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Table of Contents
Textbook
Chapter 3
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9

Lectures
The Self
The Multiply Motivated Self
Attitudes & Behavior: Cognitive Dissonance
Persuasion
Conformity & Compliance & Obedience

Supplemental Articles
Linville (1985)
Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman (1981)
Santos, Leve, & Pratkanis (1994)

Lecture Quiz/Exam Practice Questions ONLY

Answers

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Textbook

Chapter 3
● Accuracy of self-knowledge
○ Know thyself → the main source of knowledge about self is self
○ Self-knowledge is not always accurate because of self-serving bias
○ Example: A person thinks they bought the product because they liked it when it was
actually that it was the last one they saw
○ Self is better at assessing inner states (being optimistic etc) and others are better at
assessing external states (being outspoken etc)
○ Study: Vasire and Mehl: They asked both participants and their “informants”- people
close to them- to assess their enactment of 25 behaviors. The researchers then recorded
the lives of the participants and coded how accurate their ratings were. The results
showed that informants’ ratings were as accurate as self’s.

● Self-schema = a cognitive structure, derived from past experiences, that represents a person’s
beliefs and feelings about the self, born in general and in specific situations
○ Regardless of its accuracy, self-schema serves as a basic unit of organization for
self-knowledge and influences our judgments about self.
○ Study: Markus: The researchers classified participants into schematic and non-schematic
people. They found that the schematic participants, who labeled themselves closer to the
extremes of the scale, were much quicker to judge if the traits were true or untrue of them
than non-schematic participants.
● Reflected self-appraisal = a belief about what others think of one’s self
○ Example: overt or subtle reactions and appraisals of others such as teachers assigning you
challenging tasks, parents praising your accomplishments, and a romantic partner making
light to your fears
○ NOT guaranteed to be accurate. It’s not what others think, but what we THINK what
others think of them. Could be like echo chamber case where others see your self-concept
and get reinforced, which leads you to believe more of the concept
○ Example: Many people rate themselves to be more shy than how shy other people think
they are
● Working self-concept = a subset of self-knowledge that’s brought to mind in a particular context
○ Example: your self-concepts related to romantic relationships are more relevant and thus
more likely to show in front of your romantic partner, and your self-concepts about
competence are more relevant and thus more accessible to you in academic or
professional settings.
○ Makes you unique in certain situations

● Distinctive aspects of the self = We tend to highlight what makes us unique or distinctive in a
given situation. In Western world, what is most central to identity is what makes you distinct.
○ Example: Study: The participants who were especially younger or older compared to
other members in the classroom mentioned their age as one of their self-definitions.
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Similarly, foreign students mentioned their demographic characteristics, and minority

genders mentioned their gender.
● Malleability and stability in the self-concept = While a person may have different self-concepts
in different contexts, they are consistent within each context
○ Paths of reconciliation of malleability and stability:
■ Core aspects of self-knowledge that are likely to be what a person thinks of first
when thinking about the self, though one’s working self-concept varies across
situations.
■ A person’s overall pool of self-knowledge remains relatively stable over time,
providing a sense of self-continuity even as different pieces of self-knowledge
come to the fore in different contexts.
■ A person’s sense of self may shift depending on the context, it’s likely that these
shifts conform to a predictable, stable pattern.
○ Example: One may be confident around her friend but insecure around her overly critical
mother. Though she is not always confident, her self concept around each context is
stable.
○ = a person may have variance in self concepts among contexts, but there are some
cross-contextual values that a person has.
○ I can be shy around members of other sex and confident around girlfriends, but I’m a
good listener no matter who I’m with

● Culture and the self-concept = Western independent culture is more self-centered, and Eastern
interdependent culture looks at self from others’ viewpoints more often
○ Study: When the researchers show children a picture of a student whose facial expression
is either matching or mismatching the other members, Japanese participants were more
likely to include the other members’ emotions into account whereas Canadian students
were more likely to describe the situation focusing on the states of themselves
○ Culture is not merely in which country a person is grown up. Many different aspects like
nationality, region, religion, gender, etc matter altogether
○ Example: When the researchers asked participants to list 20 things that describe
themselves, those who are exposed to Western culture more such as American
undergraduates and Kenyan undergraduates were more likely to describe themselves in
independent terms (I’m friendly), whereas those who are exposed to less Western culture
like workers in Nairobi and tribes in Kenya described more in terms of social relations
(I’m a daughter).
● Interdependent and independent self-construals = An independent self-construal promotes an
inward focus on the self, whereas an interdependent self-construal encourages an outward focus
on the social situation.
○ Westerners tend to experience and recall events from the inside out -- with themselves at
the center, looking out at the world. Easterners are more likely to experience and recall
events from the outside in -- starting from the social world, looking back at themselves as
an object of attention.
○ Westerners play the lead in their personal narratives; non-Westerners are more likely to be
just one among many cast members.
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○ Example: The study with American and Japanese Ps found that when judging an
individual’s emotions, the Japanese are more likely to take into account the emotions of
others in the surrounding social context (Cultural differences in attention to the social
context).
● Gender and the self-concept = women are more likely to show interdependent self. It may
partially be because of hunter-gatherer traditions, but such stereotypical social roles are reinforced
by society.
○ Example: Children conform to their gender roles and spend time in gender-segregated
groups in their childhood. They then are further reinforced with gender expectations in
the workplace. There are definitely some social influences other than evolutionary causes
because some cultures go well beyond what evolution can explain, while others almost
diminish the gender differences.
● Social class and the self-concept = higher social class tend to be more independent because they
want to be competitive and lower social class tends to be more interdependent because they want
to help each other in relatively harsh environments
○ Example: First-generation students who were exposed to information about their cultural
gap between interdependent background and independent school system significantly
increased their grades compared to those who were not provided with such information
● Social comparison theory = the idea that people compare themselves to other people to obtain
an accurate assessment of their own opinions, abilities and internal states
○ You tend to compare yourself to others who stand in relatively close situations with you
○ When our focus is on improving ourselves, we tend to frogo the self-esteem benefits of
downward social comparison and engage in upward social comparison instead.
○ Example: When you want to know how good of a singer you are, you don’t compare
yourself to Taylor Swift but to your friends who you go to karaoke with
● Self-esteem—trait versus state
○ Trait esteem: a person’s enduring level of self-regard across time. Fairly stable.
○ State esteem: dynamic, changeable self evaluations a person experiences as momentary
feelings about self
○ Example: college students’ self esteem momentarily drop when their favorite football
team loses
● Contingencies of self-worth = a perspective maintaining that people’s self-esteem is contingent
on the successes and failures in domains on which they have based their self-worth
○ Example: When the researchers asked grad school applicants’ self-esteem levels on the
days they got rejection or acceptance letters, the self esteem of those with higher
dependencies on academic competence were affected more.
● Sociometer hypothesis = the idea that self esteem is internal, subjective index of the extent to
which a person is included or looked favorably by others
○ It is an internal, subjective marker of the extent to which we are connected with others
○ High self-esteem: indicative of a strong sense of social connectedness
○ Low self-esteem: indicative of a poor sense of social connectedness
○ Self-esteem is developed to monitor the social environment for clues as to whether the
individual is being accepted or rejected
■ If rejection is detected, the individual is motivated to take corrective action
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○ Example: Evolutionarily, people needed to be aware of their social standings so they were
accepted by society. Self esteem serves as a sign of if people are acting likable, competent
and attractive which suggests that their behaviors are accepted, or if they were having
interpersonal issues with the group which suggests that they should change their
behaviors.
● Culture and self-esteem = East Asians tend to have lower self-esteem than Western people, but
when they are exposed to more Western culture, they increase their self-esteem
○ Western people praise each other’s achievements, while East Asians tend to criticize each
other to correct mistakes and improve skills.
○ Example: Japanese people who moved to Canada and got immersed in Canadian life have
significantly higher scores in self-esteem compared to Japanese people living in Japan.
○ Example: When Canadian and Japanese participants were given good or poor feedback
on their creativity task, the Canadian participants worked in the next similar task longer
when they were given good feedback, while the Japanese participants worked longer
when poor feedback was given. This suggests the Canadian participants, the Westerners,
tend to avoid being reminded of failure, while Japanese participants, the East Asians,
used the second task as a place to improve.
● Self-enhancement = the desire to maintain, increase or protect one’s positive self-views
○ Self-serving construals
○ Example: When you get bad feedback in your life, you look for a reason or justification to
feel good about yourself
● Better-than-average effect = people tend to think that they are better than the average
○ Reasons for being upbeat about ourselves: self-serving interpretations of these kinds of
good traits are one means of pursuing self-enhancement.
○ Example: Most people think they are better-than-average drivers
● Self-affirmation theory = the idea that people can maintain an overall sense of self-worth
following psychologically threatening information by affirming a valued aspect of themselves
unrelated to the threat
○ Example: “I totally failed this semester, but overall my life is good because I have a great
relationship with my boyfriend.”
● Self-enhancement and well-being = Self-enhancement is better for well-being than to have
completely accurate self-concepts in Western culture
○ Although self-enhancement was linked to greater self-esteem and well-being in the short
term, the advantages linked to self-enhancement eroded over time.
○ Example: When faced with stressful situations, high self-enhancers in Western culture
had healthier coping responses such as lower levels of cortisol and autonomic nervous
system to stress than low self-enhancers in Western culture.
○ Taylor and Brown’s thesis about the benefits of positive illusions: such illusions, far from
being detrimental, actually enhance well-being. BUT it has the greatest challenge comes
from cross-cultural research.
○ East Asian people tend to have better well-being when they are playing their social roles
well than when they are self-enhancing. Self-enhancement is not always a way for better
well-being.
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● Self-verification theory = the theory that people sometimes strive for stable, subjectively
accurate beliefs about themselves because such self-views give them a sense of coherences and
predictability
○ People selectively attend to and recall information that is consistent with their views of
themselves. Also, they choose to enter into relationships that maintain consistent views of
the self.
○ Our quest to verify our sense of ourselves guides our assessment of the validity of
self-relevant information, while our desire to think favorably about ourselves guides our
emotional reactions to the same information.
○ Example: When you strongly believe that you are a shy person, you don’t want your
friends to tell you that you’re actually not that shy and you can be the first to present in
class, because it goes against who you think you are. This effect holds even when your
self-concept is negative.
● Self-regulation = processes by which people initiate, alter, and control their behavior in the
pursuit of goals, including the ability to resist short-term rewards that thwart the attainment of
long-term goals
○ Example: You keep away from watching YouTube for hours and read the textbook instead
so you can do well in the midterm
● Self-discrepancy theory = a theory that behavior is motivated by standards reflecting ideal and
ought selves. Falling short of these standards produces specific emotions: dejection-related
emotions in the case of actual-ideal discrepancies and agitation-related emotions in the case of
actual ought discrepancies
○ Actual, ideal, and ought selves
■ Actual: who you are right now
■ Ideal: who you want to be
■ Ought: who you think you’re supposed to be
■ Example: Your ideal self is a creative artist, but the ought self that your parents
suggest is a smart lawyer. Your actual self is a college student who slacks off at
midnight and watches YouTube until 4am.
○ Promotion and prevention focus
■ Promotion focus: a focus on attaining positive ideal self standards
■ Prevention focus: a focus on avoiding negative outcomes
■ Westerners are more likely to have a promotion focus. East Asians are more
likely to exhibit a prevention focus.
■ Example: You can have a romantic relationship with a promotion focus to build a
stronger, more intimate relationship with your partner. You can also have a
relationship with a prevention focus to avoid conflicts and potential breakup.
● Self-control and shifts in construals/perspectives =
○ Promotion focus→ obtaining a positive goal
○ Prevention focus→ avoiding a negative outcome
○ High level construals focus on abstract, global, and essential features (seeing the forest),
whereas low-level construals emphasize salient, incidental, and concrete details(seeing
the trees).
○ Higher-level construals tend to facilitate self-control.
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○ Example: When children were instructed to have one marshmallow now or wait 15
minutes to get 2 later, they construed the marshmallow in cooler terms like a cotton ball
or a cloud, so that they would not focus on the temptation.
● Automatic self-control strategies = While self-regulation starts as a conscious, effortful
behavior, it gets automatic and unconscious as you keep regulating yourself.
○ Implementation intentions = an “if-then” plan to engage in a goal directed behavior
whenever a particular “if” is encountered
■ Example: If the clock hits 5PM, I pack up my stuff and go to the gym.
○ Goal-temptation mental associations = temptations can be associated with your
long-term goals.
■ The temptations may become linked in memory to your goal. So that when
temptations are brought to mind, the thoughts of your goal also come out.
Fishbach team found that bringing goals to mind first has the effect of
diminishing thoughts about temptations.
■ Example: Looking at gooey cookies when you’re on diet makes you think how
many calories they have and how bad it’d be for the goal to lose weight if you eat
it.
● Self-presentation = presenting the person we would like others to believe we are
○ Also called: impression management
○ Example: You use many jargons when you talk to your parents because you want them to
think that you’re getting smarter in college
● Face = the public image of ourselves that we want others to believe
○ The social drama of self-presentation is highly collaborative. We depend on others to
honor our desired social identities, and others likewise depend on us to honor their face
claims.
○ Example: you want people to believe that you’d be a great boyfriend material regardless
of what kind of boyfriend you actually are
● Self-monitoring = tendency to monitor one’s behavior to fit the demands of the current situation
○ Like actors, ppl play a role of the face they want to show by scrutinizing their own
behaviors. High self-monitors scrutinize situations and shift their self-presentation and
behavior according to the people and situation. Low self-monitors are more likely to
behave according to their own traits and preferences, regardless of the social context.
○ Example: You make sure you’re not burping or saying mean things on the first date so
that your date believes that you’re an attractive, good dating partner
● Self-handicapping = You give yourself obstacles for the thing you want to achieve so that you
can use them as excuses in case you didn’t achieve the goal.
○ The action taken provides an explanation for possible failure, thereby protecting the
desired public self if failure does occur.
○ Example: I clean my room and do dishes a night before the midterm, and tell my friends
that I didn’t do well because I was doing house chores and didn’t spend time studying for
the exam.
○ Sheppard and Arkin (1989): Exams either valid or invalid predictor of academic success
(high vs low importance). Half the Ps were told there’d be distraction during the test
(handicap vs no handicap available). Then Ps given a choice of music either helpful or
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distracting for the exam. Result→ Only the Ps who take the important exam with no prior
knowledge of the handicap chose the distracting music so that they would have handicap
in case they do bad in an important exam
● Presenting the self on-line = People actually present themselves fairly accurately online even
though it is easy to edit posts to be self-enhancing.
○ Self-verification theory/ people want to have a consistent self online and offline so that
others won’t judge them
○ Example: Strangers’ ratings on people’s personalities based on their Facebook accounts
fairly match with the average ratings of the person who owns the account and their close
acquaintances.

Chapter 7
● Attitude = An evaluation of an object in a positive or negative fashion that includes three
components: affect, cognition, and behavior.
○ Example:
○ Attitude on Carrots
○ Cognition: Carrots are high in vitamin A, which are good for your eyesight.
○ Affective: Carrots aren’t yummy. Personally, I'm not a big fan of their taste.
○ Behavior: I eat carrots from time to time. I get my vitamins and minerals from eating
carrots.
● Three components of attitudes
○ Affect= how much someone likes or dislikes an object (liking or disliking a politician,
landscape, etc)
○ Cognition=thoughts that typically reinforces a person’s feelings (knowledge about
histories of your favorite city, special time you spent there)
○ Behavior= behavioral tendencies to approach or avoid a thing/ situation
○ Example: You have a general liking about people in rural areas (affect). You remember
that whenever you visit a small village in rural areas, people there welcome you very well
(cognition). You tend to ask many friendly questions to people and become friends if they
tell you that you are from a rural area (behavior).
● Likert scale = a numerical scale used to assess people’s attitudes; a scale that includes a set of
possible answers with labeled anchors on each extreme
○ Simple scales are likely to miss some important elements when it comes to many
complex attitudes.
○ Example: To measure how accepting people are of using cell phones while driving, you
ask participants “How acceptable is using cell phones while driving?” and provide the
scale of 1 (not at all acceptable) to 7 (totally acceptable).
● Response latency = the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, such as an attitude
question.
○ It is to measure the acceptability of the attitude. People who take less than a second to
respond affirmatively to a question are likely to have a stronger attitude on this topic than
those who take several seconds to respond.
○ Example: If you ask someone what they think about a politician, the one who answers it
faster probably has a stronger opinion than the one who takes time to decide their answer
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● Implicit attitude measures = Used to measure people’s attitudes that they might be less willing
to admit.
○ Nonconscious attitudes - people’s immediate evaluative reactions they may not be aware
of or that may conflict with their consciously endorsed attitudes.
○ Example: To measure the level of stereotypes people have, you ask participants to
associate negative or positive words with names with specific demographic
characteristics. Those with stronger negative stereotypes would associate the names and
negative words faster than those with less stereotypes. (IAT)
● Predicting behavior from attitudes = It’s intuitive that people’s attitudes, i.e. what they think of
an object, predict behavior, i.e. how they react/respond to it.
○ If people behave a certain way, they probably have positive feelings about the behavior.
○ Example: If you have negative attitudes about Thai food, you probably do not choose a
Thai restaurant to eat out tonight.
● Reasons attitudes sometimes don’t predict behavior = Attitudes do not always predict
behavior.
○ Attitudes conflict w/other determinants of behavior
■ One potent determinant of a person’s actions that can weaken the relationship
between attitudes and behavior is that person’s understanding of the prevailing
norms of appropriate behavior.
■ Example: Your attitude about losing weight is pretty positive but you don’t take
actions because of other external factors that encourage you to eat cakes such as
going to a birthday party
○ Introspecting about the reasons for our attitudes
■ Coming up with wrong reasons to explain your attitudes may distort how you
think your attitude is, which makes it less predictable of the following behavior.
■ When the basis of an attitude is largely affective (emotional), the contaminating
effect of introspection is limited to those times when the true source of our
attitude is hard to pin down. When the basis of an attitude is primarily cognitive,
the introspection isn’t likely to mislead us about our true attitude.
■ Example: couples who were asked to list the reasons why they felt certain ways
about their relationships (and thus came up with some false reasons) predicted
their relationship evaluation after 9 months much less accurately than the couples
who were simply asked to list their relationship evaluations v
○ Mismatch between general attitudes and specific behaviors
■ Attitudes towards general groups or categories do not necessarily apply to
attitudes towards specific individuals or situations
■ Example: Restaurants owners that LePierre contacted had generally negative
attitudes towards Orientals, but they treated a specific oriental couple who were
pleasant nicely
● Predicting attitudes from behavior
○ Instead of attitudes predicting your behaviors, how you behave leads you to have certain
attitudes towards the things you are approaching or avoiding.
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○ Cognitive consistency theories - the impact of behavior in attitudes reflects the powerful
tendency we have to justify or rationalize our behavior and to minimize any
inconsistencies between our attitudes and actions
○ Example: Most people decide to follow religious rituals not because they have positive
attitudes towards the religion. Instead, they acquire the behavior of praying and following
other rituals from their surroundings such as parents and region, and you eventually come
to have genuine positive attitudes toward the religion you grew up with.
● Cognitive dissonance theory = inconsistency between a person’s thoughts,sentiments, and
actions creates an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency
○ People usually cope with the unpleasant emotions by changing their cognition to make it
more consistent with the behavior
○ Can be PHYSICALLY arousing, not just in the brain
○ Example: I think it’s important to eat healthily but I eat ramen every night. It makes me
feel awkward and unpleasant, so I convince myself that I’m busy with schoolwork and
the time I save from just eating ramen instead of cooking healthy meals every day is
worth it.
● Decisions and dissonance = When we make a decision, there’s a dissonance because the rejected
option has some advantages and the chosen option has some disadvantages. In such cases, people
tend to focus on the advantages of the chosen option and rationalize its disadvantages so you have
more chances to feel good about the choice you made.
○ Example: You left a small town in Canada and moved to LA for the nice weather. While
the weather there is much better than your hometown, LA has heavy traffic. You tell
yourself and your friends that the time you have to spend in traffic is not as bad, giving
excuses like “I get to listen to audiobooks in a car and it’s very informative”.

● Effort justification = the tendency to reduce dissonance by justifying the time, effort, or money
devoted to something that turned out to be unpleasant or disappointing.
○ Sweet lemons rationalization (“it’s really not so bad”)
○ Example: Hazing in a fraternity group. If one gets into a fraternity by getting hazed and
then finds out that the group isn’t that great, there is dissonance because you “suffered to
get into this group” but “the group I got in is boring”. To alleviate such dissonance, you
change your cognition and convince yourself that the group you got into is actually not
that bad. “See, I have all these good drinking friends and I look much cooler than when I
was in high school not getting invited to parties.”
○ You like lego and ikea products more than what the product is worth because you put in
the time and effort to assemble it. You convince yourself that you put in such resources
because the products are better.
● Induced (forced) compliance = subtling compelling people to behave in a manner that is
inconsistent with their beliefs, attitudes, or values in order to elicit dissonance and therefore a
change in their original attitudes and values
○ ...and attitude change = when you can’t take back your behavior, you change your
original attitudes.
■ Example: When participants did boring tasks and then were told to tell the next
participant that the study is interesting, those participants who were not paid well
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were more likely to alter their original attitudes and rated the task to be not as
boring, whereas those participants who were paid well to tell the next participant
did not engage in changing attitudes as much.
○ ...and extinguishing undesired behavior = the mild punishment can bring about
psychological change, such that they’ll no longer be tempted to do what you don’t want
them to do.
■ Example: “Forbidden toy” paradigm experiment: The children in the severe
threat condition either didn’t change their opinion of the forbidden toy or liked it
even more than before. Many of those in the mild threat condition viewed the toy
less favorably. It is because the kids in the mild condition did not have enough
justification to not touch the toy, which creates dissonance, and felt the need to
change the attitude that they did not want to play with the toy in the first place.
On the other hand, the kids in the severe condition already had a strong enough
justification to not touch the toy and thus did not feel the need to change their
attitude towards their favorite toy.
● When does inconsistency produce dissonance? = when it implicates our core sense of self,
anything that challenges the way we think of ourselves will arouse dissonance. We experience
dissonance when we act in ways that are inconsistent with our core values and beliefs, and more
so when the behavior was freely chosen, not sufficiently justified, has negative consequences, and
those consequences were foreseeable
○ Free choice = Engaging in a behavior that was freely chosen produces dissonance
because choosing to engage in a task that conflicts with your self concept creates more
internal conflict
■ Example: Those paid less to write an essay they freely chose to write changed
their attitude on the topic more than those paid more
○ Insufficient justification = If a behavior is sufficiently justified by existing incentives,
even if it goes against internal beliefs it will not arouse dissonance because their behavior
is justified and thus they do not feel the weight of the inconsistency in their beliefs
■ Example: Those paid more to write an essay about something they don't believe
in felt no pressure to actually change their view because there was sufficient
justification for doing it. For those receiving little money, that incentive was not
enough justification for writing the essay and they actually changed their beliefs
even more
○ Negative consequences = People only experience dissonance if their behavior has a
negative consequence (negative consequences are necessary for the arousal of cognitive
dissonance)
■ Example: I stole from the grocery store which goes against my moral standards.
If I don't get caught, I don't feel bad about it and dissonance is not aroused. But if
I do get caught, I regret it.
○ Foreseeability = If we can foresee negative consequences as a result of dissonance
inducing behavior, they are seen as a threat to the self image and arouse dissonance
■ Negative consequences that aren’t foreseeable don’t threaten a person’s
self-image as a moral and decent person, so they shouldn’t arouse dissonance.
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■ Example: Can't blame someone for giving someone peanuts if you didn't know
they had an allergy
● Self-affirmation and dissonance = when dissonance is aroused, people can ward it off by
looking at their positive qualities and core values
○ People who value confronting prejudice but fail to do so end up evaluating the person
making the prejudicial remark more favorably.
○ Example: I know I’m failing all my classes, but I am such a good friend
● Is dissonance universal?
○ If east asians experience dissonance in the induced-compliance paradigm because they
question their actions when others are observing them, they should also show dissonance
in the free choice paradigm if they are led to think about other people's reactions to their
free choice
○ Example: In the study, schematic faces in the poster prime the concept of “social others”.
The results show Japanese showed no evidence of dissonance reduction in the standard
free-choice condition, but in the poster condition they did. I.e. Easterners are more likely
to feel dissonance in a social context
● Self-perception theory = People don't always come to know their own attitudes by introspection
and discerning what they think or how they feel about something. Instead, they look outward at
their behavior and the context in which it occurred to infer what their attitudes must be
○ We come to understand ourselves and our attitudes in the some way we come to
understand others and their attitudes
○ Example: I always cut people in line, I must hate following rules
○ “If I chose this, I must like it.”
● Reconciling dissonance and self-perception accounts
○ Dissonance reduction processes are more likely to be activated when people engage in
behavior that is inconsistent with a clear-cut attitude, whereas self-perception processes
are more apt to come into play for more vaguely held attitudes.
○ Although self-perception processes typically influence unimportant attitudes more than
important ones, at times they do influence important attitudes and important subsequent
behavior.
○ The crux of self-perception theory - we use whatever cues we have available to us to
figure out what we think and how we feel, including knowledge of the surrounding
context and how we’ve acted.
○ Example: clear cut attitudes about long-debated policies about gun control, or vague
attitudes about the relatively new concept of selfie sticks.
● Overjustification effect (Box 7.4) = tendency to devalue those activities we perform in order to
get something else. The justification for performing the activity is overly sufficient: we would do
it because it’s inherently rewarding (or, more generally, for intrinsic reasons), but also because
there is an external payoff (extrinsic reasons). Because the extrinsic reasons would be sufficient to
produce the behavior, we might discount the intrinsic reasons and conclude that we don’t much
like the activity for its own sake.
○ Example: **? If someone says “you have to eat your broccoli before you eat your
cupcake” you might infer that person prefers cupcakes. But maybe they don't have a
preference and the broccoli will get cold if they don't eat it quickly
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○ We tend to dislike the thing we have to do first in order to do the other thing. Even if the
first thing alone is pleasant, we rate it less pleasing if we have to do that thing in order to
do the next thing.
○ A skilled tennis player used to play tennis for fun, but after she was paid to play tennis,
she stopped playing it in her free time because it’s not paid.
● Embodied nature of cognition and emotion = In figuring out what we think, feel, or believe, we
draw on whatever cues are available to us - including what our body is doing - without being
consciously aware that we are doing.
○ People draw on all sources of information -- not just the actions they have performed, but
also the precise movements of the body -- to comprehend ideas and determine their
attitudes
○ Example: 1) Ps evaluated the ideographs presented while they flexed their arms more
favorably than those presented while they extended their arms. 2) Respondents in the
warmer room expressed greater belief in global warming.
● System justification theory = The theory that people are motivated to see the existing
sociopolitical system as desirable, fair, and legitimate.
○ Extolling the virtues of the prevailing system is typically an easier way of reducing that
dissonance than bringing about effective change.
○ Compensatory stereotypes or beliefs that those who occupy less privileged roles in a
society nonetheless derive a number of compensatory benefits.
○ Example: sometimes women report feeling they deserve to make less money than their
male counterparts doing the same work.
● Terror management theory = people deal with the potentially crippling anxiety associated with
the knowledge of the inevitability of death by striving for symbolic immortality through
preserving valued cultural worldviews and believing they have lived up to the culture’s standards.
○ The most common approach is denial -- to maintain that it’s only the physical body and
this particular earthly existence that will come to an end. (“The denial of death”)
○ Making death salient makes people want to uphold the values of the institutions they
identify with and that will live on after them.
○ Mortality salience manipulations have been shown to make people more hostile to those
who criticize their country, more committed to their ingroups and more hostile to
outgroups, more eager to punish those who challenge prevailing laws and established
procedures, and more reluctant to use cultural artifacts.
○ Example: The survey respondents were more favorable to Bush and less favorable to
Kerry after a mortality salience manipulation, because Bush was seen by many as the
leader of the fight against al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

Chapter 8
● Elaboration likelihood model = A model of persuasion maintaining that there are two different
routes to persuasion: the central route and the peripheral route
○ Example:
● Central/peripheral route = Central route: occurs when people think carefully and deliberately
about the content of persuasive message
■ When issue is personally relevant
 14

- People listen carefully and think about the argument

■ Knowledgeable in domain
■ Factors promoting attitude change: quality of argument
○ Peripheral route: relatively superficial, easy-to-process features of a communication that
are tangential to the persuasive information itself.
■ Issue not personally relevant
■ Distracted of fatigued
■ Incomplete or hard to comprehend message
■ Factors promoting attitude change: source of attractiveness, fame, expertise,
number and length of argument, and consensus
- People are swayed by surface-level aspects of the message
■ Rely on relatively simple heuristics, or rules of thumb
○ Example: When I decide which university is right for me, I would take the central route
as it is personally relevant and it is the field I have knowledge about. When I decide
which perfume to buy, I’d probably rely on the peripheral route, because I do not know
what each perfume smells like and it’s relatively superficial. I’d just look at
advertisements and decide based on the colors of the posters or the actors on TV.
○ Central route: mindfulness App commercials explaining in details how the app works
○ Peripheral route: mindfulness App commercials using celebrity endorsements to persuade
the crowd
● Roles of motivation and ability = What determines whether we will engage in central or
peripheral processing in response to a persuasive message
○ Motivation increases when the message has personal consequences
○ Ability increases when you have sufficient cognitive resources as well as time available
○ Attitude change can be brought about by A) strong arguments when people are motivated
and by B) the expertise of the source of the persuasive message when people aren’t
motivated.
○ Examples:
■ Low ability — argument is presented too quickly for you to process or is not
explained clearly
■ Low motivation — you see the news claiming a particular policy is harmful, but
because it doesn't apply to you (e.g. social security getting cut but you are
middle-/upper-class) you apply peripheral processing to it, and don’t base your
opinion of it on the strength of the argument but on other things
● Elements of persuasion (who, what, and whom of persuasion)
○ Who: source of information
○ What : content of the message itself
○ Whom: intended audience of the message
○ Source characteristics = characteristics of the person who delivers a persuasive
message, such as the following:
■ Attractiveness
● persuasive when physically attractive people or sources under
circumstances when message is not personally important and when
people have little knowledge in the domain (peripheral route)
 15

● Example: George Clooney advocating for the humanitarian crisis in

Darfur, Sudan
■ Credibility = experts who are trustworthy
● Sway opinions under circumstances that promote the peripheral route to
persuasion.
● If the audience happens to be highly motivated and able to think
carefully, source credibility can be taken as a strong argument in favor of
moving toward the position the credible source is endorsing.
● Example: Citing doctors because they are known for their expertise and
trustworthiness
■ Sleeper effect = an effect that occurs when a persuasive message from an
unreliable source initially exerts little influence but overtime causes or have
potential to shift attitudes
● Example: you see a facebook post about politics which is not particularly
persuasive at the moment, but later you remember the post and it feels
more persuasive because you kind of forget that the source was not
trust-worthy
● Similarly, a weak message from a highly credible source might not be
persuasive at first, but over time it becomes more effective because we
have dissociated the source of the message from its content.
■ Certainty = when sources express their views with certainty and confidence,
you’re more inclined to be persuaded by them
● Example: Studies of jurors show that people judge how credible
eyewitnesses are based on the confidence they express when they give
their testimony.
→ if the witness seems super confident like “I’m 100% sure that was
him,” it seems more persuasive than when the witness is not confident
like “I feel like that’s what I saw, but I’m not sure”.
○ Message characteristics = Aspects of content of a persuasive message, including the
quality of evidence and the explicitness of its conclusions
■ Message quality
● High quality messages are more persuasive in general (especially for
people who are strong in motivation and ability)
● More attitude change will result if the conclusions are explicit in the
message
● Messages are more persuasive when sources argue against their own
self-interest.
● Example: Patrick Reynolds’s anti-smoking advocacy is likely seen as
more sincere by the mere fact that it goes against his own self-interest,
because he is the heir to the second-largest tobacco company in the U.S.
■ Vividness = Colorful, interesting, memorable tend to be more effective
● Vivid information conveyed by a personal narrative with emotional
punch can be more persuasive than statistical facets.
 16

● Example: a movie showing the harmful effects of smoking persuades

more people to quit than a simple pamphlet
■ Identifiable victim effect = people are more inclined to be persuaded to act on
behalf of a cause by portrayals of clearly identifiable victims
● The tendency to be more moved by the vivid plight of a single individual
than by a more abstract number of people.
● Limitations: in cases where it’s possible to blame a victim for his or her
plight.
● Example: children in the compelling ad for UNICEF than abstract
statistics
- When a humanitarian advertisement shows a face of a suffering
child, it’s more persuasive than just saying “1000 kids are
suffering in the world”
■ Fear = Persuade people to act in order to avoid some dire outcome
● Fear can increase personal relevance, but it can also cause hysteria that
inhibits cognitive abilities to process
● Fear is most persuasive when combined with clear information or
guidelines for diminishing it
● Example: illustrating all the fatal and detrimental effects of a massive
earthquake, but also including instructions on how to prepare, how to
take cover, and what to do after
■ Culture = persuade people through tailoring a message to fit the norms, values,
and outlook of the cultural group of your audience.
● American ads emphasized benefits of the individual
● Korean ads focused on benefits to collectives
● Westerners were more persuaded by the gain-framed message, whereas
Easterners were more swayed by the loss-framed message.
● Messages may vary at different times within the same society or culture.
● Example: Smoking is bad for your lungs in US and smoke troubles others
in Japan
○ Audience characteristics = characteristics of those who receive a persuasive message,
including need for cognition, mood, and age
■ Need for cognition = people differ in their need for cognition, the degree to
which they like to think deeply about things.
● A high need for cognition are more persuaded by high-quality arguments
and are relatively unmoved by peripheral cues of persuasion. A lower
need for cognition is persuaded more by easier-to-process, peripheral
cues.
● Example: a philosopher would be more persuaded by an in-depth and
comprehensive argument that addresses all possibilities than a succinct
one
■ Mood = Easier to persuade if the person is in the right mood
● Message is more persuasive if the mood of the audience matches the
mood of the message
 17

● Inducing people to feel guilt can increase their compliance to a

persuasive appeal.
● Example: Hitler’s Youth rallies created a mood of unity and strength,
which made his messages about Germany’s unity and strength in WW2
more persuasive
■ Age = Younger people are more likely to be persuaded by message
● Older people more likely to be rooted in their beliefs
● Example: In children abuse cases, children's attitudes can be readily
altered by clever attorneys interested in winning a case not at getting at
the truth.
● Meta-cognition and persuasion
○ Secondary thoughts that are reflections on the primary thoughts ( thoughts we have about
our thoughts ) can influence attitude change or have their own persuasive impact
○ Example: When you think about the origins of carbon emissions and their effects
(primary cognition), assessment of how confident you are in your knowledge about
carbon emissions, the ease with which facts about carbon emissions come to mind, or
how clear the facts seem to you (secondary cognition).
● Self-validation hypothesis = the idea that feeling confident about our thoughts validates those
thoughts, making it more likely that we’ll be swayed in their direction
○ We have greater confidence and are apt to be persuaded, when we perceive our thoughts
to be easily brought to mind, accurate, and clear.
○ The favorability or unfavorability of one’ thoughts influenced persuasion only when they
were associated with a feeling of confidence
○ Example: Petty et al expt: Ps who had previously generated most favorable thoughts
about the exam reported more favorable attitudes toward the message. Those Ps who
recalled a time of doubt didn’t rely on their thoughts to come up with their attitudes
toward the exam.
○ confidence→ more persuasion
○ doubt→ no more persuasion than baseline

● Embodiment and confidence

○ How confident or not we feel about the thoughts we have in response to a persuasive
appear can also come from nonverbal sources
○ Self-validation hypothesis explanation: bodily movements can signal varying degrees of
thought confidence, and it’s this confidence that determines whether or not persuasion
occurs.
○ Example:
■ nodding to a stimulus → agree vs shaking head → disagree
■ Brinol and Petty expt: In the strong arguments condition, nodding heads lead to a
greater confidence to favorable thought. However, in the weak argument
condition, students who nodded their heads were less persuaded than those who
shook their heads side to side. (Explanation: Nodding led students to feel greater
confidence in the unfavorable thoughts they had in response to the weak
 18

arguments they were listening to, leading them to feel less favorable toward the
headphones.)

● Media and persuasion = the power of the media to influence people’s tastes, opinions, and
behavior. It is often indirect.
○ Shared attention = When people perceive that they’re attending to a stimulus (televised
speech) simultaneously with many others known, they’re inclined to process the stimulus
more deeply resulting in persuasion via the ELM central route.
■ Example: When we realize that we are watching a live public speech with many
other people, we are more likely to judge the speecher’s content with the central
route.
○ Agenda control = Media influence shapes our very conception of social reality. Media
of all types substantially contribute to shaping the information we think is broadly true
and important.
■ Example: Gerbner’s expt: Ps are more likely to cite energy as one of the three
most important facing the country when they read more stories dealing with U.S
dependence on foregin energy sources.
○ Conceptions of reality → heavy TV viewers construe social reality much like the reality
they see on the screen. They tend to endorse more racially prejudiced attitudes, assume
that women have more limited abilities than men, and overestimate the prevalence of
violent crime.
● Resistance to persuasion = many of the important principles of social psychology serve as a
source of independent thought and significant forces of resistance in the face of persuasive
attempts.
○ Attentional biases = responding selectively to information in a way that maintains our
initial point of view
■ selective attention: people are inclined to attend selectively to information that
confirms their original attitudes
■ Selective evaluation: the tendency people have to evaluate information in ways
that support their existing beliefs and values.
■ Example:
● Eagly & Chaiken expt: the pro-legalization students pushed the button
more often when the speaker was delivering the strong arguments in
favor of legalization. The anti-legalization students were more likely to
push the button while the speaker was offering up the easy-to-refute
arguments.
● Ditto and Lopez expt: people who receive unhealthy diagnoses are more
likely to downplay both the seriousness of the diagnosis and validity of
the test that produced it.
● If you are a democrat, you may think CNN is more valid than Fox News.
If you are a republican, you may think Fox News is more valid than
CNN.
○ Previous commitments = When people publicly commit to a position on an issue
publicly, this can increase their resistance to attempts to persuade them otherwise
 19

■ Thought polarization hypothesis = the hypothesis that more extended time

thinking about a particular issue tends to produce a more extreme attitude
■ Example: Tesser & Conlee expt: the repeated expression of attitudes has been
shown to lead to more extreme positions in a variety of domains.
■ Caveat: Increased thoughts may lead to a more moderate attitude if people
previously had little motivation or little preexisting knowledge about it. → the
more you think about it, the more various info you get and you don’t know which
to choose
○ Knowledge and resistance = More knowledge more resistance to persuasion, less
knowledge, easily shift attitudes
■ Example: Wood expt: Students with a lot of knowledge about the environment
changed their stance only a little bit because they counterargue the message
which opposed environmental preservation with their knowledge and beliefs. The
less knowledgeable students shifted attitudes towards the anti-preservation
message.
○ Attitude inoculation = small attacks on people’s beliefs that engage their preexisting
attitudes, prior commitments, and background knowledge, enabling them to counteract a
subsequent large attack and thus resist persuasion
■ Theory works the same as vaccines
■ Example: Smoking prevention program: given the pro-smoking arguments, then
encourage people to make counterarguments. The initial attack would inoculate
them, thus making people more resistant to future inducements to smoke.

Chapter 9
● Social influence = The many ways people affect one another, including changing in attitude,
beliefs, feelings, and behavior resulting from the comments, actions, or even the mere presence of
others.
○ Example:
■ Other affect us: friends’ pressure to go out drinking, advertiser’s efforts to get us
to adopt the latest fashion, etc
■ We affect other: unconsciously smile at someone for actions we like, frown at
someone for behavior we dislike, etc
● Conformity = Changing one’s behaviors or beliefs in response to some real or imagined pressure
from others
○ It could be both implicit and explicit. Some types are bad, such as going along with a
crowd to pull a harmful prank. Still, others are beneficial, such as suppressing anger and
forming lines. It eliminates potential conflict and makes human interaction much
smoother.
○ Example: someone smokes cigarettes because members of the peer group encourage
them.
● Compliance = Responding favorably to an explicit request by another person
○ Example:
■ Boss asked you to run an errand (compliance attempts come from people with
some power over us)
 20

■ A classmate asks to borrow your notes (compliance attempts come from peers)
● Obedience = In an unequal power relationship, submitting to the demands of the person in
authority.
○ Example: When a teacher yells at students to walk without disrupting a line, students
listen to the teacher and walk without disrupting the line.
● Automatic mimicry = the tendency to mindlessly imitate other people’s behavior and
movements.
○ Reasons: 1) ideomotor action 2) to facilitate smooth, gratifying interaction and to foster
social connection
○ Example: when two people chat in a cafe, one person drinks tea when the other person
takes a sip, unconsciously mimicking the other person. The key is that the person drank it
not necessarily because they wanted it. They did at the same time as the other person.
● Ideomotor action = The phenomenon whereby merely thinking about a behavior makes
performing it more likely.
○ Based on the fact: the brain regions responsible for perception overlap with those
responsible for action.
○ Example: When you let a person put a hand on a sheet of paper with words “yes” “no”
and “maybe” on it and ask a bunch of closed ended questions, the person is likely to
slightly move their hand toward the answer they are thinking about because of ideomotor
action.
● Autokinetic illusion = the sense that a stationary point of light in a completely dark environment
is moving.
○ Example: Sherif’s experiment
○ Ps’ estimate about how far the light moved converged over time as a group norm (the
light is actually not moving at all)
● Informational social influence = The influence of other people that results from taking their
comments or actions as a source of information about what is correct, proper, or effective. (You
think others know what’s going on when you don’t)
○ When we have vague ideas, are uncertain about what is correct, or are in unfamiliar
situations…we are more likely to conform to others’ views and draw on other people’s
actions and opinions as useful sources of information.
○ Example: Sherif’s experiment: the uncertainty of the lights’ movement left the
participants open to the influence of others.
○ Example: When you are lost on the way to go to a big concert, you follow the crowd of
people with band t-shirts because you assume they know the way
● Normative social influence = The influence of other people that comes from the desire to avoid
their disapproval and other social sanctions. (Peer pressure. You kind of know what’s correct but
go with the crowd anyways because you don’t want to stand out)
○ Example: Asch’s Conformity Experiment
○ Example: When you come into the classroom, you see most people sitting at the back of
the classroom. You decide to sit at the back as well, not because you want to, not because
you believe it is necessarily better, but because it seems more “normal” to sit at the back
like anyone else.
 21

● Factors affecting conformity pressure = These include characteristics of the group; the
surrounding context, including cultural influences; and the task or issue at hand.
○ Group size = As the number of people in majority increase, so does the tendency to
conform, but only up to a unanimous majority of three or four. After that, conformity
levels off.
■ Example: In Asch’s paradigm, the more people gave the same wrong answers, Ps
more likely to conform
○ Group unanimity = This effect suggests a powerful tool for protecting independence of
thought and action. If you expect to be pressured to conform and want to remain true to
your beliefs, bring along an ally.
■ An ally weakens both informational social influence and normative social
influence. (Noted: the other person who breaks the group’s unanimity doesn’t
need to offer the correct answer - just something that departs from the group’s
answer.)
■ Example: the implication for free speech (we tolerate loathsome and obviously
false statement not bc what is said has any value, but bc it liberate other people to
make atypical remarks that are of value)
○ Anonymity—internalization vs. public compliance = Anonymity eliminates normative
social influence and therefore should substantially reduce conformity.
■ Internalization - Private acceptance of a proposition, orientation, or ideology.
■ Normative social influence often has a greater impact on public compliance than
on private acceptance. ( i don’t actually believe it but I’ll behave in a way that
does not show I’m going against the crowd)
■ Example: participants in Asch’s paradigm are allowed to write their judgements
on a piece of paper instead of having to say them aloud for the group to hear,
conformity drops dramatically.
○ Expertise and status = expertise primarily affects informational social influence, status
mainly affects normative social influence.
■ We take expertise’s opinion more seriously as sources of information because
they are more likely to be right. The disapproval of high-status individuals can
hurt more than the disapproval of people we care less about.
■ Example: Torrance's experiment - the group report pilot’s correct solution as their
answer 91 percent of the time (The opinions of higher-status individuals thus tend
to carry more weight
○ Culture (including tight vs. loose) = people from interdependent cultures might be
expected to conform more than those from independent cultures.
■ Tight: cultures that have strong norms regarding how people should behave and
don’t tolerate departure from those norms. Loose: their norms aren’t as strong
and their members tolerate more deviance.
■ Example: Gelfand’ experiment
■ Tight cultures tend to be in places with fewer resources, high population density
and greater risks of natural disasters
■ There is a cross-cultural gender norm that women should be sexually modest. In
loose cultures, there would not be harsh punishments if women go against the
 22

norm other than possibly hurting their social reputation. On the other hand, in
tight cultures, those women who go against the norms can be severely punished
socially, physically, or even legally.
○ Gender = Women tend to conform more than men but only a bit.
■ Women tend to conform more in stereotypically male domains (e.g. geography or
deer hunting), men tend to conform more in stereotypically female domains (e.g.
child rearing or relationship advice).
■ Example:
● Influence of minority opinion = minorities typically influence fewer people, but the nature of
the influence is often deeper and results in true private attitude change. In contrast, majorities
typically elicit more conformity but it is often of the public compliance sort.
○ When the minority opinion was consistent, it had both a direct effect on participants’
response in the public setting and a latent effect on their subsequent private judgements.
○ Primarily through informational social influence rather than through normative social
influence.
○ Example: Rosa Park refusing to give up on a bus seat resulted in a city-wide
demonstration
● Compliance techniques = There are three basic types of compliance approaches: those directed
at the head, those directed at the heart, and those based on the power of norms.
○ Norm of reciprocity = A norm dictating that people should provide benefits to those who
benefit them.
■ It also exists in many bird and mammal species, which helps cement the social
bond between them
■ Example: Businesses and other organizations often try to take advantage of this
pressure by preceding their request with a small gift (e.g. Marketers who want us
to complete a survey send it along with a dollar, cult members offer a flower
before giving their pitch).
○ Door-in-the-face (reciprocal concessions) = people feel compelled to respond to a
concession by making a concession themselves
■ Asking a large favor first that will certainly be refused, then follow the request
with one for a more modest favor. Dropping in the size of the request will be
seens as a concession, the people being asked will feel compelled to match that
concession to honor the norm of reciprocity. So the most available concession the
person can make is to comply with the asker’s second request.
■ When the two requests are made by different individuals, this technique doesn’t
work.
■ Example: Cidldini’s experience with the Boy Scout and field study
■ A boy scout team asks if a person wants to buy a 5-dollar ticket to a boy scout
meeting, which is likely to be declined. And then the team follows with a smaller
request such as asking the person to buy a dollar chocolate bar. This technique
makes it more likely that the person buys the chocolate buy
■ If you ask your crush to travel with you tomorrow, you’d probably be refused.
But if you ask them to go to a cafe with you tomorrow following the initial big
request, your crush is more likely to agree.
 23

○ Foot-in-the-door = A compliance approach that involves making an initial small request

with which nearly everyone complies, followed by a larger request involving the real
behavior of interest.
■ Slippery slope: getting people started on something small often makes it easier to
get them to do much bigger things down the road.
■ Example: After getting the customer to agree to a test drive, it may be easier for
the salesperson to close the deal and have her buy the car.
■ After getting your kid to bring their dishes to the sink after they eat, it may be
easier to also get them to do the dishes. You ask for a smaller favor and then ask
for a bigger favor
● Compliance and positive and negative mood
○ A positive mood tends to increase compliance
■ Reasons: 1) Our mood colors how we interpret events. We’re likely to view
requests for favors as less intrusive and less threatening when we’re in a good
mood. 2) A positive mood tends to increase compliance involving what’s known
as mood maintenance. Being a good mood increases compliance, it does not do
so when the act of compliance would undermine that good mood.
○ A negative mood can decrease compliance but there are certain types of bad moods that
are actually likely to increase compliance. At least one type of bad mood, centered
around guilt, should increase compliance.
■ Reasons for bad mood increase compliance: we simply don’t want to feel bad,
and helping others makes us feel better. (Negative-state relief hypothesis)
○ Example: In the Isen, Clark, & Schwartz’s experiment, being in a good mood boosted
participants' compliance, with the effect slowly wearing off with the passage of time.
○ Those Ps who received a free sample of stationary were more likely to comply to a
request than those who did not receive anything. The compliance rate declined gradually
as time passed after they received the free sample.
● Negative-state relief hypothesis = The idea that people engage in certain actions, such as
agreeing to a request, to relieve their negative feelings and feel better about themselves.
○ Example: A study showed that those solicited on the way into church gave more money
than those solicited on the way out because those on their way in were rehearsing their
sins and thus feeling guilty.
○ Your girlfriend is more likely to take your request after you point out that she was flirting
with someone else because she would feel guilty and would try to mitigate the negative
feeling by doing something nice to you (complying)
● Norm-based approaches = Norm-based approaches to compliance are based on the power of
social norms. They appeal to both the head and the heart.
○ Descriptive norms = The behavior exhibited by most people in a given context
■ It corresponds to what is
■ Example: Most students sleep much less than 8-9 hours. (Combined with
prescriptive norms example below)
■ Researchers gave neighbors posters telling how much energy the neighborhood
used on average. Those who used more than the average lowered their energy use
to fit the average, and those who used less than the average started using more to
 24

fit the average. Adding a sad face to the posters for those who used more and a
smiley face to the posters for those who used less worked to decrease the energy
use in both groups.
○ Prescriptive norms = The way a person is supposed to behave in a given context; also
called injunctive norm
■ It corresponds to what ought to be
■ Example: University administrators often say the students should get 8-9 hours of
sleep each night.
○ It is important that norm-based appeals do not pit descriptive and prescriptive norms
against each other.
○ → hanging a sign “please do not steal toilet paper rolls thank you” in a public bathroom
communicates that that’s what people do. This might increase toilet paper stealing
because now people may think it’s a descriptive norm to take toilet paper rolls.
■ Petrified wood investigation: in a national park, one sign included the usual
emphasis on the severity of the problem, stating, “Many past visitors have
removed petrified wood from the park, changing the state of the Petrified Forest,”
accompanied by photographs of visitors taking wood. An alternative sign was
framed positively: “The vast majority of past visitors have left the petrified wood
in the park, preserving the natural state of the Petrified Forest,” with
accompanying pictures of visitors admiring and photographing a piece of
petrified wood. → Theft rate was over four times lower when the signs
emphasized how few people take wood from the park.
● Reactance theory (in Box 9.3, p. 299) = The idea that people reassert their prerogatives in
response to the unpleasant state of arousal they experience when they believe their freedoms are
threatened.
○ The moment you feel your freedom is being taken away, it becomes more precious and
your desire to maintain it increases.
■ Example: “Don’t dye your hair” → “Now that you told me not to, I want to do it
more”
○ Factors that might increase someone’s ability to stand firm:
■ Practice (e.g. Those Christians who helped the most often didn’t have any higher
regard for their Jewish neighbors than those who help less during the Holocaust;
they were simply more praticed in reaching out and providing aid)
■ Have an ally: Asch’s research shows how difficult it can be to be the lone
holdout. Also, be wary of potentially slippery slopes.
● Milgram experiments = Using a shock generator that looked real but was actually just a prop,
Milgram studied whether participants would continue to obey instructions and deliver electric
shocks to a learner, even when they thought the learner was in grave distree.
○ Opposing forces
■ In the Milgram expt, on the one hand, Ps were forces compelling them to
complete the experiment and continue delivering shock (e.g. sense of fair play,
normative social influence, etc) On the other hand, several powerful forces
compelled Ps to want to terminate the expt (e.g moral imperative and
responsibilities)
 25

○ Would you have obeyed?

■ They tried but failed (In Milgram's study, nearly all Ps tried to disobey in one
form or another. They tried to disobey but they weren’t good at it. People tend
not to act decisively when they lack a solid grasp of the events happening around
them)
■ Release from responsibility increases obedience. (Only when people viewed the
person taking responsibility as a legitimate authority)
■ Step by step involvement: It will be more likely to be obeyed in stepwise
procedure. (e.g. Milgram’s experiment)

Lectures

The Self
Oct. 4 - Oct. 11
● Self-concept = Identity, personal view of oneself
○ Ideal Self → person you want to be
○ Self image → how you see yourself (physical attributes, personality traits, and social
roles)
○ Self Esteem → how much you value/like/accept yourself (based on how others see you,
comparison to others, role in society, etc.)
○ Example: “I’m a good mother.”
● Sources of self-knowledge
○ Introspection, “who am I?”
■ Research has shown that people don’t take that much time to introspect
■ ...but when we do, it can help shape self-knowledge
○ Attributions = explanations for behaviors/attributions we make for ourselves
■ Recall: self-serving attributional bias
● Being self-serving, self-protective in how we view ourselves, including
any self-attributions we make
● Example:
○ Self-concept: “I am a good chemistry student”
■ Doing well on a test: “See? I am right!”
■ Doing badly: consider outside factors to maintain
self-attribution (e.g. roommate was sick/loud/hard to
deal with, I was sick/had a bad week, etc.)
○ Inferences from observations of one’s own behavior
■ Acting as an outside observer observing our own behavior as we would another
person’s
■ Example:
● Having a heated political issue with someone → realizing that you must
really care about this issue because of how agitated/excitable you are
over it
 26

● (More basic) Eating or drinking a lot, very fast → realizing you must
have been very hungry/thirsty
■ Self-perception theory = We infer our attitudes and feelings based on
observation when we are uncertain about those attitudes and feelings (not when
we are sure or have strong feelings towards something)
● Gaining self-knowledge by taking an observer perspective on our own
behavior does not work in all situations
● Example:
○ Friends
■ After meeting someone for the first time and feeling
unsure of whether you like them → you ask yourself:
was I laughing? Did I feel comfortable? If I didn’t feel
comfortable or amused, was there something else about
the situation that affected me or is it this person?
■ Whether or not you like your best friends… of course
you do!
○ Prof Chen: doesn’t need to observe behavior to know she hates
cilantro
■ However, when trying new foods, you may revisit the
same food you weren’t sure you liked to check if maybe
you might like it the second or third time
■ Chaiken & Baldwin (1981) study “Self-Perception”
● Main question: Does observing our own behavior affect self-knowledge
only in scenarios where we are unsure about our attitudes/feelings?
● Methods:
○ Select range of P’s with very strong or weak attitudes about the
environment (this was the 80s)
○ Try to manipulate P’s observations of their own by behavior
through loaded questions → nudge P’s to observe specific
behaviors about themselves
■ “Have you ever recycled?”, “Do you always recycle?”
○ Ask P’s to indicate their attitudes on the environment
● Results:
○ Only P’s with weak attitudes engaged in self-perception
process/were affected by the manipulation
○ P’s with strong feelings weren’t affected in their self-perception
○ Social context/From feedback & reactions from others
■ Socialization
● Example: How your parents treated you; activities they involved you in
(sports, academic extracurriculars, religion, etc.)
■ Looking-glass self = seeing yourself through others’ eyes, including picking up
on the reaction of others towards yourself and feedback
● Coined in 1902 by sociologist Charles Cooley… so this concept has been
around for a while!
 27

● Example: Karaoke - how people react to your singing → affect how good
or bad you think you are
■ How we think others see us is not necessarily accurate, but can influence us
strongly nevertheless
○ From comparisons with others
■ Social comparison theory = inclination to socially compare ourselves when
there are no objective standards available; assumes the motivation is to get
relatively accurate information about the self, so the most informative
comparisons ar with relatively similar others
● Leon Festinger, 1954 (same dude for cognitive dissonance)
● Example: Psych 160 grades - better to compare your grades with others
in your class, especially in your year and/or major
○ From social group memberships
■ Social identities = aspects of the self-concept directly derived from group
memberships
● What matters is the individual’s sense of membership/belonging in the
group(s)
● Example: sorority/fraternity, Cal student, masonry
■ Self-stereotyping = perceiving stereotypic attributed associated with the group as
part of one’s self concept
● When social identity is made salient/noticeable → more likely to define
self as group members and take on relatively stereotypic association with
being a member of that group
● Example:
○ Cal student at a Cal vs Stanford football game: more likely to
identify as and act like a Cal student in that moment
○ Only female in a room of males: more likely to associate with
and present gender stereotypic attributes
○ From the context
■ Focus on what's distinctive… in a given context and moment
● Example: If you’re older than your peers, more likely to mention age in
self-concept.
■ Focus on what's relevant… in a given context and moment
● Example:
■ The self you are right is likely to be driven primarily by how ever you think
about who you are in that particular moment and context
■ Example: during a Zoom lecture: more likely to identify with and present as a
student, your major, etc.
● Working self-concept = subset of knowledge about the self that is active at a given moment and
context
○ Our identity constantly shifts as a function of context, but there is a “single” self in that
we develop and maintain coherence and stability in who we are over time
○ Only a subset of a person's vast pool of self-knowledge is brought to mind in any given
context—usually the subset that's most relevant or appropriate in the current situation
 28

○ Arguments in favor of the working self-concept

1. We have too much self-knowledge to be accessible at once
2. Fits with social cognition research that some self-knowledge can be
accessible/primed as well as have chronically accessible parts of self
3. Allows for both stability and malleability of self
Example: Multiple selves
You are the same “friend self” with your best friend
You are the same “student self” on campus, in class
→ “Self”s may differ but they are consistent within their context
● Cultural differences in self-concept = interdependent vs independent view of self
○ Markus and Kitayama (1991)
■ Independent view of the self = defining oneself in terms of our own internal
feelings, thoughts, and action
● Promoted in Western culture
■ Interdependent view of self = defining oneself in terms of one’s relationships
with others; focus on social environments, group memberships, and maintaining
social harmony
● Promoted in collectivistic cultures
■ Findings:
● On average…
○ People from East Asian cultures tend to define themselves by
social bonds and relationships… ways in which their self is
bounded by and interconnected with others
○ People from Western cultures tend to define themselves by traits,
their own thoughts and beliefs… things that distinguish them
from others
● Effects on attributions…
○ Independent view → more likely to attribute autonomy to others,
commit fundamental attribution error
○ Interdependent view → aware of social environment, less likely
to commit fundamental attribution error
● Self-complexity theory = Assumes multiple selves; self aspects vary in the emotional/affective
consequences associated with each self; degree of complexity varies from person to person; # of
different self aspects and degree of overlap between self concepts
○ High vs low self complexity
■ High self complexity = large # of distinct self aspects
■ Low self complexity = a small # of non-distinct self aspects
■ Example:
Angelina = high self complexity with many distinct selves
Macey = low self complexity with few less distinct selves
 29

○ Central hypothesis of self-complexity theory

■ Degree of complexity is related to how people feel in response to positive and
negative events related to the self
■ Even if your self esteem in this one self concept is hurt, there is less spillover
effect if you have many more self concepts because you can at least be doing
well in other self concepts. But, if you don’t have very many self concepts and
have many duplicates, then you’re more likely to have spillover effects and be
affected in many other fields.
■ Responses to positive & negative self-relevant events = low self complexity
will lead to more extreme swings in affect and self-evaluation
■ Example:
● Angeline and Macey get told by a friend, “I feel like you haven’t been
supportive lately”
○ Macey → more negative emotional impact / harsher
self-evaluation; impacts “friend self” and “leader self” because
of overlap; impacts her greater because she has fewer selves
○ Angelina → negative emotional impact / self-evaluation on
“friend self”; but impact is more self-contained because no
overlap between selves and greater variety of selves
● Bob is low self complexity
○ When he gets a good grade, he is ecstatic
○ When he gets a bad grade, he is devastated
● Self-discrepancy theory = People hold beliefs about not only what they are actually like, but
also what they would ideally like to be and what they think they ought to be
○ Promotion Focus: When people regulate their behavior with respect to ideal
self-standards; a focus on attaining positive outcomes
○ Prevention Focus: When people regulate their behavior with respect to ought
self-standards; a focus on avoiding negative outcomes
○ Actual, ideal, and ought selves
■ Actual self = the self one thinks one actually is
● Example:
“I am a good friend”
“I am a doctor”
 30

■ Ideal self = the self one aspired to be; the self one wants to be (i.e. reflect your
hopes, wishes, goals)
● Example:
“I want to be a better friend”
“I want to be a doctor someday”
■ Ought self = the self one thinks one’s significant others want one to be (i.e.
reflect duties, obligations you feel)
● Example:
“My friends expect me to be a better friend”
“My parents want me to be a doctor someday”
○ Affective consequences associated with actual-ideal discrepancies and actual-ought
discrepancies, i.e. when you feel / are reminded that your actual self does not meet the
ideal and ought versions of yourself (you are falling short of ideal and ought
self-standards) → specific emotions
■ Actual-Ideal Discrepancy → dejection-related emotions
e.g. disappointment, depressed
● Example:
○ Laughing at a sexist joke:
■ Actual self: laughed at a sexist joke
■ Ideal self: more egalitarian
○ Realizing you didn’t study all day:
■ Actual self: unproductive, laxy
■ Ideal self: productive, daily studier
■ Actual-Ought Discrepancy → agitation-related emotions
e.g. shame, anxious
● Example: Teacher believes you can do well in a contest or exam:
■ Actual self: did not do well
■ Ought self: should have done really well
■ Example: Life transition stage e.g. being a senior
● Actual self: not getting job interviews, not putting out enough resumes,
not getting as good of grades
● Ideal self: gets job interviews, gets good grades
● Ought self: should be networking more (based on parents’ expectations)

The Multiply Motivated Self

Oct. 11 - 13
● Motivation and the self
○ Self-evaluation motives = motives driving how we want to be evaluated / how we want to
see ourselves, usually favorably but sometimes unfavorably
■ Motivators include (see below)…
● Enhancement
● Accuracy
● Improvement
● Consistency
 31

● (1) Enhancement (e.g., SEM model, downward social comparison, self-presentation—listed

above) = enhance positive attributes about ourselves
○ Motivation: we like to feel good about ourselves and things associated with us
○ Bushman (2010)
■ Survey of US college students showed that they valued self-esteem boosts (e.g.
getting good grades, receiving a compliment) over sex, food, getting a salary
payment, seeing a friend, having a drink
○ Behaviors exhibiting enhancement:
■ Self-serving attributional bias: when things go well, attribute to self; when things
go badly, attribute to others / external factors
■ Self-presentation: dressing up for a job interview and presenting yourself with
positive attributes (e.g. appropriate clothes, attitude, props, etc.)
○ Example:
● Self-Evaluation Maintenance (SEM) model
○ Comparison vs. reflection processes =
■ Comparison process = compare yourself to others
● Example: Ice skating tournament: comparing yourself to other skaters
and skating performances
■ Reflection process = allow others’ successes and failures reflect on yourself
● Example:
○ Cal is a highly ranked public university → reflects well on you
because you attend Cal
○ Your best friend wins a prize → reflects well on you because you
are best friends
○ Terrible news article about your school → reflects poorly on you
as a student there
○ Parameters that determine whether you will undergo comparison or reflection
■ Relevance = how relevant the domain of performance is to your self-definition
● Affects whether you compare or reflect
○ Higher relevance → suffer by comparison
○ Less relevance → bask in reflected glory
■ Closeness = how close you are to the outperforming other
● Affects degree of comparison or reflection
○ More close the other is → increases basking / suffering
■ Example:
● Exam performance in social psych class:
○ ..of a psych major (relevant) vs physics major (less relevant)
■ When someone outperforms physics major → reflection
● The closer the outperformer → greater
reflection, e.g. your best friend in the class did
well
● The further the outperformer → the less you can
bask in reflection, e.g. random student you don’t
know
 32

■ When someone outperforms psych major → comparison

● The closer the outperformer → greater
comparison impact / suffering
● The further the outperformer → lessens
comparison impact / suffering
● Sibling outperforming you in a domain you care about:
○ What do you do to increase positive self-evaluation?
■ Decrease relevance of domain to your self-definition
■ Decrease closeness between you and your sibling
■ Re-define domain
● e.g. Psychology: “She’s good at social
psychology… I’m good at personality
psychology”
■ Sabotage sibling or cheat to close the gap
■ Improve own performance to close the gap
■ Relative performance of other = how we choose comparison targets to make us
feel better
● Downward social comparison = choosing a comparison target who is
worse / worse off than ourselves → make us feel better about ourselves /
our circumstances
● Bogart and Helgeson (2000) “Health-related implications of downward
vs upward social comparisons”
○ Methods:
■ P’s = breast cancer patients in support groups
■ P’s periodically assessed, including P’s reporting on
times they talked to / thought about / heard about other
patients in the support group
■ Responses were coded to see how often spontaneous
downward comparisons were made
○ Findings:
■ Majority of times P’s compared themselves to others it
was a downward comparison
■ Correlationally, the more downward comparisons that
were spontaneously made → the better P’s reported
feeling
● (2) Accuracy (e.g., social comparison theory) =
○ Desire to improve the self
○ Seek out information and situations relevant to “ideal” visions of self
○ Example:
● (3) Improvement (e.g., upward social comparison) =
○ Example: Comparing myself with one year of experience playing basketball to someone
who has three years of experience. Challenge myself to improve and be comparable to
them.
● (4) Consistency (e.g., self-verification theory) =
 33

○ Desire for a consistent self-concept

○ Seek out (or act in ways that elicit) feedback that confirms existing (positive or negative)
self-conceptions
○ Example:
● Self-regulation =
○ Refers to the processes by which people initiate, alter, and control their behavior in the
pursuit of their goals
○ Given that successful goal pursuit often requires resisting temptations, self-regulation
also captures people’s ability to delay gratification—that is, to prioritize long-term goals
by foregoing short-term rewards
○ Example:
● Promotion (focus on ideals) vs. prevention (focus on oughts) regulatory focus
○ Promotion focus (ideal/positive): Regulating behavior with respect to ideal standards,
focusing on presence and absence of positive outcomes
■ Focusing on the presence or absence of a good grade = striving for the presence
of a good grade
■ Focusing on the presence or absence of a great first date = striving for the
presence of a great time
○ Prevention focus (ought/negative): Regulating behavior with respect to ought standards,
focus on presence and absence of negative outcomes
■ Focusing on the presence or absence of a bad grade = striving for the absence of
a bad grade
■ Focusing on the presence or absence of making a fool out of yourself on a first
date = striving for the absence of making a fool out of yourself
○ Example:
● Automatic self-control strategies = Over time and with practice, certain self-control strategies
can be automatized
○ Example: Seeing a delicious cookie on the table and being reminded of your goal to eat
less sugar.

Attitudes & Behavior: Cognitive Dissonance

Oct. 13 - Oct. 18
● Attitudes =
○ an attitude is a psychological tendency that’s expressed by evaluating an object with some
degree of favor or disfavor
○ Example:
● Three basic components of attitudes
○ Cognitions =
■ beliefs about positive and negative attributes of object
■ Example: dentists are friendly
○ Affects =
■ positive and negative feelings toward object
■ Example: dentists make me feel anxious
○ Behaviors =
 34

■ positive and negative actions exhibited in relation to object

■ Example: I am a very cooperative patient
● Attitudes predict behavior?
○ Classic LaPiere study
■ Bringing along an Asian couple to establishments all over the country - after
surveying those same establishments 99.9% they would not serve Asians
○ Inconsistency among the components of attitudes =
■
■ Example: positive cognitions about dentists, but negative affect associated w
dentists
○ (Mis)match in generality/specificity of attitudes and behaviors in question =
■
■ Example:
● Cognitive dissonance theory = The theory that inconsistency between a person's thoughts,
sentiments, and actions creates an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to
restore consistency; Leon Festinger
○ Basic assumptions =
■ Dissonance is unpleasant
■ Dissonance arouses motivation to reduce it
○ Different ways to reduce dissonance =
■ Change relevant cognition
■ Change relevant behavior
■ Add new consonant cognitions
○ Attitude-behavior discrepancies =
■ Sometimes people have certain attitudes or ideas but their behavior does not
match
■ Example: Someone says that they believe that people that break the law would be
given consequences, but they jaywalk everyday on their walk to campus
○ Insufficient justification (e.g., Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959) =
■
■ Example: Those who were paid $1 to tell a participant a boring experiment was
exciting experienced more dissonance than those who were paid $20. Although
lying to the participant went against the participant’s morals, those who were paid
$20 saw the behavior as being justified and therefore did not experience
dissonance.
○ Post-decision dissonance (e.g., Brehm, 1956) =
■
■ Example: Participants who were given a choice between two equally attractive
products increased their positive evaluation of the product they chose. They also
found more faults/focuses more on the negatives of the unchosen product to
justify their decision. Participants experienced dissonance since both products
had advantages and disadvantages to them.
○ Self-affirmation theory (Steele, Hoppe, & Gonzales, 1996) =
■
 35

■ Example: Sense of self-worth can be restored by reaffirming self in a variety of

domains.

Persuasion
Oct. 18 - Oct. 20
● Persuasion =
○
○ Example:
● Two basic routes to persuasion
○ ELM (central & peripheral routes) = A model of persuasion maintaining that there are
two different routes to persuasion: the central route and the peripheral route; a person's
motivation and ability to think carefully and systematically about the content of a
persuasive message determine which route is used; Richard Petty and John Cacioppo
■ ELM Central Route: A route to persuasion wherein people think carefully and
deliberately about the content of a persuasive message, attending to its logic and
the strength of its arguments, as well as to related evidence and principles;
Motivation (personal consequences) and ability (knowledge in domain) are high
■ ELM Peripheral Route: A route to persuasion wherein people attend to
relatively easy-to-process, superficial cues related to a persuasive message, such
as its length to the expertise or attractiveness of the source of the message; little
motivation or ability
■
■ Example:
○ Role of motivation and ability =
■
■ Example:
○ Comprehensive exams study (Petty et al., 1981)
■ Implement a comprehensive exam to graduate
● Implement next year (high motivation) vs. implement in 10 years (low
motivation)
● Arguments from high schoolers vs. a specialized committee (peripheral
most persuaded by expertise)
● Weak vs. strong arguments (central most persuaded by strong arguments)
● Short-lived vs. long-lasting attitude change
○ Key to achieving long-lasting attitude change is to persuade audience by central route
○ Example:
● Yale Attitude Change Approach (“who says what to whom”) = framework to consider when
wanting to persuade, in addition to understanding that people can process persuasive arguments
more peripherally/heuristically/automatically or more centrally/systematically/controlled
○ Focus on source (who says), arguments/message (what), audience (to whom)
○ Example: Developing the most effective ad campaign for Nike - hiring a celebrity athlete
as a source, message is to buy Nike for sports, audience is athletes/people who engage in
fitness activities
● Elements of persuasion (and how they correspond to the 2 basic routes to persuasion)
 36

○ “Who”: Communicator/source characteristics

■ Likability = fame, physical attractiveness, personality
● People tend to agree with/get persuaded by people they like
● Example: Serena Williams (celebrity), comedians
■ Similarity = “one of their own”
● People tend to agree with/get persuaded by people they can relate to
● Example: Audience is college students… make source another college
student
■ Credibility (expertise and trustworthiness)
● People tend to agree with/get persuaded by people they believe are
experts who are trustworthy (credible)
● .Perception of credibility is subjective, biases
○ Example: Perceived credibility of different news networks
● Example:
○ Class textbook - professor assigning a good textbook they
believe is the best choice (expertise and trustworthiness) vs
professor advocating for a textbook who is being funded by the
company producing the textbook (expertise but less
trustworthiness)
○ Vaccine news story in New England Journal of Medicine vs
tabloid
■ Mainly affects peripheral route, however, could also be used to strengthen
argument message through central route if a credible source is presenting
■ Takes little motivation/ability to notice these characteristics
○ “What”: Persuasive communication (i.e., message characteristics)
■ Argument strength and length =
●
● Example:
■ Affective vs. cognitive framing =
● “I think” → has more impacts on cognitive-based attitudes
● “I feel” → has more impacts on affective-based attitudes
● Example:
■ Mainly affects central processing
○ “To Whom”: Target/audience
■ Need for Cognition = Notion of thinking appeals to me vs. notion of thinking
does not appeal as much
● If a person’s initial attitude is affectively based, use affective based
persuasion
● If a person’s initial attitude is cognitive based, use cognitive based
persuasion
● Example: researchers categorized participants with either affective or
cognitive based thought-processes. They then gave them a paragraph to
persuade that it is good to
■ Culture (Han & Shavitt, 1994) =
 37

● Independent vs. interdependent self-construal affects how effective

certain messages are
● Example: Messages emphasizing uniqueness/individuality more effective
for independent cultures. Messages emphasizing collective groups are
more effective for interdependent cultures.
○ ‘Share this breath freshening experience (collective) vs. Stand
out with these Levis (individual)

Conformity & Compliance & Obedience

Oct. 25 - Oct. 27
● What are conformity, compliance, & obedience?
○ Conformity: change in behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people
■ Example: Drinking at a party because friends are drinking
○ Compliance: change in behavior due to direct requests from another person
■ Example: Taking off your shoes in someone’s home
○ Obedience: change in behavior due to commands of an authority figure
■ Example: Driving on the right side of the road in the US, driving on the left in the
UK
○ Pressure increases on the individual along this continuum
● Why do people conform?
○ Informational social influence (e.g., Sherif's autokinetic experiment)
■ conformity that occurs when we believe others’ interpretation of a situation is
more correct than ours
■ other people serve as a source of info for how to act
■ reflects a need to know what’s right
■ Factors that increase ISI:
● When the situation is ambiguous
● When the situation is a crisis
● When others in the situation are perceived as experts
■ Autokinetic Experiment: participant in a dark room told to estimate the distance a
light moves
● difficult and ambiguous task
● Light is stationary but appears to move b/c of autokinetic effect (illusory
movement of still object)
● After practice trials, confederate comes into room and gives consistently
higher or lower estimates
● Results: Participants gradually conformed with confederate’s estimates
○ Normative social influence (e.g., Asch's line- judgment studies)
■ conformity that occurs when we believe doing so will get others to like/accept us
■ others convey implicit or explicit social norms (rules about acceptable behs,
values, & beliefs)
■ reflects a need to be accepted/liked
■ Asch’s line judgment studies
● Control groups got answer right ~100%
 38

● When confederates choose obviously wrong lines, 76% of participants

give at least 1 wrong answer → only 24% never conformed even on an
easy/unambiguous task
○ Social norms = Implicit & explicit rules about acceptable values, beliefs, & behaviors
■ Example:
○ Kassin & Kiechel (1996) study
■ Study under guise of reflex speed test with a ‘forbidden key’ to touch while
typing
■ Participants assigned to type either quickly or leisurely (IV)
■ One minute into task, the computer malfunctions and the experimenter accuses
participants of hitten the ‘forbidden key’
■ When participant denies accusation, confederate either reports seeing nothing or
‘admits’ to seeing participant hit the forbidden key (IV2)
■ 69% of participants wrote confession to hitting the key when demanded by
experimenter
■ 28% really believed they were guilty
■ Most of these people were in the type quickly condition (when things are
AMBIGUOUS) and confederate said they did it (when there is an expert-like
witness saying they did)
● How deep is conformity based on different forms of influence?
○ Private acceptance → comes from informational influence
■ Example: Sherif's ambiguous autokinetic effect experiment
○ Public conformity → comes from normative influence
■ Example: Asch's simple line judgments experiment
● Compliance techniques
○ Foot-in-the door = A compliance approach that involves making an initial small request
with which nearly everyone complies (to get the foot in the door), followed by a larger
request involving the real behavior or interest
■ Example:, asking for $3 from a parent, getting it, and then asking for an
additional $7 (instead of asking for $10 from a parent, being refused for too much
$$)
○ Low-balling = Reasonable request → get compliance → reveal costly details
■ Example: Can you drive me to the airport? (get compliance) Thanks, it’s a 2 hour
drive.
○ Door-in-the-face (Reciprocal Concessions) = A compliance approach that involves
asking someone for a very large favor that will certainly be refused and then following
that request with one for a smaller favor (which tends to be seen as a concession the
target feels compelled to honor)
■ Example: If you can’t take me to the airport, at least help me pack up my
apartment!
○ That’s-not-all = Large request → immediately offer discount/bonus
■ Example: Buy this TV, 2 for 1!
● Why do compliance techniques work?
 39

○ Informational social influence = conformity that occurs when we believe others’

interpretation of a situation is more correct than ours
■ Example: Autokinetic Experiment
○ Dissonance reduction = the process by which a person reduces the uncomfortable
psychological state that results from inconsistency
■ Example: Foot-in-the-door: asking someone to do something small for you to
reduce dissonance to then ask them a larger favor
○ Reciprocity norms = norm dictating that people should provide benefits to those who
benefit them
■ Example: share a study guide with a friend who previously helped you study for
an exam
● Obedience
○ Milgram's obedience studies
■ Posed as ‘effects of punishment on learning’
■ P= ‘teacher’ & confederate= ‘learner’
■ Teacher P told to deliver shocks w/15-volt increments
■ P told to deliver shocks w/15-volt increments
■ Learner indicates discomfort, pain, heart trouble, P less likely to give shocks w/o
reinforcement, but still gave shocks with convincing
■ Dependent measure: shock level when P refuses to continue (i.e., disobeys)
■ Motivators for obedience:
● Increasing pressure on the individual to obey

Supplemental Articles

Linville (1985)
● Central point of this article (i.e., why it was assigned)
○ Proves self-complexity theory! Degree of self-complexity determines how you respond to
positive/negative events related to the self
● Central finding(s)
○ People with lower self-complexity have more extreme changes in mood and
self-evaluation in response to failure/success than those with greater self-complexity
(especially in the case of failure), whose mood and self-evaluation remain more
consistent
○ Lower self-complexity correlates with higher affective variability over extended periods
of time, and vice versa

DV: emotions, self evaluations

IV: failure vs success, self complexity
→ ppl with less self- complexity more emotions when failure/ success

Experiment 2
Diary study
DV: emotions
 40

IV: self complexity

→ the more self-complexity, the less emotional turbulences

● Relation to course material

○ Self Complexity Theory

SEPetty, Cacioppo, & Goldman (1981)

● Central point of this article (i.e., why it was assigned)
○ Students were told that their school will implement a new policy where all
undergraduates must take a comprehensive exam before graduating (many started the
study with an unfavorable view of this policy)
○ Independent variables:
1. Personal relevance
a. High - policy may take effect next year
b. Low - policy may take effect in 10 years
2. Source expertise
a. Report written by high school student
b. Report written by commission chair by a professor
3. Argument strength
a. 8 strong arguments, e.g. “institution of exam led to reversal in declining
scores”
b. 8 weak arguments, e.g. “friend of the author took exam and now has a
prestigious position”
○ DV: Students’ attitudes about the policy
● Central finding(s)
○ High relevance→ prefer strong argument (central route) but not affected by experty
(peripheral)
→ when it’s personally relevant, it’s better to go for the central route and give actually
strong arguments rather than the peripheral route!
→ if not personally relevant, participants not as much motivated to focus on the actual
arguments and more likely to be swayed by the peripheral route
● Relation to course material
○ Persuasion

Santos, Leve, & Pratkanis (1994)

● Central point of this article (i.e., why it was assigned)
○ In experiment 1, the confederates either asked an usual request (can spare a quarter) or an
unusual request (can you spare 17 cents). The result showed that people were more likely
to give money when they were given the unusual request.
○ In experiment 2, the same experiment was replicated in the lab setting and then asked the
participants to list the thought processes of when they were given an usual or an unusual
request. The result showed that
● Central finding(s)
 41

○ Unusual requests tend to disrupt our automatic, scriptive responses and thus make us
more likely to comply
● Relation to course material
● The Pique technique = a technique for gaining compliance that focuses on gaining target persons'
attention by making an unusual request and so preventing them from engaging in automatic
refusal
○ Motivations:
■ Novelty
● Wanting to know the reason for the request
Thinking the requester is trying to accomplish something specific
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Lecture Quiz/Exam Practice Questions ONLY

ANSWERS FOUND IN SECTION BELOW
1. Which of the following is self-perception theory most relevant to? (10/4)
a. Ariela’s perception of how much she loves her boyfriend, whom she has been dating for
several years
b. Maya’s attitude toward social psychology, after having taught it several times
c. Rachel’s perception of how much she likes Ethiopian food, which she tried for the first
time last weekend (CORRECT)
d. Amie’s opinion on being a grad student at Cal, now that she’s in her final year of her
graduate program
2. Assume Amal is higher in self-complexity than Bob. Which of the following is most likely to be
true? (10/6)
a. Amal is more upset than Bob about getting a poor grade on the important chemistry test
they just got back.
b. Amal feels less confident than Bob about her aptitude for chemistry after they both get
poor grades on an important chemistry test.
c. Amal and Bob are equally happy that they were chosen to be the editors of their senior
yearbook.
d. Bob is far more ecstatic than Amal about being chosen to be one of the editors of their
senior yearbook. (CORRECT)
3. All but one of the following is consistent with Tesser’s SEM. Which one is the exception? (10/11)
a. Siblings tend to pursue different careers.
b. People bask in their friends’ successes in domains they themselves care about.
(CORRECT)
c. Sabotaging the performance of a close other is more likely to the degree the domain is
relevant to one’s self-definition.
d. People tend to favor job candidates whose strengths and skills complement their own.
4. Which of the following do you think best captures the results of Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman
(1981)?
a. Argument strength influenced low relevance participants’ attitudes but not high relevance
participants’ attitudes.
b. High relevance participants were more persuaded by strong vs. weak arguments, but did
not distinguish much between an expert vs. non-expert source. (CORRECT)
c. Low relevance participants only took into account the strength of the arguments.
d. High relevance participants were most affected by the expertise of the source.
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Answers
1. C. Rachel’s perception of how much she likes Ethiopian food, which she tried for the first time
last weekend
a. Consider: Who is most likely to need to infer self-knowledge from their own behavior,
not any prior self-knowledge or conceptions
b. If you have eaten Ethiopian food many times before, you would not need to go through
the self-perception process
2. D. Bob is far more ecstatic than Amal about being chosen to be one of the editors of their senior
yearbook.
a. Amal has higher self-complexity therefore Bob has lower self-complexity
b. Lower self-complexity results in greater impact on affect (emotions) and self-evaluation
when getting feedback on one of his selves
3. B. People bask in their friends’ successes in domains they themselves care about.
a. On average, SEM would argue that it is hard to bask (reflection process) when the
domain is relevant and the outperformer is close to you
b. You are more likely to engage in comparison process
4. B. High relevance participants were more persuaded by strong vs. weak arguments, but did not
distinguish much between an expert vs. non-expert source.

a.
b. High involvement P’s were processing more carefully
i. Expertise of source was less impactful
ii. Strength of argument is very impactful
c. Low involvement P’s were not processing carefully
i. Expertise of source was very impactful
ii. Strength of argument is less impactful