PSYB10 (introduction to Social Psychology)

Lecture 1

Social psychology: explaining and predicting behaviors

Focuses on how social situations can influence the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals
Personality psychology: focuses on how differences betw een individuals influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
Sociology: focuses on behavior of communities and groups, not individuals
Cognitive dissonance: explain ow n behavior to yourself
Pow er of the situation: situation on w hich you put people might have profound impact on their behavior w hich might be
different than their morals. Situations can often determine behavior despite individual differences. Ex - Nazi Germany
Milgram's study of obedience: study of learning. Participants give shocks if others got answ er w rong. keep increasing
shock.
More than 50% w ent all w ay to the end
Situational pressure made participants not stand up and could not refuse orders
Seminarians as Samaritans: individual w ill help another person in need
90% did not help w hen in a rush
60% helped w hen not in an rush
Fundamental attribution error: tendency to overestimate the role of personality and to underestimate the role of situations
w hen explaining other people's behavior
Channel factors: often the influences of situational factors aren't fully recognized. Something w e can manipulate.
Small situational factors can have large influences on behavior by guiding behavior in a particular direction.
Ex: fly in urinal makes less miss.
Construal: interpretation and inferences made about a stimulus or situation. Tw o people might interpret situation
differently. What happens in people's heads.
interpretation is an active process, they are subjective and may misrepresent the truth. Construals can govern behavior.
How w e interpret a situation w ill influence how w e act in the situation
people are more likely to cooperate in a prisoner's dilemma game w hen the game is presented as a 'community game'
than as a 'w all street game'
Schema: general know ledge about the physical and social w orld. Includes expectations about how to behave in
different situations. general set of expectations w e have. Not conscious of these expectations. Adapting to different
cultures
Example: labels likes "Estate Tax" vs "Death Tax" can influence opinions
Stereotypes: schemas about specific social groups. Influences interactions, makes interactions more efficient. Can be
applied incorrectly to w rong individuals. Stereotypes are mostly expectations.
Automatic vs Controlled Processing: social information processed in tw o different w ays
Automatic processing: automatic, involuntary, unconscious and based on emotional responses
Controlled processing: conscious, systematic, deliberate and can override automatic responses. Ex: driving
Common sense: generally poor guide to predict how others w ill act
Example: 6% of suicide survivors attempt suicide again. Take aw ay ability to kill people easily then less suicide
Hindsight Bias: things that seem entirely unpredictable in prospect seem inevitable in retrospect.
Theory: broad state of related statements, w hat is used to generate hypothesis
Hypothesis: specific prediction, w hat is actually being tested
Types of research
Observational research: observes participants in social situations, may involve additional measures like interview s and
questionnaires
Archival research: analyze social behaviors documented in past records, ex- new spapers, social media posts etc. Can
be used to test theories about social behavior. Ex - homicides over insults are common in south than north
Survey: ask participants questions. Important to consider the number and type of people surveyed. Surveys accurate if
surveys gotten from small, unbiased sample, so randomly choosing people from a population w ill create an unbiased
sample.
Population: group you w ant to know about
Random sample: taken at random from the population
Convenience sample: taken from some available subgroup in the population
 Problem of causal inference: inferring x causes y from certain kinds of behavior, results from over generalizing
Correlational Research: examines relationship betw een variables w ithout assigning participants to different situations or
conditions. Perfect negative correlation has negative slope and -1.0, perfect positive correlation has positive slope and
1.0.
Third variable problem: external variables can explain correlations. Correlation betw een tw o variables may actually be
caused by third variable
Self-selection: experiments allow for causal inferences about how different conditions influence behavior, participants
randomly assigned to different conditions. Assign x variable for participants
Experimental research: conditions are controlled or manipulated by researcher
independent variable: manipulated by researcher
dependent variables: that is measured
control condition: condition identical to the experimental condition except independent variable
random assignment: condition ensures that individual differences are evenly distributed across conditions
Concepts for Understanding Research
External validity: results can generalize to real-life situation because the experimental set-up resembled a real life
situation
Internal validity: experimental results w ere being caused by the manipulated variables
more closely situation resembles real life (external validity), more difficult o tightly control situation (internal validity). They
are inversely related
Reliability: how consistently a test w ill measure the variable of interest
Measurement validity: degree that a test accurately measures the variable of interest
Statistical significance: probability that a given result w ould have occurred if there w ere no real relationship in the
population
Basic vs Applied Research
Basic research: understand phenomenon w hether it is applied to the real w orld. Just to gain know ledge
Applied research: using current understanding of a phenomenon in order to solve a real-w orld problem
Ethical considerations
Informed consent
Deception: misled participants require more paperw ork

Lecture 2

What is self
Descartes: I think therefore i am
David Hume: w hatever w e experience
William James: Father of Social psychology, look at people's self beliefs
individual self: beliefs about unique individual, preferences etc
relational self: beliefs about identities in specific relationships
collective self: members of social groups to w hich w e belong. Ex - canadian identity
Situationism and Self
Idea of self may change depending on situation
Working self-concept: subset of overall self know ledge. Like travelling abroad makes national identity stronger
Distinctiveness: highlight aspects of self that makes us feel more unique in the given context
Social context: sense of self may shift dramatically depending on w ith w hom w e are interacting. Ex: supervisor vs
subordinate
Culture of Social Self
Independent view of self: seeing self as distinct and anonymous. Separate from others and defined by personal traits.
Ex: N. American, European
Interdependent view of self: self seen as connected to others, social role depends on social duties. Ex: Asian, Latin
Gender and Social Self
Men have more independent, w omen have more interdependent
Differences due to socialization
Evolution may contribute to gender differences
Self-Esteem: positive or negative evaluation that each person has on themselves
Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (RSE): generally stable over time, product of on going self evaluation
Contingencies of self-w orth: w orth is derived on different domains and our success on domains impact self-w orth
 Sociometer hypothesis: refinement on general contingencies. Being accepted or seeming favorable to others mostly
determines self esteem
Culture and Self-Esteem
individualistic cultures tend to have higher levels of self-esteem than collectivistic cultures
members of collectivistic cultures place more value on self improvement
contact w ith other cultures can influence view s of the self
self esteem in asians increase w ith exposure to North American culture
Danger of high self-esteem
inflated self-esteem can be counterproductive. High self-esteem w ill lead to satisfied w ith self despite poor life
outcomes. Many psychopaths, murderers have high self-esteem
more sensitive to threats, insults and challenges because they have false front
Social comparison theory: w e evaluate ourselves through comparisons to others. Dow nw ard social comparison can boost
self esteem. Upw ard social comparisons can motivate self-improvement
Self-Enhancement
Better-than-average effect: w esterners positive view of self, tend to rate self better than average, w eight abilities w e
excel as more valuable
Positive illusions and mental health. Well-adjusted people may have slightly unrealistic view s about themselves
Elevate positive mood
Foster social bonds
Promote pursuit of goals
Cultural and positive illusions
positive illusions about self are more common in individualistic cultures
individualistic cultures place greater value on positive view s of self than collectivistic cultures. Self is thought as unique,
independent and good
Outw ard self: manage w hat other people think of us
Self presentation
Public face
Private face
Self-monitoring: tendency to monitor and scrutinize one's behaviors w hen in a public situation
Protecting others' face
may strategically communicate in w ays to preserve the public faces of ourselves and others
on-record communication: direct, honest language meant to be taken literarily
off-record communication: indirect and ambiguous language that hints at ideas w ithout explicitly stating them. Ex: flirting
Attribution theory: term for theories about how people explain the causes of events they observe
Causal attribution: explanation for cause of your or another person's behavior. This is broad umbrella term
influence how you respond to the situation
Internal attribution: behavior explained by aspects of the person
External attribution: behavior explained by aspects of the situation
Explanatory style: person's habitual w ay of explaining events
Explanatory dimensions
internal vs external: Degree cause is linked to self vs external situation
stable vs unstable: degree cause is seen as fixed or as something that is temporary
global vs specific: explaining on broad factor or specific skill
Ow n behavior
Pessimistic attribution style: internal, stable, global. It predicts low er grades and poorer physical health later in life
Processes of Causal Attribution
Covariation principle: people act as scientists and w eigh evidence and come up w ith explanation in un-bias manner
Discounting Principle: less w eight given on particular cause if there are alternative causes present
Augmentation principle: more w eight given on particular cause if there are alternative causes present that w ould cause
opposite behavior
Attributional Biases
Self-serving bias(ow n behavior): tendency to attribute failures to external causes and success to internal causes. Self-
serving biases can boot and maintain positive self-esteem.
Fundamental attribution error(others' behavior): behavior is due to person's traits despite the situational causes present
Causes of fundamental attribution error
Motivation to believe in a just w orld and people get w hat they deserve in life. Focus on characteristics of individuals than
on characteristics of situation
 Perceptional salience: person's behavior is w hat is salient to us, w e do not look at situational factors influencing
behaviors
Automatic and controlled cognitive processing
Dispositional attributions made automatically
Situational attributions require more thought after getting info from context
Actor-Observer Differences
actor explains based on situation
observer explains based on dispositional qualities of the actor
Individualists more likely to attribute behaviors to dispositions

Lecture 3

Decisions best w hen w e can predict future and w e can make inferences from data.
We have to understand w hich errors people typically make.
Heuristics: mental shortcut/rule of thumb for making judgements. Save time, good enough, prone to systematic error
Availability heuristic: overestimate how likely something w ill happen based on frequency, casual impact. Spring easily to
mind. We thought about it recently and easier to bring to mind. Input is bias, for example w hen w e are bombarded w ith
negative new s w hen w e w atch new s show s.
Listing Reasons: When asked to rate a certain brand w ith 1 point, they rate positively. When asked to rate w ith 10
points, rate negatively.
Anchoring : people's estimates of unknow n quantities are easily biased by w hat values they consider, even w hen
values arbitrary. Ex: how much prof donates? if asked more or less that 50 then median guessed is 100. If asked more
or less than 5000 guess is 1000
First offers as anchor: making first offer by buyer/seller sets anchor.
In case of conflict of interest and that person gives anchor value, w e might not be able to ignore that value even if w e
know that the other person has a conflict of interest.
Biases of Know ledge and Perspective: w e have info that w e dont entirely share w ith out audience
Not good at adjusting our bias to those of others
Spotlight effect: w e think w e're more noticeable than w e really are
Really hard to tell w hen people are lying because w e feel like w e are nervous w hen w e are lying
Hindsight bias: once outcome happens overestimate the likelihood that w e w ould have predicted that outcome in
advance
Curse of Know ledge: once w e have know ledge w e cannot make a prediction w ithout our bias getting into play. In
general very difficult experts to determine how people think w ithout this area of expertise.
Attitude projection: w e tend to project our ow n attitudes, beliefs, and experiences onto others.
Projection is good w hen w e are trying to guess the attitudes of people w ho are similar, bad w hen they are dissimilar.
Egocentric Prediction: prediction based on yourself and not consider other people at all. We consider those w ho do not
see things from out lens are biased, ignorant, or uninformed.
We assume that those w ho are not persuaded by info must be biased or stupid. Since w e think those w ho hold different
beliefs are biased, w e tend to reject any proposals made by them.

Lecture 4

Attitude: positive or negative evaluation of an object. Measuring attitude means predicting behavior.
Affect
Behavior
Cognition
Measure attitude
Likert scale: numerical scale to assess people's attitudes. Draw backs - sometimes people dont really know , but are
unw illing to tell you, use implicit attitude measures
Implicit attitude measure indirect measure of attitudes that does not involve self report. Ex: response latency - time it
takes an individual to respond to stimulus
Attitudes are poor predictors of behavior
Social norms and situational factors influence behavior. Ex: denying a person service based on race
General attitudes may not match specific targets. Ex: attitudes are based on stereotypes vs the person of that particular
 group.
Attitudes are often based on secondhand information. Firsthand experience better prediction of behavior.
Attitudes can be inconsistent. Affective and cognitive aspects conflict. Ex: pie is good, but bad because w eight gain. So
affective and cognitive can influence behavior at a given time
By trying to come up w ith reasons w e block our senses and overthink our responses. And blocks our affective
reasoning.
Coming up w ith reasons may overw eight factors that are not actually beneficial and blocks underlying affective
response.
Many behaviors are automatic
Tough to predict attitude is neutral. If their attitudes are at extremes easier to predict.
Attitudes may be poor predictors of behavior, but behavior can be good predictors of attitudes.
Cognitive consistency: people try to maintain consistency betw een beliefs and behaviors. If people realize they are
inconsistent they try to shift their attitude.
Balance theory: people try to maintain a balance betw een their thoughts, feelings and sentiments
People are motivated to resolve unbalanced triads
Cognitive Dissonance: inconsistencies betw een thoughts, feelings and behavior create an unpleasant mental state that
motivates mental efforts to resolve them by making them consistent
Changing beliefs is easier than changing behavior, so w e are more likely to change beliefs to get rid of
inconsistencies
Decisions and Dissonance: dissonance typically resolved by emphasizing the positives and minimizing the negatives
of the selected choice, also emphasize negatives of unselected choice and minimizing positives
Effort justification: effort or cost spent to obtain something unpleasant or disappointing. Greater effort expended
leads to more dissonance and more attempts to rationalize behavior
Induced (Forced) Compliance: subtle getting people to act in w ays inconsistent w ith their attitudes. Often leads to a
change in order to resolve dissonance. Ex: $1, $20 experiment
$1 found it most interesting because it is hard to justify w hy they lied. So they are left w ith no good reason for their
behavior, so w e change beliefs about task and thing the task w as more interesting than it w as.
Forbidden fruit: mild threat less interest for toy. Severe threat more interest in toy, make behavior more appealing.
Cognitive Dissonance happens w hen they free w ill and insufficient justification.
Euro-canadians (individualistic) experience more dissonance w hen making a choice for themselves than for a friend. While
asian-canadians (collectivistic) experience more dissonance w hen making a choice for a friend than themselves
Dissonance vs Self-Perception Theory
Self-perception theory: people infer their attitudes from observing their behavior. If prior attitude is w eak, people may use
their behavior to understand their attitude
Self-perception argues that people didn't change their attitudes; instead they inferred their attitudes from their behavior in
the situation
Reconciling Dissonance and Self-Perception
Cognitive dissonance most likely w hen behavior doesn't fit a preexxisting attitude and the attitude is important to self-
concept
Self-perception most likely w hen attitudes are w eak or ambiguous
Context effects perception
Automaticity: w e make decisions w ithout conscious attention or aw areness
Priming: activating in w orking memory. Activation effects behavior
Functional, reduces cognitive w ork, primes behavior for social situation, negate consequences
Can show automatic stereotype. It show s flexible activation of situationally-appropriate behavior, show s individuals
beliefs and know ledge, can negate consequences.
Mimicry: chameleon effect / automatic social mimicry
w hen people mimic you, you like others more. Feel more in sync

Lecture 5

Emotion: brief, specific response to goal-relevant events

emotions motivate behavior to achieve goals
psychological drives behavior, physiological help organism achieve goal, facial expressions sometimes
physiological(appraisal) determined by autonomic nervous system, that is beyond our control
sympathetic gets ready for challenge
 parasympathetic gets body back to regular state
Cognitive appraisals
Appraisal process: how events in our environment are evaluated relative to current goals, different appraisals -
different emotions
Primary appraisal stage: initial, quick appraisal made of an event or circumstance
Secondary appraisal: slow er, w hy w e feel the w ay w e do and how to respond
Facial expressions are recognized cross-culturally. Human expressions match primates.
Evolutionary vs Cultural View s
Evolutionary explanation: adaptation meant to promote survival, that's w hy physiological responses cross-cultural
Cultural explanation: influenced by view s of self vary betw een culture. How w e display
Both explanations are correct.
Cultural variation in emotion
Emotion accents: culturally specific w ays that emotions are expressed
Cultural norm w hen it is expressed
Emotion and Social cognition: effects our judgements
Feelings-as-information: positive and negative emotions lead to different types of information processing
Positive mood: think less deeply. Linked to more creative thinking
Negative mood: think more deeply. Leads to less stereotype
Thinking about emotion
Duration neglect: length of emotional experience has little influence on the overall evaluation of how pleasurable or
unpleasurable the experience w as. Ex: peak-end rule, end is w eighted more heavily
Affective forecasting: predicting how w e w ill feel during or after a particular event in the future
Immune neglect: underestimate our resilience during negative life events
Focalism: focus on only one aspect of an event w hen trying to predict future emotions
Emotion is brief response to a stimulus (10 min), mood persist longer(hours or days)
Older, richer, and people w ith individual rights are more happy. Increased social relationships can also increase happiness.
Expressing positive emotions linked to happiness and health.
Moral Attitudes
Consistent over time
Resistant to change
Predictive of behavior
Morality Models
Kohlberg: morality is important, decisions are complex, children improvement over time. Rational model. Ex: moral to steal
medicine if overpriced?
Criticism: Too w estern, too androcentric (mean as norm)
Moral decisions made automatically, then w e rationalize our moral judgement
Moral intuition (Haidt): moral intuition. Ex: brother and sister have sex, used protection is that moral
Describe how people make decisions.
Moral Foundations
Harm/care, fairness/reciprocity (Individualizing)
ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, purity/sanctity (Binding)
Conservatives have high binding, liberals have higher individualizing
Emotional Biases
Partial: more emotions for something w e care about
Arbitrary: mood influenced by other things
Passive: can't alw ays control emotions
Empathy present in infancy and other animals
Biases: closeness, vividness
Single death is tragedy, million deaths are a statistic
Disgust causes harsher judgements
Disgust tow ards outgroups. Such as gay people, immigrants, prostitutes
Morality is based a lot on emotion

FINAL
Lecture 6 (Social Influence)

Forms of Influence
obedience: follow ing demands of someone w ho is higher in social pow er than oneself
ex: follow ing order of police officer
Milgram experiment: participants w ere asked to shock someone else. Orders given by scientist
Compliance: agreeing to the request of another person regardless of that person's status
doing favor, giving to charity
there are many techniques to increase compliance. As long as w e give something to people that sounds like a
justification people generally agree. Higher for real and placebic information.
no information
real information
placebic information: statement that sounds like a justification but no information is given
Reason-based approaches
norm of reciprocity: feel obligated to give to someone w ho has given to us.
door in the face: make a large request that is refused, follow ed by smaller request
foot in the door: make small request that is accepted, follow ed by a large request. This is because this changes
perception of self and they think they like the cause so they follow through.
Emotion based: Both positive and negative increase compliance.
Positive mood
Mood maintenance: maintain positive mood and feels good to say yes
Different construal of the request: people think less critically w hen happy
Negative moods
Negative state relief: w ant to make us feel better. Especially w hen they feel guilty
Experiment participants led to believe they ruined research. People w ho caused harm and kept in that guilty
state they are more likely to help. If bad mood elevated then they less likely to help.
conformity: change behavior w ith or w ithout pressure from others.
informational social influence: other people may know something that w e dont.
autokinetic illusion study: dark room single point of light. Point of light appears to move. Participants had to estimate
how much light move around. When they met up as a group over multiple trials their they converged to a certain
value. Others influence answ er w ithout explicit pressure.
normative social influence: conformity based on the desire to be liked or socially accepted.
Experiment, line judgement study: one participant, the group w ere confederates. The participant conformed at least
once 75% of the time. When in private they no longer conformed to the group. Group only influences w hen they
have to state answ er publicly.
Factors influencing conformity
Group size: as size increases conformity increases
Group unanimity: if group unanimous in a decision conformity higher
Expertise and status: high status individuals have more normative social influence, experts exert more informational
social influence
Difficulty or ambiguity of task: more susceptible to informational influence for difficult or ambigious tasks
Publicity: w hen decisions can be made anonymously people are less susceptible to normative social influences.
Private acceptance vs public conformity
informational social influence leads to internalization (private acceptance) if the majority opinion as they think group is
accurate and correct
normative social influence leads to public conformity, but not private acceptance.
Minority influence: in some cases minority can change majority opinion
minority opinion strongest w hen they express believe consistently and strongly. Can only exert informational social
infleunce
if they seem to act in self interest then they more likely to fail
Milgram study: classic study show ing the pow er of social influence
62.5% participants completed to the end
if they quit they w ere likely to quit w hen they hear "let me out"
more teacher is confronted w ith pain of learner less likely to proceed
w hen experimenter less pow erful then teacher more likely to disobey
participants dont like giving shock but if experimenter pushes back they oblige, they try not to take personal responsibility
 and blame experimenter, start in small shocks and build up

Lecture 7 (Attraction and Relationships)

Rules of Attraction
Propinquity (physical/psychological/functional distance): be attracted to someone w e see more.
Mere exposure: the more w e encounter something more likely to like it more. applies to people, abstract symbol etc. We
like our mirrored image more because w e see it more, w e like our friends non-mirrored image because w e see that more
Fluency: easier to process something familiar therefore pleasant feelings associated
Classical conditioning: repeated exposure to a stimulus w ithout any negative consequence makes the stimulus more
pleasant
Similarity: friends and romantic partners tend to be in similar in beliefs and other characteristics
More fluent interactions: easier conversations w ith people w ho are similar to us
Social validation: more likely to agree w ith us
similar people have characteristics w e like: w e like ourselves
Beauty
Halo effect: someone w ho is physically good looking w e associate positive things w ith them. More attractive people are
generally happier
Physical attractiveness
Attractive infants receive more attention, parents attend to more attractive children, attractive faces are preferred at an
early age
Why attractiveness matters
Immediacy: Physical appearances are first w hen w e encounter people, and since w e operate heuristically it impacts us
highly
Both men and w omen prefer physical attractiveness more than earning prospects and they value it about the same.
Prestige: physical attractiveness is socially valued
Biology: signals cues of biological health and reproductive potential
Symmetric faces and unblemished faces: signals there development have not been effected by parasites
Broad shoulders in men and broad hips in w omen: have more sex hormones to have ideal offspring
Faces that are more average are seen more attractive
Men have higher sex drive than w omen
Men are more likely to date people younger than them, w hile w omen are w illing to go higher and low er but not by much
Gender differences in mate selection
Evolution: females have higher time investment in offspring about 2 years
In species w here the gender invests more they are more likely to be more choosy
Check if partner going to stick around and good provider
Interpersonal relationships: extended attachments betw een tw o or more individuals ex. family
Study baby monkey w ith artificial cloth mother or artificial food mother. Monkey preferred cloth mother because it is
w arm and cuddly. Show importance of early social contact for normal development. If raised in isolation, they grow up to
be socially dysfunctional.
Belonging is a biological need, similar to hunger
Five criteria of need
Evolutionary basis: need linked to survival and reproduction
Universal: all cultures have similar types of social relationships and dynamics
Guides social cognition: social relationships guide how w e see ourselves, others and our surroundings
Satiable: w e desire relationships w hen w e dont have them, similar to hunger and can be satisfied by finding new
relationships
Profound consequences w ithout relationships: cut off from others bad for mental and physical health
Consequences of social rejections: shorter life span, higher levels of chronic pain, feelings of shame and distress, reduce
ability to regulate behavior
Attachment theory: w orking model of close relationships. We depend on caregivers in earlier part of life for survival. Babies
have big eyes and head to make them look cute so adults compelled to take care. Infants mammals bond w ith their
caregivers. These bond w ith caregivers can affect relationships throughout our lives. Children develop understanding of
how relationships w ork, including how much w armth and security relationships provide.
Experiment strange situation: infant in room w ith mom, mom leaves and stranger appears, then mom returns
secure attachment: baby needs comforted after she returns, baby settles dow n and keep exploring. Most stable
 feel secure in relationships, comfortable w ith intimacy, desire to be close to others during times of stress
anxious attachment: baby upset and not easily comforted, does not w ant to leave mom and does not explore
feel insecure in relationships, seek closeness but w orry about relationship, during stress excessively try to get
close to others
avoidant attachment: baby upset and rejects mother w hen being comforted
feel insecure in relationships, feel self-reliant, prefer distance from others and during stress dismissive of others
Adult attachment style predicted by infant attachment style and generally stable across adulthood.
Anxious and avoidant pairs w orst
Anxious people most likely to drug abuse, and eating disorders
Relationship dissatisfaction
blame negative attributions for partner's behaviour
divorce predictors: anxiety, rejection sensitivity, marrying at young age, undergoing financial stress. Four horsemen
Criticism (being overly critical tow ard partner)
Defensiveness (refusing to accept responsibility for conflicts)
Stonew alling (w ithdraw al from partner, refusal to emotionally interact)
Contempt (looking dow n on one's partner; particularly w omen doing this)

Lecture 8 (Groups, Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination)

People naturally form themselves into groups.

Humans live in ultra society. Very few species do this
in other ultrasocial species other than humans they are closely related and given birth by queen
minimal group paradigm: groups made if they liked painting. Asked to split resource betw een in-group and outgroup member.
Participants chose to maximize ingroup profit or maximize differences betw een group but never split equally.
intergroup bias
Affect: prejudice means emotional bias. Negative feeling about a certain group
Behavior: discrimination means differential treatment due to group membership
Cognition:
Stereotypes: generalization about a group that is seen as descriptive of all members of that group
Outgroup homogeneity: tendency to see all outgroup members as alike
Open expression of bigoted view s is now less common in some countries.
Blatant racism: readily admitted
Benevolent racism: race and gender stereotypes contain mix of both positive and negative sentiments
Implicit attitudes: people w ant to control expressions of prejudice, it can be difficult to measure true attitudes tow ard different
social groups
Automatic processing
Implicit Association Test (IAT): timed sorting task, categorize betw een groups. Group a good, b bad, then after a w hile
alternate. Is it more difficult to associate one group w ith good than another. Measures reaction time. Not very reliable
test, lot of noise. Works because huge dataset.
White americans prefer w hite. Black americans show no preference.
Social information processed
Automatic processing: automatic, involuntary, unconscious and often based on emotional responses
Controlled processing: conscious, systematic, deliberate, controlled processing can override automatic responses
Origins of Prejudice and Discrimination
Economic perspective: groups in competition over scare resource in society
realistic group conflict theory: w hen in competition see others as bad and ingroup as good. Ex: resources may be
physical, economic or conceptual (religion)
hostile conflict increases ethnocentrism: w hen in conflict glorify ingroup
strongest feelings of prejudice from group that feels they have most to lose
if groups w ork together for common goal then decrease prejudice
Motivational perspective: w e w ant to see our groups superior to outgroups
social identity theory: people derive part of their self-concept from membership in groups
self esteem based on how people evaluate ingroup. So motivated to view ingroup more favorably. Any criticism of
ingroup taken personally.
comes from higher status groups to low er status to feel good
Cognitive perspective: schemas about differences betw een ingroup and outgroup members. Natural hierarchy
 Stereotypes used as mental shortcuts. It helps us process social information efficiently.
More likely to used stereotypes w hen w e are mentally drained. Stereotypes can be efficient but inaccurate.
Stereotypes accentuate ingroup similarities and outgroup differences.
Outgroup homogeneity effect: members of outgroup view ed as more similar to each other instead of distinct individuals.
Biased information processing: stereotypes guide attention, perception and memory. We remember things that are
consistent w ith our stereotypes but fail to notice things that are inconsistent.
Illusory correlations: false beliefs about groups maintained because w e more easily remember the pairing of tw o distinct
events. Negative behavior w ith minority more easily remembered.
Automatic stereotyping: shooter bias: w hites less likely to get shot, object recognition: see black or w hite face and tell if
object is gun or tool.
Cant control activation of stereotyping. If w e are aw are, and have the mental energy then w e can correct it.
Robbers Cave experiment to test economic perspective of prejudice
11 year old boys at camp split into groups. Do activities w ith group to increase ingroup identity. Engage in competitive
sports w ith prizes for w inning team.
they preferred to make friends w ith ingroup members and made fun of outgroup members.
intergroup hostility having food fights and raiding each others cabins
conflict reduced w hen they had to w ork together, how ever identification w as hard to eliminate entirely
Reducing prejudice and Discrimination
Motivational perspective
give alternative route to make them feel good about self. Self affirmation, list 5 things they are good at.
Economic Perspective
mutual interdependence: make people w ork together for common goal
Intergroup contact
Equal status
Common goal
No competition
Sanctioned by authority/social norms
Contact must involve friendship

Lecture 9 (Aggression, Altruism, and Cooperation)

Aggression: any behavior aimed at causing physical or psychological pain

Hostile aggression: causing harm is the goal
Instrumental aggression: causing harm is means to some other goal. Ex: robbing bank
Factors of Aggression
Situational (fluctuating)
Heat: more violent crimes occur in summer months, occurs more in cities that have higher average temperature
Media (fiction or non-fiction)
boys w ith preference for violence in TV at 8 more likely to engage in criminal behavior
video game violence increase aggression temporarily
copycat violence: act if violence imitated from media portrayals
Dispositional (stable)
Culture
Income inequality: more inequality, more aggression
Culture of honor: if someone insulted more likely to act aggressive
More honor in south USA. More argument related homicides.
More common w here there is absence of law enforcement because honor used to defend self.
gender
males more physically aggressive (9x ore than females) but females display more relational aggression
Women aggression is covert and socially directed. Ex - spread rumors
Altruism: desire to help another person w ith no benefit to oneself, even at cost to oneself
Empathy: ability to put onself in another person's shoes
Empathetic concern(sympathy) helping behavior
Empathic distress(anxiety) feel bad w atching someone in distress
Self Interested
Social rew ards
 Personal distress: help someone else to reduce ow n distress as they dont w ant to feel bad
If empathic concern low and ease of escape easy then escape. If high concern then help.
If empathic concern low and ease of escape hard then help. If high concern then help.
If someone dissimilar to self then more likely to escape than help
Steps to intervene in emergency
Notice situation
Interpret event as emergency
Ignorance can lead to reduced probability of an individual helping. Look around to see how others are reacting. Less
likely to help in bigger group because dont realize situation is an emergency
Take responsibility for providing help
Pluralistic ignorance: failure to act if no one seems alarmed, results from informational social influence
bigger group the more people think it is someone else's problem
Decide w hat to do
Execute
Evolution and Helping
helping is typically more costly than non-helping, so it should have been less prevalent but not case.
Kin selection: if someone genetically related then helping is beneficial for survival of genetic relatives
Reciprocal altruism: advantages to help non-relatives if that help w ill be reciprocated at a later time.
Prisoner's dilemma: model to show cooperation
if play once better deflecting, if playing multiple times then best to cooperate
if labelled w all street game vs community game people behave much differently
Ultimatum game
Split money, if other veto none get anything
reject if less than 20-30% of total
Ability to punish leads to cooperation. If no punishment then cooperation falls apart quickly

Lecture 10 (The Replication Crisis)

Replication crisis: scientific studies cannot be replicated ins subsequent investigations

Causes
Publication bias: journals prefer to publish positive results
Fix: paper is published regardless of results
Fix: Allow negative results to be published
Analytic flexibility (p-hacking)
report only a subset of experimental conditions, exclude participants, subset of many measures collected
Fix: disclosure standards
Fix: pre-registration: analysis plans must be registered in advance
Top journal replication rates: 40-50%
Elections
Polling: polling error in key states. systematic errors are:
nonresponse bias: some people harder to reach
social desirability bias: people dont like to admit they have certain beliefs
Turnout
likely voter models: is person likely to vote
Demographics
Intergroup conflict
they needed to break dow n groups further. For example w hite males include bankers, factory w orker etc.
Nudge (change behavior)
healthier eating
incentives
information
calorie information: not very useful people tune out numbers
different colored labels: healthy choices increased, info more palatable and easier to understand
accessibility/channel factors
if more accessible more likely to choose
have defaults. like in ontario by default not organ donor
spending and savings
offering more savings rate cause savings to go dow n. because it makes decision harder for them so they choose to do
it later
employee plan: increase contribution to retirement w hen they get a raise from the time they signed it
giving someone gift certificate makes them more likely to splurge
w hen they feel money is a bonus more likely to spend it
Education
kids w ho think intelligence is malleable do w ell
kids w ho think intelligence is fixed do not do as w ell
praising for effort vs for smartness w ill make them w ork harder and doing better