Social Influence
A doctor who preaches against smoking then goes home and lights a cigarette to smoke at the end of the day
Cognitive dissonance: when your actions contradict your deeply held beliefs, holding two conflicting values at once
This psychologist conducted the obedience experiments involving shocks
Stanley Milgram: 1961 psychological study conducted at Yale University to measure how far ordinary people would go in obeying an authority figure when instructed to inflict harm on another person
A homeowner agrees to place a small environmental sticker in their window and later agrees to display a large sign in their yard
Foot-in-the-door phenomenon: securing compliance with a small, initial request that significantly increases the likelihood that a person will later agrees to a large, more significant request
A basketball coach assumes a player missed practice because they are irresponsible, despite not knowing the player was hospitalized
Fundamental attribution error: a cognitive bias where people tend to overemphasize a person's character traits and underemphasize situational factors when explaining someones behavior
A school combines rival groups into teams that must work together to achieve a common goal. This strategy is based on:
Superordinate goals: objectives that require cooperation from two or more distinct groups or individuals to achieve
After hearing every other juror vote guilty, a juror changes their vote despite privately believing the defendant is innocent
normative social influence: when individuals conform to the expectations, behaviors, or unspoken rules of a group to fit in, gain approval, or avoid social rejection.
Which study most directly demonstrated the influence of social roles on behavior?
Standford Prison Experiment: 1971 psychological study at Standford University, placed 24 healthy male college students into a moch prison environment to examine the psychological effects of power, authority, and powerlessness.
It's power to influence behavior was displayed when students at Stanford agreed to be part of a 2 week prison experiment.
Role-playing: consciously adopting/changing one's behavior to assume a different persona
A manager concludes an employee is lazy because of one late assignment while ignoring evidence of strong performance
Dispositional attribution: the process of assigning the cause of a person's behavior to their internal characteristics
Following the 9/11 attacks, some individuals lashed out and directed hostility toward innocent Muslim Americans
Scapegoat Theory: Prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame
Researchers find that participants conform significantly less when even one group member disagrees with the majority. This demonstrates the importance of:
Unanimity: a state of complete, unanimous agreement among all members of a group
The social act of mirroring others actions based off observation was demonstrated through this experiment
Bobo Doll Experiment: 1961 study by Albert Bandura to which he found that people learn new abilities through observing and imitating the behaviors of others.
After spending hours volunteering for a cause they originally cared little about, a person begins believing strongly in that cause
Cognitive dissonance reduction: easing the mental discomfort that occurs when your actions, beliefs, or values clash
A student attributes a poor test score to an unfair exam but attributes a high score to intelligence
Self-serving bias: tendency to attribute positive successes to your own abilities while blaming negative events to external factors
Just-World Phenomenon: the tendency to believe the world is fair, leading people to assume that victims of misfortune or inequality get what they "deserve"
A student adopts the political views of their friend group after researching those views and becoming convinced they are correct
Informational social influence: when you conform because you believe they posses accurate information and you want to be correct
Even though Kevin knew the correct answer to a question in class, he altered his response to align with all of his other classmates. This was demonstrated through this experiment
Solomon Asch's Experiment on Conformity: results emphasized the strong influence of social pressure on individual behavior
The ABCs of attitudes stand for these three components.
Affect, Behavior, Cognition
When driving to your friend's house, someone pulls in front of you and cuts you off. You honk your horn at them and yell "You are a terrible driver!" This is an example of this type of attribution.
Internal/Dispositional attribution: explaining a person's behavior by pointing to their internal characteristics (personality traits, abilities, motives, intelligence)
A teacher told her students that all the children with brown eyes were more superior to the students with blue eyes. Immediately the children with brown eyes became arrogant and hostile, dominating the children with blue eyes.
In group-bias: the tendency to favor members of our own social groups over outsiders
Participants continue administering shocks because the experimenter accepts responsibility for any consequences. This finding from Milgram's study is best explained by:
Agentic state: a condition where an individual views themselves as an instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, shifting personal responsibility for their actions to the authority figure
Bob slacks off work all the time, when he became aware that there was going to be a supervisor on grounds the next time he worked he arrived early to his job, exceeded his work limit, and pushed himself to the max. This is explained by
The Hawthorne Effect: when people adjust their behavior when they become aware that they are being watched or observed by others
Your friend frequently talks about how much she hates Taylor Swift's music. The next time you hear her on the radio, you think about how bad it is and change the station. This is an example of this this effect.
Validity Effect: where people are more likely to believe a statement is true simply because it has been repeated to them frequently
While shopping, you overhear a father yelling at his young daughter. What is one dispositional attribution you could make? What is one situational attribution?
Dispositional: bad father, mean, harsh
Situational: he's having a bad day, he's stressed out, daughter was misbehaving
After Sam was told by one of her professors that she wouldn't succeed in her career, she stopped completing her assignments, dropped out of her career club, and stopped coming to school.
Self-fulfilling prophecy: when a person has a strong belief about a future behavior and then acts unknowingly to fulfill or carry out that behavior