culture is di to pinpoint as it e ects many aspects
-> Cultural di are relative
-> risk of confounding variables
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Globalisation
Decrease in intercultural di
Increase in intracultural di ( di within society )

Increasing mix b/t global and local social environment - glocalisation

Increasing cultural complexity and dynamics

Additional notes

-> emotions - appraisal, bodily response, behavioural expression, subject feelings and
action tendency

Consensus - what most ppl do in a situation / distinctiveness / consistency (i.e., whether

things happened repeatedly in the same way

The facial feedback hypothesis is the theory that facial expressions can activate and
regulate emotions by in uencing the processing of emotional stimuliBy smiling when
you're happy, this hypothesis suggests that you will feel happier. Or, by furrowing your
brow when you're angry, you may feel angrier

Social proof - action of others to understand what the right behaviour is in a given
situation
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