Social Psych Final

Beliefs about social groups used to make inferences, predictions, and attributions about individuals

Differential treatment based on perceived group membership

• Negative behavior toward out-group

• Preferential treatment toward in-group

Always inaccurate, negative, harmful, Always considered over individual info

predjudice being used a justification for a stratified / hierarchichal society

segregation (redlining), education (the idea of “race”), language (slurs), media sources (lack of rep)

places in the world where you will be ostracized if you DON’T participate in prejudice

need to think of our in-group as better and the out-group as worse or irrelevant (RU vs. Princeton)

trivial / arbitrary & previously unnoticed differences can cause people to start to categorizing and making schemas of themselves and similar others, vs. dissimilar others (Tajfel dot estimation experiment)

if you can’t act aggressively against who/what you perceive to be the source of your frustration, you will find an “acceptable” or convenient outlet/scapegoat to act upon to relieve your tension

goods (wealth, power, status, influence, respect, etc.) in society are limited, and groups are in constant competition for these scarce goods, which creates prejudice

when groups of our human ancestors came into contact with strangers in history, they did not survive, so only the inclination to stay away from strangers was genetically passed on

authoritarians, those with desire for group social dominance (higher prejudice)

See difference and people who are different as a threat / dangerous, have high desire for “strong leaders”

ability to categorize is ESSENTIAL to intelligent human life, and once something/someone is categorized all our knowledge of that group is activated

facial recognition is much better for everyone with their own race than for other races (thinking those in other groups look/are all the same)…a need to understate differences between individuals in out-group

exaggerating the differences between groups

we have so much more experience with the in-group than the out-group, so it only takes one singular negative example of a member of the out-group to paint the entire group that way (like rep. heuristic)

someone who is high in prejudice will only associate with other highly prejudiced people, which will only reinforce their prejudiced beliefs

external attribution for successes/accomplishents of outgroup, internal attributions for those of the in-group, reverse is true with respect to negative stuff

cost benefit analysis of helping

If someone has helped us, we are obligated to help them later (universal; every single society)

We are obligated to help others if we are able (universal; every single society)

We are far more likely to help our family—those who are more closely genetically related to us

Whatever actions or traits were beneficial to our ancestors for survival will be carried forward in our own genetics?????

N.I.A-

1. Noticing situation

2. Interpreting situation as problem

3. Assuming (responsibility for giving help)

“If other people are doing nothing, that tells us that nothing is the right thing to do”

• The more people who are witnesses, the less pressure each witness feels to respond

• Think of weight, either being all on one person’s shoulders, or shared by many people

• Less weight of responsibility = takes more time to for someone to act

Ambiguity, Bystanders are strangers, Other’s reactions are difficult to interpret (we don’t know why they’re not helping), # of bystanders increases, time pressure

Affect — guilt, sadness, lack of SE, happiness

Religiosity, gender

Men (bc of physicality, decreased vulnerability and danger, etc.)

Public situations

Random one-off acts of kindness vs careers in caretaking/nurturing (men vs women)

Empathy

gender, similarity (women, people similar to potential helper more likely to receive help)

Bc we learn that helping is possible, and we learn how to do it

by witnessing helping behavior, we are primed to engage in helping ourselves

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Watching people help others increases the tend-and-befriend hormone, which makes you want to help others too

Negative attitude toward socially defined group and any person perceived to be member of that group

having certain predetermined ideas about groups of people will cause us to treat people in those groups in ways that will bring about the exact qualities that we think they have

even young black children start to show a preference for white dolls over black ones

when someone’s in a situation where a stereotype could apply, their anxiety/stress due to it can impair performance; confirming the exact stereotype they’re afraid of

Blue eyes > Brown eyes, said blue eyes are better and then brown eyes, created minimal groups, then Blue eyes < Brown eyes, teacher basically used a metaphorical situation to help her students understand the experience of racism

Racism shows very clearly; in vivo research, subjects had NO IDEA they were even part of a study, white vs. black hand

Anonymity, measurability of how socially desirable answers are

“facial recognition memory test,” supralimnally primed with white or black faces, word categorization

white people: primed with white faces, recognize good words better

black people: primed with white faces, recognize bad words better

Quality of Interactions

subliminally primed with white or black faces, word categorization, jury decision task (black defendant), interview with black experimenter

priming effected word categorization, no relation between self-reported prejudice and priming effects, self-reports related to …..?????

timed test of word association and priming of faces / name stimuli, tests implicit attitudes towards certain groups

lack of time, cognitive overloaded, ambiguous situation

• high ambiguity

• high cognitive demands

• situational “excuses” present (we have a rationalization for our prejudiced behavior)

• SE threatened / decreased

• emotional arousal

• group interactions

• unfamiliar vs. familiar targets

“Contact hypothesis,” but only with limiting conditions; common goals, mutual interdependence, equal status, goal attainment

a normal classroom is a highly competitive environment, where everyone is vying for the teacher’s respect and for the opportunity to display their intelligence, and oftentimes minority groups get subpar education so they are already naturally behind

a few kids raise their hand and one person answers correctly, to the admiration of the teacher and the groans of the other kids in other groups

Aronson changed the classroom environment to be less competitive…split class into ethnically diverse 6-person groups, and then each kid has to read and explain their specific paragraph of a 6 paragraph essay to the other 5 in their group…the only way for each kid in the class to succeed was to pay attention to each of the other kids in their group of 5

The most frequent cause of false convictions

post-event questions can result in “false memories”

Aligned with what witnesses saw

Goes against what witnesses saw

car stopping at stop sign and then collision, some subjects asked congruent question, but others asked a misleading question, and this changes their memory of what they saw

recalling events that in fact never occurred

relationship between witness accuracy and witness certainty is low (false confidence)

neither witnesses themselves nor “experts” can distinguish false memories from accurate ones

jurors are not good at detecting witness lying

Writing about a scenario creates the illusion that a false memory really did occur

Eyewitness testimony

Pictures of people who are not the actual suspect, but who resemble the suspect

Sequential, to avoid “best guess” problem

“leading” the eyewitness — if the law enforcement official is aware of the suspect, they can unconsciously do something that makes the witness pick out the suspect

False ID rate goes up

False ID rate goes up

Run versions where suspect is and isn’t in lineup,

tell witnesses that suspect may or may not be in lineup

Attractiveness, similarity to jurors, Matching principle

allowing how closely the defendant matches the kind of person you think of when you think of the crime to skew your conviction decision

high ambiguity & high complexity situations

instructing jurors to ignore something actually draws their attention to that very thing

Fail to match juror “prototypes” of crimes

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creating a plausible story for the jury

Higher conviction rate and greater sentence severity

Quality of evidence

Acquittal

Conviction

minority influence, group norm formation, conformity, polarization, persuasion variable

a unanimous decision

Group recall > individual recall

Forced deliberation requires in-depth thinking - use of central route (systematic) processing is increased

Representativeness (diversity) of perspectives

Attention focused on all evidence instead of selective pieces

Restrains use of inadmissible evidence

When evidence is clear & compelling, most juries render verdicts consistent with the evidence