Social Psychology

Lecture 15

Social Psychology vs. Common Sense

The Honking Study

German or Australian flag stuck on car

Measure the time it took for the honk to occur when participant didn’t
move when light was green

Australia: less time, Germany: honking was done much faster

Italians, Spanish, French and the Germans – order of the time taken to
honk in general from least time taken to honk to most

Nationality and aggression towards the nationality of car

If it was foreign car (Australia), they were more lenient

Maybe Germans had a more negative stereotype in Europe at that time?

The History of Social Psychology

Hedonism – humans seek pleasure and avoid pain

Altruism – cooperate and intertwined with other individuals

Rationalism – rationally consider alternative causes of behaviour

available to them

The nature of human sociability

Is a life alone possible? – Abandoned children, hermits, shipwrecks

Effects: hallucinations, psychotic symptoms, visions

Importance of sociability

Sociality is the key characteristics of humans

The Social Brain Hypothesis (Dunbar, 2004)

Brain size and group size

The bigger the group size, the bigger the brain size to coordinate
the activities of the group

Prosimians, anthropoids, Homo

Brain size is in response to the social needs

Group size of humans: around 150 (Dunbar number)

Evidence on social isolation

 Schachter, 1959: five volunteers in a windowless room

How long could they stay?

Individual’s differences in tolerating isolation

Some last less than 2 hours, 2 days and some lasted 8 days with no
adverse situations

Humans are profoundly social animals

Reasons for sociability

Evolutionary – sociability leads to survival, which leads to reproductive

opportunities

Reinforcement – learn that other people are a source of reward, trained

and adapted from childhood

Social comparison – to know anything about the world, sense of reality,

need for permanently linking your view of reality to others

Social exchange – provide unique benefits and profits to others

Lecture 16

Some evolutionary universals

1. In-group favoritism
Since the Stone Age – primary groups, preference for in-group vs.
mass society
Enlightenment model – individualism, respect for personal choices
Multiculturalism mode (e.g. Canada) – support and maintain
distinct ethnic cultures, respect for group culture

Promoting group identity

Criticisms – a cluster of tribes?
Official multiculturalism may also limit the freedom of
minority members by promoting cultural and geographic
ethnic enclaves
At the core: what works better?
Respect for individuals vs. respect for groups

2. Gender differences
David Buss: female/male differences universal?
E.g. newspaper ads, surveys of sexual preferences: men as
‘seekers’ and women as ‘choosers’
Different mating preferences
Different jealousy patterns
Women would be more upset when partner falls in
love, men would be more upset when partner is
sexually active with someone else
Differences in perceptions and judgments

Behaviour should even out if gender differences are

due to social norms

This has not happen despite social ideology of

pregnancy control has changed

Same differences continue to exist

Longer dependency from pregnancy leads them to

seek more stable relationships

Social vs. Biological influences: Mead vs. Freeman

Margaret Mead and Samoa

Her evidence and its implications

Late 40s, early 50s

Interested in studying sexual mating

behaviour in native Samoans

Tried to show that in these idealistic pacific

cultures differ to Western

Did not show the same gender differences in

Western cultures

However, it turned out wrong

Derek Freeman (ANU): universal sexual customs

Went to elaborate the information of Samoa,

learnt the language and stayed there longer

Found exactly the opposite

Concern about virginity, promiscuity and

marriage faithfulness were also the norm in
Samoa

Showed the same gender differences as

Western culture

Margaret’s book was bestseller so why was

she wrong?

Found the two women that Margaret had

spoken to and they admitted they had lied

The questions posted to them were so

embarrassing and culturally insensitive they
were lying/joking
 During that time, it was important to
continue believing gender plasticity

Implications: culture vs. fundamentals of social

behaviour

Theory about gender differences: Robert Trivers – Parental

investment theory

The sex investing the most and having the most to lose in
reproduction will be the choosier sex, causing the opposite
sex to be more competitive and aggressive in pursuing it

Men seek to propagate widely and women seek to

propagate wisely

Some evidence: gender differences in willingness to have sex

How long should you know a person before having sex?

Women less likely to have sex until they know each other
for more than 2 years

Men are more willing than women to have intercourse after

a short acquaintance

Error management theory

Judgments not about accuracy but to minimize most costly

errors

For males – sexual over perception, false negatives (missing

mating opportunities) are more costly, so false positives are
preferable to missed opportunities

Men tend to over perceive signs of intimacy from

females

For females – commitment under perception; false positives

are most costly so they tend to judge commitment when
there is none

Women do not accept easily

Reliable, stable and trustworthy

Does not accept these communications

Not so much risk of pregnancy but judgment bias of

women

3. The need for identity and attachment

Human evolution – adapt to small-group life
Identity based on group membership
What if there is no group?
Breakdown of primary groups since 18th century
Philosophy of Enlightenment – you are not just member of
group, you are a unique individual
French Revolution, Industrialization
Emile Durkheim: organic (when you see same group of
people very often) vs. mechanical (we obey shared norms,
perform them in absence of any personal relationships)
solidarity
Toennies: community vs. association

Emergency of mass society

Possess a mass culture and large-scale, impersonal, social

institutions

In mass society, prosperity and bureaucracy have

weakened traditional social ties

Result: social isolation, alienation

Traditional vs. modern societies

Growth in wealth, freedom, mobility

But loss of face to face sociability

Loneliness, shyness an epidemic

Unmet social needs can drive materialism and

consumption?

Utility vs. identity consumption: to satisfy social needs?

Evidence: satisfaction static

Happiness and wealth

Growth domestic product and life satisfaction measure

GNP increase greatly since 1950 to 2000 but life

satisfaction hasn’t changed since 1940s

Advertising and marketing

Creating of artificial needs, selling status and identity

Classical theory: advertising increases efficiency, reduces

prices

Galbraith – “Affluent Society” – the opposite is the case

Advertising – design to create psychological monopolies –
paying extra is worth the effort
 Consumption and identity

Selling an image and an identity, not a product

E.g. Nike, Apple, brand labels

Sell you something they can’t give you, a sense of identity

Lecture 17

Advertising and Marketing

Creating of artificial needs

Increasing tendency of people consuming for symbolic purposes

Images suggesting that people using that product will have a

certain image

Selling of status and identity

E.g. bottled water

Non-existent market two decades ago

Typical identity product

Freely available from every tap

Misleading health arguments – organic water?

The Consumer’s Dilemma

In search of status and identity

Substituting needs with consumption but it doesn’t give us what

you pay for

Social perception and cognition

How do we interpret, analyse and remember information about our social

world? Forming impressions, predicting behaviour, schemas, mental
shortcuts, explaining the causes of behaviour, error biases, influences of
feelings on our thoughts

Constructive and reconstructive – biases are invisible

We work on assumption that world works the way you see it as

But what we see is not reality but a reality distorted by personal

influences resulting in our social perception

Most shared social knowledge is vague, uncertain and second hand

E.g. global warming – complex evidence but different beliefs since
2006
 Nature of risk vs. other risk

Facts allow disagreement and different interpretations

Political rhetoric – ‘believers’ vs. ‘deniers’

Should it be a case of belief – there is no absolute consensus

Lee Jussim, 2014: denial is only possible when there is an

unquestionable reality to be denied

Beliefs based upon social information using a lot of input

that has nothing to do with issue at hand

Social perception and cognition: subject to highly constructed bias

Physical vs. social perception

Latent vs. social perception

Latent features e.g. friendly personality?

Cannot be observed by looking, but by observing

Has to be inferred

Inferences: social perception is constructive

Not testable

Open to self-serving biases – we don’t see what it is, we see what we want
to see

Social perception is highly constructive – what we already know

influences what we see

Accuracy is problematic

Accuracy in perception vs. everyday beliefs

Assessing accuracy: target, measure and criterion

Finding criterion for specific trait is difficult

Perceiving emotions –

Complex emotions: Landis, 1924 – humans could not identify

emotions of other people

Simple emotions: Ekman (inspired by Darwin who suggested

universality of facial emotions as evolutionary) – how come
Landis’s results did not agree with Darwin’s findings?

Asked people of different cultures to display different

emotions
 Showed other cultures photos of these emotions

Very accurate in perceiving these emotions

When isolated cultures were asked, they were still very

accurate in perceiving these

Communication of emotions is evolutionary universal

Landis looked at complex emotions and therefore produced such

results compared to that of simple emotions of Ekman and Darwin

Universal: neural basis of experiencing emotion is directly linked

to facial emotion of that emotion

Ekman trained people to control facial muscle so they could be

instructed to adopt certain facial expressions without being told of
that feelings e.g. put a smile on, they will experience the emotion
linked to that emotion e.g. happiness

Other studies showed that the way you put a penny in your mouth
could change your muscle movement and affect your emotional
state

Accuracy in perceiving personal characteristics

Effects of training – paradoxical

Does not promote accuracy

Accuracy as a multi-factor skill (Cronbach)

What is accuracy? Assumed it exists

Suggested accuracy as a complex set of skills

Stereotype accuracy – recognizing the type (of person)

Differential accuracy – how the individual is unique

If you’re good at one, then you’re probably not so good at

the other

Training: emphasies differential accuracy and ignoring of

stereotype

Influences on person perception accuracy

Influence of expectations

Cognitive effects – e.g. mood affects on behaviour perception,

Forgas et al. 1984

Interviewing two people about general university questions

and were filmed
 After hypnotic mood induction – positive and negative

Watch videos of interactions from day before

Were asked to mark what behaviours they thought

was negative or positive

Mood influences what is perceived

People in good mood  more positive ratings and

vice versa

Self-other differences

Similar to self-perception but fewer ratings of

negative behaviours

Mental shortcuts and heuristics

Heuristics – mental shortcuts

Human beings have limited computing skills, cannot

perceive, analyse and process all information

Shortcuts make this process easier

Use of heuristics is also an evolutionary adaptation

Rely on them because they usually work on most

occasions

Representativeness – judged by resemblance

False consensus – others think like us

Anchoring – starting estimates have greater effects

Availability – what comes to mind easily

Priming effects – recent exposure, behaviour priming –

Bargh

Counterfactuals – what might have been, Gilovich, 1995

People in third are happier than second

Second: so close to being first

Third: so close to nearly missing out

Different counterfactual

Embodiment as heuristic – warm/cold, stable/unstable

Lecture 18
Evolutionary: feedback about bodily information is way of representing the
world

Argue that these rationales, analytic, cognitive systems are fundamental based
upon early bodily representational system

Harder to model a computer walking than to model a computer playing chess

Knowing how to walk is actually more sophisticated than playing chess but
stimulating playing chess is easier than stimulation of walking

All this knowledge is embodied in us (e.g. perception of time, walking) are

informing higher cognitive processes

Physically stable environments, make judgments on stability of social

relationships and vice versa; impacts upon social judgments

Physical experience of warmth impacts upon social judgments on

warmness of others

Pre-existing shortcuts from all around us impact on social judgments

Impression Formation

Basic theories: how is information combined?

Holistic (Gestalt) models

Highly constructive process where incoming information is

actively processed to form a holistic idea

Making up meaningful units e.g. stable images in quick

progression, you see smooth motion

The mind makes it a smooth motion, the most meaningful

interpretation of this experience

Atomistic (mechanical) theories

Argues that we can understand impression formation as

mechanical operation
Given 5 characteristics of a person, what impression is formed of
John?

You average the information you have of that person

The Atomistic Model – Anderson; ‘Cognitive algebra’

Get a whole lot of personality trait and rate each one on

how likeable it is

Two models – they either average the traits or weigh them

The notion of stable trait values

 The value of honesty will stay the same i.e. rating of 6
always

The Gestalt model; Asch, 1946

Traits do not have permanent values but depends on

everything that goes on at the time

Central vs. peripheral traits

Some traits are more important in forming

expressions e.g. warm and cold are central traits
whilst polite and blunt are peripheral traits

Cold intelligence does not equal warm intelligence

Warm and cold has an impact upon all the other

traits that the two individuals have equally

Peripheral traits do not cause such major change in

other traits

Central traits: external validity

Kelly, 1950

Guest lecturer, warm/cold manipulation, prior knowledge

Chat for 15 minutes

Rate lecturer on 15 traits

More favorable impressions on all characteristics when

“warm”

56% in warm condition stay for discussion, only 32% in the

cold condition

Expectation = self-fulfilling prophecy

Weighting or biasing factors in impression formation

Halo effects

When a person has one, perhaps outstanding, favorable

characteristics such as ‘warm’ and we therefore assume
that all of their characteristics are favorable e.g. physical
attractiveness, physical height, and unusual names

Primacy effects

Asch, 1946

Once the first part of information comes in, you form halo
effect
 Once you have expectation, the later information becomes
assimilated into initial impression; you seek to confirm it
rather than to disconfirm it

Luchins – introvert and extrovert

Assimilation of meaning hypothesis

Meaning of later traits changes to fit into the

meaning of the first trait

In some conditions, you get recency effects

If people are consciously make conclusion, they pay

more attention to the end information

Mood effects on primacy – positive moods tend to

generate superficial heuristics, auto thinking

Negative mood known to attentive, focused

processing style

Positivity/negativity bias

Baseline expectation: positive behaviour, socially desirable

In the absence of information, social norm of positive

information

But if negative information is available, it is

overemphasized

Implicit personality theories

Private theories about people

Each of us as an individual and developed differently

Based on these, we have our ideas of how people are

A set of assumptions based on our own perceptions about which

personality characteristics are associated with others

Based on personal experience

Partly individual, partly cultural

Given two traits and in your mind what goes with those
traits, people will give different responses based on
personal experience

Lecture 19

Implicit personality theories

 Two Dimensions

Social Evaluation and competence/task evaluation

People have at least 2 fundamental dimensions in which

they see other people

People are usually good on one dimension but not the other

People acting competent makes them more likeable but

doesn’t really work that way

Deceased person’s implicit theory of personality

Used description of deceased author to show his implicit theory of

personality

Counting adjectives used in his people description

Male and female characteristics were very important to him

It is revealed through the way you describe other people

Largely determined by what characteristics are important to you

Person prototypes and stereotypes

We try to generalize

Prototype: typical representation of groups of people we are familiar with

Simplified guides to behaviour – cognitive economy

Easily formed often during childhood

Enduring, slow to change, role of social policy (feminism, gay

rights movement)

Stronger and negative in terms of conflict (Nazis)

In the US – Katz & Braly, 1933

US people’s perception of other citizens

Negroes: lazy and ignorant, Jews: shrewd and grasping, Germans:

efficient and Nationalistic (Hilter had just come to power), English:
sportsmanlike and intelligent, Japanese: intelligent and industrious

Nowadays, such studies carry a lot of political issues

Stereotype effects

Razran (1950)
Rate pictures of girls with traditional or foreign names
 Girls with Jewish sounding names were judged as more intelligent but
less nice

Devine and Elliot (1995)

New black stereotype, athletic, rhythmic, low in intelligence

Schemas

Schemas influence social cognition (encoding, storage, retrieval) by

Providing frameworks for organizing and interpreting new

information

Remember information consistent with schemas

Saving us considerable mental effort (efficient)

Act as a cognitive filter during attention and encoding

Persist despite disconfirming information (perseverance effect)

Promoting self-confirming effects (self-fulfilling prophecy)

The role of stereotypes and expectations

Two bits of information become confused

People perceive black person holding razor when it was the white
person – becomes distorted when reporting it

Black shoving white is also seen as violent whereas white person

shoving black is seen as horseplay

Given a portfolio by white and black people to apply for law school

Weak and strong application

When potentials were strong, the black application was rated as

higher than white but when potentials were weak, the white were
rated as higher than black

Overemphasize on credentials when it comes to member of out-

group – strong black is seen as more strong and weak black is seen
as more weak

For out-groups, we don’t have much information so it’s much

easier to overweigh any information we are given

Schemas influences perception

We see what is expected rather than what is there

Ignore or forget facts inconsistent with stereotypes

Is there a grain of truth in racial schemas?

 They do contain a grain of truth

Not many empirical studies exist but they observed play of different raced
children

Found that in terms of peer rating and self-ratings, African Americans

were more aggressive than other races

Is it something necessarily part of culture or is it because of social

inequalities?

Measuring implicit prejudice? The Implicit Association Test

Hit right knee when word is positive, left knee when word is negative

Hit right knee when name is Anglo-Saxon and left knee when name is
Arabic

The reverse of this is difficult

Associating positive hand with a negatively viewed name

Evidence of implicit racism –

Dissociate positivity from positive characteristics, then it is hard

Should we change people’s internal mechanisms to eliminate the

prejudice but if everyone is prejudiced, then is it still prejudice?

But are implicit association necessarily linked to explicit prejudice

and prejudiced behaviours?

Stereotype effects

Is it possible to eliminate stereotypes?

Should we try to eliminate bad thinking and control all undesirable

thoughts or should we emphasis on group characteristics
(multiculturalism)?

Inferring the causes of behaviour: Attribution Theory

Infer causality in order to predict (Heider’s naïve psychologist)

Internal – caused by person’s trait (disposition)

More important in determining a cause of human behaviour

External – caused by situation

Weiner: internal/external and stable/unstable causes

Stable Unstable

Internal ability effort

 External situation luck

Lecture 20

Later-controllability

People argued that this is also a factor of inferred causation of

behaviour

Jones & Davis (1965) – Discounting Principle

We can only infer internal causality when behaviour is

a. Not externally explained (e.g. not socially desirable)

b. Has unique, non-common, effects

Kelley – Three Dimensional Co-Variation Model

Consistency – person always behaves this way

Consensus – what do others do?

Distinctiveness – person behaves this way in other situations?

3D model of attributions

Scan social information in these dimensions to come to

conclusion

Some Attributional Errors

Despite Heider, not all attributions are rational and are subjected to
biases

Source of bias – cognitive (not perfect information processors, limited

attention, cognition and abilities) and motivation (e.g. self-serving)

Bias towards perceiving causality – Heider & Simmel

Anthropomorphism

Perceiving self-directed entities

Individuals were shown a film in which three little geometrical

figures moved around

Individuals described these movements in a causal way

Human mind works in a causal way and we see reality in causal

patterns through evolutionary pattern in which we make sense of
the world

Fundamental Attribution Error (Correspondence bias)

Overestimate internal causes, ignoring external causes

 Focus on actor, ignoring situation – Figure Drown Effect

Cultural view that people have freedom to make choices especially

white cultures than other cultures

Actor-observer effect

Own behaviour, external cause; others, internal cause

Actors focus on environment whereas observers focus on actor

If two people fail course, they say that they failed because it was
difficult and lecturer was bad (external) whereas the other person
failed because they were lazy and stupid (internal)

Salience Effect

E.g. Taylor & Fiske – whatever is most salient is given causal status

Actor A and B were having conversations with six observers

Those observers who faced Actor A saw A as having more casual

importance and vice versa and no difference in those sitting in the
middle

Motivated attribution bias

The Just World Bias – Lerner

Blaming the victim

We do it because we have a happy state in believing that the world

is a just place

We would feel insecure and stressed if otherwise

We maintain this belief but if bad things happen to people, we

blame them for it

If we attributed internal cause, we could avoid it by not acting that

way

Belief in mastery that we can control our own fate and the
existence of a just world

Understanding ourselves: Self-Attribution

Attribution of emotions: how do we know what we feel?

The Two-Factor theory of Emotion

Schachter’s idea that emotional experience is the result of a two-

step self-perception process in which people

1. Experience physiological arousal

 2. Seek an appropriate explanation for it
Participants were given a drug, which they either expected
to be arousing or not arousing
One arousal group and the other non-arousal group
Within each group, half were told to expect arousal and the
other not to expect arousal
Encountered confederate whilst waiting – they either
behaved positively or negatively
After exposure to confederate, all participants asked to
report on emotional state
Found was those participants who experienced arousal
from drug but had no explanation for it were significantly
influenced by behaviour of confederate

Emotional experience is a function of two components

Label is inferential of the arousal – we look around the

environment to answer the question

Emotions only exist from cognitive inferences we make

Finding the wrong cause: Misattribution of Arousal

Process whereby people make mistaken inferences about what is causing

them to feel the way they do

Self-attribution of emotion

Self-attribution of arousal – the Playboy Study (Valins)

Own feedback of heartbeat but in reality was manipulated

feedback – accelerated or not

Misinterpreted increasing heartbeat for liking the model

Also more likely to take that magazine home

We attribute our physical response

Applications insomnia (Storms and Misbett)

Can’t sleep from anxiety and stress

Given a placebo pill that had no real effect but was given 2
explanations – pill would make them more anxious and one made
them more relaxed

Found that the ones that expected the arousal slept better

They were given a reason to be anxious so they don’t feel so

anxious anymore
 But when expected to be relaxed and they were not, they would
have a harder time sleeping as mental interpretation of attribution
of causes of internal state is important

Important as to why you feel this way

Transfer of arousal (Zillman)

Sometimes residual arousal can be misinterpreted

Participants given physical exercise to be aroused and then told to

sit down for minutes

While they sat, a confederate would turn up and behaved in

insulting behaviour

Those who residual arousal will have arousal symptom and

interpreted their anger as more intense than those with no prior
arousal

Residual is misinterpreted as another cause

Arousal can also be misinterpreted as romantic love

Common fact: we know what we feel by inferring the causes

Lecture 21

Self-attribution

Attribution of Cognition

Nisbetter & Wilson, 1978

Judge an object by touching it (in reality, all objects were the same)

The choice made is usually dependent on sequence and is usually

the last one

They made up a false explanation for their decision however their

explanation seemed valid

Therefore, we don’t have much access to our mental processes

People who were observing asked to report on the criteria that

people would use to judge

Answer was usually one that was socially acceptable e.g. quality,
colour

They don’t realize that there is a completely different variable that

is hidden to them

The illusion of will: all humans operate with illusion that we know
what we think and what we want
 A lot of behaviour/judgments are not driven by an understanding
of internal events but rather by making up an explanation for it
afterwards

Psychological reactance – Bem: overvaluing what looks like a ‘I

must have liked it more than I realised’, we don’t know why we
like/dislike something but we tend to form this a result of external
events afterwards

Attribution of behaviour

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation (Lepper et al.)

Intrinsic motivation: the desire to engage in an activity because we enjoy

it or find it interesting, not because of external rewards or pressures

External motivation: the desire to engage in an activity because of

external reasons, not because we enjoy the task or find it interesting

One can displace the other in people’s mind by taking away the
reward, it takes away the extrinsic motivation and they will stop
doing the action and by adding reward, it makes an intrinsic
motivation an extrinsic one

Self-handicapping (Berglas & Jones)

Guarding the self by creating external causes for anticipated failure

E.g. if you know you are going to fail, so you go drinking to give
yourself another external attribution for your failure

Some were led to believe that they were doing well and some
believed they were not doing well

Few minutes of test and then they do another task, some expected
they were going to do well and other expected bad

Two drugs: helpful drug, handicapping drug

Expected to succeed: more likely to take helpful drug

Expected to fail: more likely to take handicapping drug

Giving themselves alternative attributional target

Self-selected (as opposed to the insomnia drug)

Self-Perception Theory

The theory that when our attitudes and feelings are uncertain or
ambiguous, we infer the states by observing our behaviour and the
situation in which it occurs
1. We infer our inner feelings from our behaviour only when we
are not sure about how we feel
 2. People judge whether their behaviour really reflects how they
feel or whether it was the situation that made them act that
way

Self-serving attributions

Explanation for one’s success that credit internal, dispositional factors

and explanations for one’s failure that blame external, situational factors

Defensive attributions – explanations of behaviour that avoid feelings of

vulnerability and mortality

Affection and attribution

Forgas, 1994 – attributions for relationship conflicts

Non-depressed (normal) people

Positive events attributed to internal, lasting causes

Negative events attributed to external, temporary causes

Depressed people

Positive events attributed to external, temporary cause

Negative events attributed to internal, lasting causes

Forgas et al., 1990 – Attributions for life dilemmas

Depressive realism

Ask them to make causal attribution to results of those

dilemmas

People in positive state mood gave for causal explanation

for internal, stable explanations for successes

Failure, people in negative mood were more likely to give

stable, internal causes

Mood effects on attributions of success and failure in an exam

Happy people claim credit for success but reject blame for failure

People in negative moo in turn take less credit for success and
blame themselves more for failing

Implications of Attribution Theory

Depression and Learned Helplessness

Depressogenic attributions (cognitive behaviour therapy, teaching

people to see negative events as unstable and positive events as
internal and stable)
 Temporary mood – similar effects

Attribution and addiction

Internal vs. external causation – illness or crime

External attribution implies helplessness

Illness to model used by addicts, not own fault, and

defensive attributional style

Implies helplessness, these ideological might be more

pleasant in short term but costly in the long term

Lack of causal inference

More painful to admit own fault, but it shows that you can
change, you can get better

Attribution and unemployment

External attributions imply lack of control

Internal attributions – more unpleasant, but implies

mastery

Culture and Attributions

There is some evidence for cross-cultural differences in the Actor-

Observer Effect and in Self-Serving and Defensive Attributions

Typically, the difference occurs between Western/individualistic cultures

and Eastern/more conforming cultures

Attribution and Ideology

Commerce majors tend to blame the individual

Social sciences tend to blame the system

Engineering majors are usually neutral

Practical implications of attribution research

Self-serving biases by groups

Groups as well as individuals commit attribution errors

Causes of WWII

Jewish – internal

German – external
Political implications
Lecture 22

Interpersonal communication

Verbal and nonverbal messages

The process of communication –

Sender (encoding) – Channel (message) – Receiver (decoding)

Encoding: converting internal intention to external message

Message: verbal channel is very conscious, nonverbal:

subconscious

Verbal: limited capacity, information per unit of time wanted

conveyed is very limited

Nonverbal: very broad, communicate on multiple signals

simultaneously

Decoding: subjective universe, private view of the world has to

receive the message and interpret it

Decoding can easily cause message in being misunderstood

Have to undergo sophisticated cognitive task to encode

intention as message and receiver to decode it

Encoding vs. Decoding problems e.g. affective influences

Happy people are more inclined to see more positive message/behaviour

than people in negative mood states

Verbal vs. Nonverbal messages

Nonverbal –

Functions – communicate attitudes, feelings and manage situation

(initiating, continuing and terminating)

Has to be learnt

Verbal –

Other species also has aspects of language but not as complex as that of
humans

How is it acquired?

Skinner – learned, behavioural

Awarded when they make word like behaviour

But children don’t use words that have been reinforced but
also show linguistic creativity
 Chomsky – innate

Born with mental capacity to acquire language

When exposed to right environment, they will speak

But not satisfactory explanation because it does not explain

why they are born with it and where it comes from

Bruner’s theory of language acquisition – it is the human ability to

engage in social interaction before birth that makes language
acquisition possible

Young infants show communicative ability

1 year olds can do simple facial expression

Infants learn that certain communicative behaviour will be

understood and responded to

Emphasizes social interaction with people around you

Language is indexical

The meaning of utterance is dependent on (indexes) already existing

shared knowledge: anything can be made to mean almost anything,
depending on the shared context

Language and thought

The means of thinking within, same language used to communicate is also

the symbol system used to think

Vgotsky – external and internal functions

Tool happens to be same for both

Language you think with is the language that you think with

One that you use to communicate is controllable, suggests that

what people can say, you can change what you think

Spair-Whorf hypothesis (or politics of language)

Does changing the words we use influence the attitudes we have?

Feministic views

Depletion of masculine terms to describe people despite them

being female

Ms. to show women irrespective of marriage state

Attempt to control thought to control language failed

 Eskimos have multiple words for snow therefore allowing them to think
of ways we cannot because we only have one word for snow

Jargon

Communicates something about their identity

Jargon: different professions and groups of people develop private set of

language

Lecture 23

Pragmatics

The case of disqualification when experiencing communication conflict

Saying something that means nothing

Pragmatics – hidden communication

Not what you say, but how you say it

E.g. using past/present tense to indicate disengagement

Linguistic-Abstraction Theory – Semin & Fiedler

Action verbs – ‘hits’ – most concrete

State verbs – ‘dislikes’ – intermediate

Adjectives – ‘aggressive’ – most abstract

Linguistic Intergroup bias

In-group: positive abstracts, negative concretes

Out-group: positive concretes, negative abstracts

Pragmatic – mood effects on language choices

Positive mood – more confident

Negative mood – more cautious, polite

The request situations involved – negotiating choices and self-

disclosure – varying levels of difficulty of the request

Processing effects

Positive mood – more assimilative thinking

Negative mood – more accommodative thinking

Mood effects on persuasive communication (Forgas, 2007)

Nonverbal Behaviour
 The way people communicate, intentionally or unintentionally, without
words

Older, evolutionary system, like fixed action patterns

Functions: communicating self presentation, attitudes, emotions,

situation management

We have special kind of brain cell called mirror neurons

These neurons respond when we perform an action and when we see

someone else perform the same action

Mirror neurons appear to be the basis of our ability to feel empathy

Nonverbal cues serve many functions in communication

Sometimes they contradict the spoken words

The intimacy-equilibrium model of NVC by Argyle and Dean

Too much intimacy in one channel is compensated for by reduced

intimacy in another

Space: uses and functions

Hall – personal boundaries: intimate, personal, social, public ‘bubbles’

Avert eye gazes at 8’, walk around/between speaker

Cultural differences – Middle East vs. West, Blacks vs. Whites in US

Territoriality – use of markers; preferred seating arrangements – Sommer

The norms of seating: people have a preference in different seating

arrangements around rectangular and round tables as a function of the
interaction (Sommer)

Touching

Effects – arousal

Increases financial risk taking: volunteers who had received a light pat on
the shoulder from a female researcher were more likely to select risky
investments

Areas of the body vary in their touchable by various people

Paralinguistics – content free speech; Milmoe – doctors voice

Kinesics and body language

Gestures – gender differences

Coordination/synchrony in interaction
 Scheflen – quasi – courtship in therapy session

Maintain intimacy

Conclusion

Social perception and communication are at the heart of everyday social

behaviour

Importance of evolutionary and historical perspective

Key objective – promote critical thinking, skepticism

Coping with everyday social life – problems of loneliness, shyness and

unpredictability

Lecture 24

Belief, stereotypes  stereotyping  discrimination

Differential affect as a function of categorical assignment even under brief

laboratory distinction

Minimal Group Paradigm

Ingroup-outgroup affect  prejudice  strong negative reaction to out-

group: discrimination

Cognitive stereotyping different to affective prejudice

Different views of prejudice

Prejudice can be exhibited to nay group on the basis on any kind of group
distinction

Prejudice can also exist in both directions – even from minority to

majority

Prejudice as personality (Xenophobia)

Prejudice is a general disposition to dislike anyone different to you

Generalised personality trait

Prejudice as (learned) attitude

Specific to specific groups

Prejudice if negative evaluation

Prejudice as intergroup emotions

Fear, anger, disgust
 New direction

More specific: not just general positivity or negativity towards group but
specific emotions to those groups

Directed towards understanding the different affects

Psychodynamic Explanations

Stems from someone having some kind of defection and showcases

prejudice to fill in these kinds of defects

Low self-esteem or self-esteem threat

Does not hold up in empirical research at all

Prejudice is motivated by desire to improve self-esteem doesn’t

hold up well

Frustration-aggression theory

Displaced anger, scapegoating

Situation in life where you feel deprived, disadvantaged

Frustration activates aggression

Sometimes you cannot express aggression against the direct cause

of your frustration so it is taken out on something else

Displaced source of frustration onto that group (scapegoating)

Unmet chronic dissatisfaction

Authoritarian Personality

Prejudice stems from certain kinds of childhood practices or from

parents that are very rigid that don’t allow expression of emotions

Suppression and rigidity in childhood produces a lot of anger and

resentment that are displaced onto out-group

Critiques of Personality Explanations

Prejudices may be more specific

Common, not pathological

Prejudice varies by historical and social context: education

Chronic internal personality traits

Prejudice as acquired attitude toward specific groups

There are social norms when you are living under society of a certain
group that limit the expression of those prejudices
 In current times, important distinction between blatant explicit prejudice
and subtle, indirect prejudice

Currently, much more subtle and take the form of resentment but nothing
that is too strong and hateful, but more mild, negative attitude

Implicit, unintended prejudice

Can go further underground, even if we don’t entertain mild

negative attitudes but at some subconscious, unintended level
there is a negative affect associated with groups different to us

Automatic Evaluations: Sequential Priming

Picture (arouse automatic affect) – blank – target word – good/bad

response

Nature of the test

Primed with negativity for a certain word and then you see
positive word, prime is inconsistent, and then you have to switch
and reevaluate and therefore should take longer

If negative word, the priming would fit (primed for negative)

which facilitates the response

It shows the affect towards the image

Image: White face, Black face (racially)

If implicit, then white face + positive should be fast and black face
+ positive should be slow and vice versa

The reverse is true when participants are African American

The face of threat

Low level of affect of things that have carried from childhood learning

We consciously reject them

When do they show up? We can’t just override them, is it important that
we have these unconscious thoughts

In pressure situation, does this person have a gun, should I shoot him? In
these kinds of situation, it is important

The judgment of shooting or not is influenced by racial identity of target

Ambivalence Models of Prejudice

Gaertner & Dovidio

Aversive prejudice ambivalence caused by being aware of negative

feelings toward out-group which are perceived as not justified
 Disconnect between ideal self and recognition, we have some negative
affect

Creates some aversive state and if we feel this internal conflict –

Consequences of Aversive Racism

Discomfort (intergroup anxiety) and preference to avoid

Self-conscious behaviour (“bend over backwards” be extra careful to not

exhibit racist behaviour)

Release of prejudice under ambiguous conditions (“letting down your

guard” negativity can slip out)

Intergroup Anxiety

White college students interacted with same race or different race

individuals – Black or Asian

On-line physiological reactivity (systolic and diastolic blood pressure)

Behaviour coding of nodding, gaze, talking time (friendliness ratings)

Code for distance, forward lean, interview time, speech error rate –
symptoms of anxiety and discomfort

A vicious cycle

Ambivalence – intergroup anxiety – avoidance of discomfort, negative

contact – ambivalence etc

The Contact Hypothesis

When group identity is very salient, we try to avoid interaction with out-
group

Hypothesis: general idea that prejudice is fed by segregation,

consequences of that are fed back into the prejudice and stereotype

“Mere Contact”

May not have a necessarily positive effect, contact can also lead to
hostile behaviour

The importance of context

Equal status, cooperative interaction, personalized

Under situation you have a reason to cooperate, common goal

Personalized, you get to know the person as an individual and not

just being there in superficial way

The Robbers Cave Experiment

 Competition vs. Cooperation

Experiment in 1950s and controlled a boy summer camp for the

entire period of time

Phase 1: In-group formation

10/11-year-old boys from neighbourhood and arbitrarily

assigned to two groups

They arrived on two different buses and sent to different

areas of the camp

Allowed them to know each other as individual group

members

They didn’t know existence of the other group

Creating in-group feelings

Called meeting in centre of camp and for the first time, they
find out the existence of each other and are not pleased

Phase 2: Intergroup Competition

Competitive games, made big deal of who won and who lost

Creating two subgroups

Distancing but they started to showcase hostile behaviour

e.g. name calling, invading camps, wouldn’t form friendship,
throwing things

Phase 3: Superordinate Goals

Introduced situation that would require kids to interact in

order to solve problem

Water supply stoppage, truck breakdown, movie (expensive

to get)

Both wanted and they had to combine efforts to reach goals

At the end of camp, they were all friends

Not surprising but underlying dynamic that was being

demonstrated was about importance of whether context situation
encourages personalized, cooperative feelings

Why Contact Works

If you have right conditions

 Cognition: Shared Identity

We are not so different we have underlying shared

identities

Behaviour: positive acts

If you do something positive to someone, you get affect to

match that affect: likely, empathy

Do they all combine to form Positive Outgroup Attitudes of group as a whole?

You can like specific out-group individual but what about the entire
group?

You disassociate the individual from out-group

You don’t reconnect the individual as part of their group

Identity salience

Only recognize them as a person but not someone part of their

group

Need to create situations to generalize in the future (future

research)