PSYC2020 Notes
Social Psychology
● The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another
● Concentrates more on how people, in general, view and affect one another
➢ Scientific method of systematic observation, description and measurement
➢ Establish general principles of individuals’ thoughts, emotions, motives and actions
➢ Emphasis on the social nature of individuals (one influence one another)
ABC Tirad
1. Affect: how people feel inside
2. Behaviour: what people do under the circumstances
3. Cognition: how people think about the situation
Fundamental Attribution Error or Bias
The failure to recognise the importance of situational influences on behaviour, together with the
tendency to over-emphasise the importance of dispositions (a person’s inherent qualities)
Independent Variable
● The factor that experiments manipulate (predictor variable)
Dependent Variable
● The factor that experiments measure (outcome variable)
Subject Variable
● Characteristics that vary across participants and can’t be manipulated
Mediators
● Through what process lead to the results (Z)
Combination of Prochaska and colleagues and Yankelovich models (first
five stage
Moderators
● Under what conditions lead to the results (Z)
Scientific Methods
1. Self-report: e.g. surveys
2. Interviews
3. Behavioural measures
4. Physiological measures: e.g. brain electricity
5. Observation
*None of them provides an absolutely adequate and accurate measure of the focal psychological
phenomenon (Single-method and single-informant bias)
Method Triangulation
● Adoption of multiple scientific methods for a more holistic research to cross-check and
enhance validity
Causal Effect
● Cause-effect linkage (If X then Y)
*Internal validity: a cause-effect relationship between IV and DV established
Causation Inference
1. Correlation
2. Temporal precedence: the cause must occur before its purported effect
3. Ruling out extraneous effect
Baseline Pre-test
Correlational Research
● Any study the researcher does not have as much control as they do in experiment
● Involves the use of statistical measures to establish the association, or correlation
Trade-off Dilemma between Internal and External Validity
● If an IV is more likely to cause DV, the less likely the observed association can be
generalised from sample to the population
The Cocktail Party Effect
● The tendency of people to pick a personally relevant stimulus, being able to attend to one
voice at a cocktail party out of many sound sources
*The self is an important object of our own attention
Nature of Social Self
● Our sense of who we is forged largely by our interactions with others
● The social me is the self-knowledge derived from social relationships
ABC Aspects of Social Self
1. A: Self-esteem
● A affective component of the self, consisting of an individual’s positive and negative
self-evaluations
➢ An attribute that can have profound impact on the way we think and present
ourselves
➢ A state of mind that fluctuates up and down in response to success, failure,
social relations and other life experiences
Self-esteem increases from adolescence to middle adulthood, peak at age 50 to 60, and
decreases at an accelerating rate
*relatively stable, people with low self-esteem tend to have low self-esteem after decades
a. Trait self-esteem (relatively stable over time)
Enduring personality characteristic
b. State self-esteem (dynamic and changeable over time)
Momentary feelings of self based on specific experiences
*The pursuit of self-worth is an aspect of human motivation
Sociometer Theory
● Desire of self-esteem is driven by a more primitive need to connect with others and to
get others’ approval, manufacturing an inner sociometer
Terror Management Theory
● Since people are conscious of their death, they will more likely to adopt worldviews
to find meaning and worth in their lives (buffer against anxiety)
“Self-esteem is a protective shield designed to control the potential for terror”
– Pyszczynski and colleagues
*The process of pursuing self-esteem itself can be costly despite its benefits
When one’s self-esteem is unrealistically high:
*may attempt to dominate those who challenge them
➢ Inflated egotism (Arrogance): not warranted by any obvious facts and rather fragile
➢ Narcissism: associated with grandiose, over-exaggerated their positive traits
Self-discrepancy Theory
● Our self-esteem is defined by the match and mismatch (self and perceived self)
*the more the discrepancy, we treasure and focus, the worse the feeling will be
2. C: Self-concept
● The sum of an individual’s beliefs about his or her own personal attributes
➢ Self-schema: belief of oneself that guides processing of relevant information
Self-knowledge
● Stored in memories
● Influenced by self-schema, derived from past experience
➢ Tend to retrieve information more consistent with the self-schema
Sources of Self-concept
1. Introspection
2. Family and other socialisation agents
3. Influences of other people by comparison
4. Autobiographical memories and the narrated self
Self-perception Theory
● People develop their attitudes by observing their own behaviour and concluding what
attitudes must have caused it
*People do not infer their internal states from behaviour when under compressing
situational pressure
➢ Because we have greater information than others do about our inner states,
we are better judges of our internal traits
➢ There is no self-other difference regarding external traits that are easy to
observe
Social Comparison Theory
● People evaluate themselves by comparing with others
➢ People tend to describe themselves in ways that set them different from
others in their immediate vicinity (Self is relative)
*people engage in social comparison in states of uncertainty, when
objectivity does not exist
● People on social media generally tend to portray themselves in overly flattering
ways, which increases the likelihood that the social comparisons we make are not
personally favourable
Self-enhancement Bias
● People usually see themselves as better than average when it comes to personal traits
that are important to them
Process that serves self-enhancement
1. Implicit egotism an unconscious and subtle expression of self-esteem
2. Self-serving beliefs:
Optimistic bias where judging desirable things are more likely to occur than
undesirable things
➢ Illusions of control: overestimating power to influence things out of control
3. Self-handicapping to protect ourselves
Behaviours designed to sabotage one’s own performance in order to provide a
subsequent excuse for failure
4. Basking in reflected glory
Increase self-esteem by associating with and showing off their connections to
successful other
➢ Cut off reflected failure (CORF):
to increase self-esteem by disassociating with others who are unsuccessful
5. Downward social comparison
When a person’s self-esteem is low, he or she often benefits from making downward
social comparisons with others who are less happy, less successful or less fortunate
*associated with an ability to cope with the kinds of life regrets
Culture and Self-concept
Individuals are shaped by:
1. Interactions with others
2. Formal institutions
3. Commonly shared ideas of what is good and what is right
Independent View of Self
● Conceives the self as containing a set of psychological qualities that are independent
of those of other people
*also possess individual rights, such as the right to pursue personal happiness
Interdependent View of Self
● Behaviours explained in terms of network of social obligations
3. B: Self-presentation
● The behavioural expression of the social self
Spotlight Effect
● A tendency to believe that the social spotlight shines more brightly on them than it
really does
Strategic Self-presentation
1. Ingratiation: acts that are motivated by the desire to get along with others and be liked
2. Self-promotion: acts that are motivated by a desire to get ahead and gain respect
Self-verification
● The desire to have others perceive us as we truly perceive ourselves
*people are highly motivated in their social encounters to confirm and verify
➢ Displaying identity cues (e.g. clothes, haircuts)
➢ Choose to enter relationship that maintain consistent views of the self
Self-monitoring
● The tendency to regulate self-behaviour to meet demands of social institution
*high self-monitors interact with others to identify appropriate conduct
➢ High self-monitors regard themselves as pragmatic, flexible and adaptive
➢ Low self-monitors are principled and be viewed as stubborn and unwilling to
compromise in order to get along
*Self-monitoring scores tend to decrease with age, because people become more
settled and secure with their personal identities when they get older
Raw Data for Social Perception
1. People
● People evaluate spontaneously and unconsciously whether a face indicates that a
person’s trait
Baby-faced Effect
● People tend to infer traits (kind-hearted & mean-spirited) based on a person’s face
➢ Baby-faced features (tend to identify these features to keep ourselves safe)
E.g. a full, round face, curly hair, long eyelashes, large eyes, short nose, full
lips and an upturned mouth
*e.g. Warm, kind, naive, weak, honest, and submissive
*Human beings are programmed by evolution to respond gently to infantile features
(Helplessness and harmless traits)
2. Situations
● There could be an underlying script how a social event would occur in sequence
Attribution Theory
● Trying to understand the causes of a person’s behaviour
Correspondent Inference Theory
● People try to infer from an action whether the act corresponds to the person’s trait
*people compare their actions with alternative actions
➢ Choice: behaviour that is chosen freely
➢ Expectedness: an action that departs from norms
➢ Effects: intended effects or consequences of someone's behaviour
Covariation Theory
● An attribution people make causal relationship to explain why people or a group
behave in a certain way
➢ Consensus: whether other people generally behave similarly with a person
➢ Distinctiveness: whether a person’s behaviour is similar in different stimuli
➢ Consistency: whether a person’s behaviour is same across time
Attribution Biases
● The systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own
and others' behaviours
Two systems of thought
*both systems are active when people are awake
System 1: Intuition; System 2: slow and controlled process of thinking
*system 1 automatically runs until there are difficulties, and system 2 will then be
activated (we are often limited by time, energy, information load to process thinking)
➢ Speed brings bias and a loss of thought accuracy
Availability Heuristics
3. Behaviour
● Recognise what someone is doing at a given situation
a. Emotions
b. Smiles
➢ Reward: serve to reinforce behaviour
➢ Affiliation: desire to social bonding
➢ Dominance: showcase status
c. Touch (carries a lot of social messages)
d. Gaze: e.g. avoid eye contact, staring etc
Pluralistic Ignorance (Occurs in group)
● A situation a majority of group members privately reject a norm but incorrectly
assume others will accept it, thus, also accept it
*People may act in ways that conflict with their private beliefs because of a concern
for the social consequences
*All are indirect clues and interply to form social perception for social perceivers
Bias
1. Availability heuristic
Tendency to estimate the likelihood an event would occur based on how easy it comes to a
person’s mind
2. False-consensus effect
Tendency people overestimate the extent to which other people also share the same opinions,
attributes and behaviours
3. Base-rate fallacy
Tendency to ignore relevant statistical information in favour of case-specific information
*Instead of taking into account the base rate, people are often distracted by irrelevant
information
4. Counterfactual thinking
Tendency to imagine alternative events or outcomes that might have occurred but did not
5. Fundamental attribution error
Tendency to focus on the role of personal causes, but underestimate the impact of situations
on other people’s behaviour
Fundamental Attribution Error (Western phenomenon)
● Social perception is a two-step process
a. Identify the behaviour and make a quick personal attribution (like a reflex)
b. Correct and adjust the inference taken account with situational influences
Motivational Biases
● Our social perceptions are sometimes coloured by personal needs, wishes and preferences
➢ Wishful seeing: we see what we desire
➢ Need for self-esteem: lead us to make favourable and self-serving attributions
➢ Belief in just world: belief that individuals get what they deserve in life
➢ Blaming the victim: people do not forgive, help or compensate victims of misfortune
*the more threatened we feel by apparent injustice, the greater the need to self-protect
by disparaging the victims
Information Integration Theory
● Impressions are based on personal dispositions and the current state of perceiver
● A weighted average of a target person’s characteristics
Characteristics of Perceiver
1. Use themselves as a standard during evaluation
2. View their own skills and traits as particularly desirable for others to also possess
3. Current mood status
Embodied Perception from the Person
1. Physical position, orientation, sensations and movements of their bodies
Social Priming
● Tendency for recently used or perceived words or ideas come to mind easily when
interpreting new information
*Information presented early has more impact on impression than later ones
Primary Effect
● People usually pay less attention after the formation of first impression
*At this moment, people tend to seek for closure in order to reduce cognitive uncertainty
Framing Effect
● Difference influences on an object based on the ways the object is presented
Reinforcement of Wrong Social Perception
1. Confirmation Bias
● Tendency to seek, interpret and create information that verifies existing beliefs
2. Belief perseverance
● Tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited
*we choose to see and hear what we want to
3. Confirmatory hypothesis testing
● Perceiver set in motion a vicious cycle
(i) thinking someone has a trait; (ii) engage in one-sided search for information; (iii)
create a reality that ultimately supports their belief
4. Self-fulfilling prophecy (The pygmalion effect)
● Tendency to act the way people have been expected in order make the expectations
become reality
Intersectionality
● Nearly any social categorisation (e.g. religion) can lead to prejudice and discrimination
Stereotype
● A cognitive belief or association that links a whole group of people with certain traits or
characteristics
Prejudice
● Negative affective feelings towards certain people based on them being members of a certain
group
Discrimination
● Behaviour directed against people based on them being members of a certain group
Social Categorisation
● Classification of people into groups on the basis of common attributes (Natural and adaptive)
➢ Form impression of people with similar attributes more quickly
➢ Help guide interactions
➢ Save time and effort to make inferences in groups
In-groups
● Groups which an individual feels a sense of membership, belonging and identity
Out-groups
● Groups with which an individual does not feel a sense of membership
Out-group Homogeneity Effect
*We usually exaggerate the differences between in-groups and out-groups, which form and reinforce
stereotypes. People assume there is a greater similarity between different out-groups, therefore,
underestimate the variability among members of out-groups, leading to superficial understanding
● People have less contact and familiarity with out-group members
● Lack of representative sample of out-groups
● Media influences
Dehumanising Out-Groups
● People sometimes process out-group members more like objects than fellow human beings
*Nazi referred to Jews as rats during the Holocaust
● Automatic and non-conscious
Roots of Division between In-groups and Out-groups
1. Evolutionary history:
People in the past form small groups with similar others to increase the chance of survival
2. Social identity:
People favour in-groups over out-groups to increase self-esteem by sharing glory with team’s
success
*individuals will use negative stereotypes to derogate stereotyped members to feel better
3. Terror management
People cope with the fear of their own death by constructing worldviews that help preserve
their self-esteem and important values
*self-protection and preservation, which also arouses in-group biases
*more likely to exhibit in-group biases when faced with death-related things
4. Social Dominance Orientation
● A desire to see one’s in-group as dominant over other groups, and a willingness to
adopt a cultural value that facilitate oppression over other out-groups
System Justification Theory
● People are motivated to defend and justify the existing social, political, and economic
conditions, to protect the status quo
Socialisation
● The process by which people learn the norms, rules and information of a culture or group
Stereotype Content Model
● The relative status and competition between groups influence group stereotypes along the
dimensions of competence and warmth
➢ Competence: higher relative status stimulates higher competence
➢ Warmth: greater perceived competition stimulates lower warmth
Gender Stereotypes
● The belief about how the sexes differ, regardless of whether they are accurate reflections
➢ Socialisation theory
*e.g. Boys are reinforced by parents, teachers and media for being masculine, while
girls are feminine
Social Role Theory
● Sex differences originate because men and women are distributed differently into
occupational and family roles
Hormonal Theories of Sex Difference
● Men and women differ not because of the external social environment, but they rather have
different hormones
*boys have greater amount of testosterone associated with aggressiveness and dominance
Evolutionary Psychology Theory
● The sexes are predicted to be similar in all the domains in which they faced similar adaptive
problems, while they differ when confronting different adaptive problems
*adaptive problems: problems need to be solved for an individual to survive and reproduce
➢ E.g. women maybe more sensitive to making a poor choice of mate because women
spend longer time than mate to reproduce
Media Effect
● Individuals and society may be influenced by both news and entertainment mass media
Automatic Stereotype Activation
● Stereotype can be activated without our awareness; can bias our perception even we disagree
with it; stereotype usually automatically activate when we are exposed to a members of
popular stereotype groups
*Subliminally presented information is presented so quickly that perceivers do not even
realise that they have been exposed to it
Shared Stereotype
● Nearly everyone shares common stereotypes
*e.g. Black men plays basketball
Solution to Stereotypes
1. More exposure with the stereotype provokes the likelihood of automatic activation
2. More prejudiced the perceiver, the lower the threshold for triggering stereotype
3. When self-esteem is threatened, people are motivated to stereotype to feel better
Inter-Group Competition and Cooperation
● Hostility between groups is caused by direct competition for limited resources
*what matters is how many resources do you possess in comparison with others
*relative deprivation (feelings of discontent because one fares poorly under comparison)
Realistic Conflict Theory
● In an environment where people of equal skills and attributes are made to compete for the
same resources, the inter-group conflict will directly relate to the resources' value and
scarceness
Racism
1. Old-fashioned racism: blatant, explicit and unmistakable
2. Modern racism: surfaces in subtle ways when it is safe, socially acceptable and easy to
rationalise
3. Microaggression: everyday subtle but hurtful form of discrimination experienced frequently
Moral Credentials Theory
● Establish one’s virtue and licence one to act in morally disreputable ways with impunity
*especially when people anticipate doing something morally dubious
*use past moral actions to justify subsequent behaviour that may contradict the moral actions
Sexism
● Prescriptive rather than descriptive
*double standards between men and women
Solutions
1. Inter-group contact
2. Shared identities
3. Enhancing belonging
4. Changing cognition (e.g. perspective-talking)
5. Changing culture