o       generalizations about the characteristics of members of groups. They have pervasive effects in everday life affecting attitudes, judgements/evaluations and behavior

o       Where they come from - The mind has a natural tendency to seek simpler explanations, to streamline the thinking and reasoning process, Generalizations and simplifications are handy, Also using things you hear from others to develop generalizations is handy too

§       They’re not just based on personal experience, but also culturally received information, for ex. many Americans maintain racist stereotypes of Blacks and Latinos despite never having known a Black or Latino person

§       Even when based on personal experience, they are over-applied (by definition, they are generalizations)

o      White basketball players – disciplined, unselfish, smart, fundamentally sound

o      Black basketball players – athletic, naturally gifted, agile, fast, tall, physical

o      This is strange because people generally discrimate against blacks using the arugment that they are biologically inferior whereas these stereotypes imply they are biologically superior and that whites work harder to be smart, unselfish, etc.

§       Hypothesis: people are more likely to apply a negative stereotype to someone who has criticized

§       Conducted at Waterloo University after grades were given students asked all instructors names, evaluations, grade received and evaluation of fairness of grade

§       Findings: male and female instructors gave out similar grades, instructors who gave students higher grades were rated higher by students. This effect was twice as strong when the instructor was female. The evaluations of female instructors were much more dependent on the grades they gave out than the evaluations of male instructors. Title “She’s fine if she praised be, but incompetent if she criticized me”

§       Followup findings: getting a negative grade activated students’ negative stereotypes of women’s competence or maybe students were distressed by counterstereotypical behavior of women.

§       The problem: African Americans seem to be disproportionately victimized by accidental police shootings. Seen in case of Amadou Diallo, an innocent black man shot 41 times.

§       Why? Might be due to explicit racism, or due to implicit stereotyping of African Americans as more threatening than whites

§       Study: Designed a video game to study this, using cops as platers who had to decide to shoot as fast as possible African Americans vs. Whites and people holding guns vs. other objects.

§       Findings:

·      1^st study: White participants made correct decision to shoot faster if the suspect was African American, made correct decision not to shoot faster is suspect was white

·      2^nd study (sped up the game): participants more likely to make erroneous shootings of African-American suspects

·      3^rd (measures perceptions of AA’s as aggressive/threatening and extent of contact with AA’s): Biases from first study greater among those with stronger AA-as-aggressive stereotype, biases also greater among those with less contact with AA’s

·      4^th: Found equivalent levels of bias among white and African American participants

Stereotype threat research (Claude Steele)

§       Problem: People perform worse on tests when negative stereotypes are made active. If African Americans are made aware of their race prior to taking a test, it leads to worse performance. But not for whites or Asians. Same for women taking math tests.

§       Why? Self fulfilling prophecy, where expectations of low achievement lead to low achievement. Perhaps when negative stereotypes become active they reduce working memory capacity – ability to focus attention on a task while keeping other thoughts to a minimum. Perhaps stereotype activation makes for diverted attention, a part of the mind is busy working or thinking about the stereotype and related low expectations

§       Methods: Activated stereotype – test either presented as working memory capacity or a quantitative test that women have scored poorly on in the past. Studied ability to do a working memory capacity test

§       Results: Female participants scored worse on the WMC when it was presented as a quantitative test that women are bad at, normally they did a little better on it

§       Follow up: Same study except on whites and Latinos. Told it was used to asses “different groups” and they were asked for their ethnicity. Latinos did worse and reported moer anxiety and perceived it as harder in the threat condition.

Final study showed that stereotype threat effects on standardized test performance are mediated by reduced working memory capacity

o      Thinking is a deliberate conscious process. Behavior is a product of conscious reasoning. We are in control of our behavior. We are aware of the causes of our actions. Assumed by: Descartes, general philosophy, most social science, lay people

 Main Idea of Nisbett and Wilson (1977) – “Telling more than we know”

o      Reacting to common assumption that you can ask people why they behaved the way they did (self-reports). They review a huge literature showing that people have little insight into the causes of their behavior

§       People always have reasons, usually rational, defensible ones. But they’re often, even usually, the wrong reasons

§       People have limited insight into the true causes of their behavior

Basically of you want to understand human behavior you can’t just ask somebody

Automaticity

Perspective that most human behavior results from automatic, nonconscious factors that operate outside of awareness. Key factors include automatic (not controlled), non-concious, effortless, unaware

·      People are surprisingly good at perceiving others’ personality characteristics via “thin slices” of behavior

o      Predicting teacher eval’s from 30 sec slient clips, Golsings “Room with a cue”, Snoop

o      In some cases (extroversion, IQ), people can rate targets more accurately from a thin slice than the targets themselves

·      making a concept “active” in a person’s mind. Uses of subliminal (people don’t know about it) and supraliminal (people know about it) priming.

·      Bargh, Chen and Burrows Studies 1-3 – Explored effects of priming on behavior.

o      Study 1 (Supraliminal)– Primed politeness or rudeness using a scrambled sentence task. Participants had to make 4 word sentences out of 5 words, words manipulated to either prime rudeness, politeness, neutral. When they went to turn it in, the experimenter was in another room, talking with a confused confederate for up to 10 mins. Dependent variable – how long before participant interrupts. Results: Polite 558 secs, 18% interrupted, neutral 519 secs, 37%, rude 326 secs 63%.

o      Study 2a (subliminal?)– Primed using the stereotype of the elderly using a scrambled sentence task. They were then debriefed and the confederate in the hallway timed participant leaving the study. Elderly prime 8.28secs, neutral 7.3s. This was statistically significant and there was no reported awareness of the effect. Study 2b – identical. Elderly prime 8.2s, neutral 7.23s

o      Study 3 – participants worked on a very boring cpu task counting even or odd circles. On each trial participants either subliminally flashed an African American face or white face. After 130 trials the cpu displayed an error message saying they must do it again. They were told to get the experimenter and their response was videotaped. Dependent variables: hostility of reaction to cpu, hostility towards experimenter. Results: African-American primed participants more hostile on both measures than white primed participants. All participants were white

·      how effective is unconscious thinking? How complex of a task can it work on? What are its limits? We can process enormous amounts of information nonconsciously, but consciously we can’t pay attention to 2 things at once

o      Method: Participants presented with infor on 4 hypothetical apartments. 12 attributes per apartment. Attributes presented in random order on cpu screen for 4 secs each. Apartment 2 was best, 4 the worst, 1 and 3 in middle. The participants then rated each apartment’s desirability on a 1-10 scale

o      Conditions: Immediate decision, conscious thought (given 3 minutes to consider their answers), unconscious though (given a “2-back task” as a distracter for 3 mins)

o      Results: Immediate decision and conscious thought participants did poorly. Diff scores: .47, .44 respectively (Difference between ratings of best and worst apartment not statistically significant). Unconscious though participants did much better. Diff score: 1.23

o      Study 2: Unconscious though condition led to best choices

·      Tiedens and Fragale (2003) Are all behaviors mimicked? Perhaps some behaviors tend to instigate their opposites? A complementarity process (not mimicry)

o      Method – Participants worked with a confederate on a painting description task

o      Conditions – Confederate postute. Expansive, Constructive, neutral. Past research indicates that expansive postures are associates with dominance across species, constrictive with submission

o      Results – Participants rates more expansive confederates as more dominant. Videos coded for participants’ postural expansion. No initial differences in expansiveness (prior to exposure to confed). Participants working with expansive confed adopted more constricted postures, and those exposed to more constricted postures were more expansive. Greater complementarity led participants to rate confed as more likable and the interaction as more comfortable.

o      Study 2 – Confeds either mimicked or complemented posture of participants. Complementarity led to more liking.

o      Study 1 – Found the most common male and female names that share first three letter with a Top 40 population city. Results: people were disproportionately more likely to live in cities that resembled their first names

o      Study 2 – Looked at 8 most populous states. Found people with the same first few letters in their last name were disproportionately likely to live in these states

o      Study 3 – 8 largest cities in Canada. Same last name effect

o      Study 4 – Looked at FL, GA, LA, VA, KY. People with similar first names were unusually likely to live in that state (men and women)

o      Study 5 – Looked at all U.S. cities names “St. __” (N = 35). People with the name were disproportionately more likely to live in cities with that name. Also, people with “Saint” in their name disproportionately likely to live in these cities.

o      Study 6 – Looked at birthdays…are people more likely to live in towns that resemble their birthdays? Yes

o      Study 7 – Looked at most common male and female names that resembled “Lawyer” or “Dentist”. Men and women were disproportionately likely to do the job that resembled their name (though small effect)

o      Study 8 – Georges and Geoffreys were disproportionately likely to publish articles in the geosciences.

o      Study 9 – People with first or last name starting with “H” or “R”. More likely to own hardware stores and roofing companies respectively

o      Conclusions – Implicit egotism effects receive support. Experiments also converge with these findings.

·      people have generally positive impressions of themselves. Includes self-serving biases: motivated reasoning, above-average effect. People like their initials and the letters of their name more than other letters

·      tendency of people to overestimate the intensity and duration of their emotions. People fail to realize that emotions will pass relatively quickly. People neglect that they have a pretty good affective immune system (which ameliorates bad experiences, reduces the impact of positive emotions as well). We neglect this system, tending to expect emotions/moods to persist longer than they actually do. If the source of the emotional reaction is not readily understood, it impairs the immune system, and prolongs the emotional reaction.

·      The study of what factors increase or decrease your happiness or “subjective well-being”

·      Imposter Phenomenon (Clance 1985)

o      Feeling among successful individuals that they do not belong in elite academic or professional setting, waiting to be found out. Success can make you feel like a fake. Common among women and minorities, presumably due to social stigmas. Don’t believe this!

·      Eastwick and Finkel (2008)

o      Past research shows mate preferences are heavily gendered. Men report greater concern for attracitveness of partner, women report greater concern for resources of partner. Through speed dating and real dating studies E&F find no gender differences though in preferences “revealed” by behavior

o      What people say they want isn’t predictive of who they wind up falling for. There are no gender differences on either dimension in actual choices made by men and women

·      Unhealthy characteristics of romantic relationships. Things to work on in relationships/warning signs

o      Criticism (attacking partner’s character, trying to win arguments), contempt (insults), defensiveness (cross-complaining), stonewalling

o      What should you do? Complain at a specific level, not about a person, listen, validate your partner and his/her points, show gratitude, accept responsibility

·      criticizes the “myth of true love”, the idea that you fall in love with one person who is perfect for you and you remain in passionate love forever.

o      Passionate – develops quickly, intense, fleeting

o      Companionate – develops slowly, involves trust, companionship, union. (This is why arranged marriages can surprisingly work)

o      The transition from passionate to companionate love is difficult. Involves sobering realizations of faults in others, often leads to break up. But companionate love has its own benefits for relationships that make the shift, it undergirds strong marriages

·      – tendency for people to overestimate how much others can see their internal states.

·      People overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noticed by others

·      immediately after, people regret actions more than inactions. But long term, people regret the things they didn’t do, not the things they did. Immune system vs. counter-factuals. If you do something and it winds up bad, you get over it surprisingly well. But it’s harder to get over the things you never do.

·      people fear failure and this deters them from trying. This is partly based on the false theory that winning and losing are negatively related. But in many domains those you lose the most also win the mose (ex. College applications, paper submissions, scholarship applications). In fact you have to lose to win, and the real determinant is how much you try.

·      Swann et al. (1994) surveyed 176 married and dating couples

o      Found that dating couples are happier and more intimate with partners who see them favorably

o      Married couples are happier and more intimate with partners who see them as they see themselves. Accurately

o      However, this also means married people with negative self-images prefer partners who see them more negatively.

o      Is this selection or adaptation? Does longer-term relationships lead to preferences for realism? Or do realistic relationships lead to marriage? Probably both.

·      People generally think their first instinct is best but just because automatic thinking is good for various tasks and fast doesn’t mean your first instinct is necessarily right.

o      Study 1 – Looked at 1,561 exams from Psych 101 at U of Illinois. Looked at changed answers (eraser marks). Wrong to right 51%, right to wrong 25%, wrong to wrong 23%

o      Study 2 – Why do people get this wrong? Perhaps it is more painful to have the right answer and switch to the wrong one than to have the wrong answer and not switch. Thus we “over-remember” wrong switching and under-remember wrong staying. Even though switching is actually good in general

o      Study 2 – asked students which would feel worse. Overwhelmingly reported switching when should have stuck over sticking when should have switched.

o      Study 3 – But do you really remember wrong switching more than staying? Gave participants part of SAT and asked to indicate two answers they narrowed down to (and which was first instinct) when they didn’t immediately know answer. Then told to give final answer for ones they missed. Told correct answers.

§       Students were contacted 4-6 weeks later. Told how many narrowed to 2, asked how many they stuck/switched and got wrong/right. Results: Participants stuck more than switched. This was wrong, since they missed it more from sticking than switching.

§       Memory bias: participants tended to over-estimate how many times they had switched and got question wrong. Underestimated how many times they had stayed and got it wrong.

o      Conclusion – Trust your later instincts. Further thinking, be it conscious or unconscious, is typically better

·      – tendency of people to overestimate the intensity and duration of their emotions. People fail to realize that emotions will pass relatively quickly. People neglect that they have a pretty good affective immune system (which ameliorates bad experiences, reduces the impact of positive emotions as well). We neglect this system, tending to expect emotions/moods to persist longer than they actually do.

·      Argue that behavioral mimicry is based on a perception-behavior link (same as priming studies).

o      Study 1 - Participants worked on 2 sessions of a photo description task with 2 confederates. Confederates were instructed to rub their faces, or shake their foot, also smiled or did not smile

§       Results – Participants smiled more times per minute (M = 1.03) when confederate generally smiles than when s/he did not (M = 0.36). Same for face rubbing and for foot shaking.

o      Study 2 – Same task. Confederates either did or did not mimic the participants nonverbal behavior while working on the task. After the study the participants were asked to rate how much they like the confederate and how smoothly interaction went

§       Results – Participants reported liking the confederate more when s/he mimicked them. Participants also through interactions went smoother when mimicked. Coding of video tapes showed that confederates in the two conditions were equally friendly

o      Study 3 – Predicted that empathic people who take the perspective of the other will mimic more. Taking the perspective of the other involves paying close attention to others, thinking about their thoughts, perhaps also behaving the way they do?

§       Results – Prediction confirmed

·      Gilbert et al. “Immune Neglect.”

o      Study 1 – people who had never been through a break-up over-estimated how bad they would feel compared to self-reports of those who had been through a break-up (recent or distant)

o      Study 2 – Surveyed professors given/denied tenure at Texas. Asked how happy they were. Surveyed Asst. Professors looking ahead to the tenure decision. Indicated current happiness, and happiness after being denied/granted tenure.

§       Results – Forecasters thought they would be significantly happier if they got tenure than if they were rejected for a period of at least 5 years. In reality, no effect of tenure decision on global happiness among those surveyed.

o      Study 3 – Voters overestimated how bad they would feel 1 month after the (1994 Texas) gubernatorial candidate they voted for lost vs. won. No huge effects.

o      Other research – Lottery winners overestimate persistence of positive emotions, negativity bias stronger than positivity bias. “Random Act of kindness” experiment (listen to webcast!!)

·      Gilovich et al. “The Spotlight Effect in Social Judgment.”

o      (1998) Participants played lie/truth-telling game in groups. Told lies 20% of the time, detected 26% of the time, but thought they were detected 49% of the time. Anchor on knowledge, insufficiently adjust for others’ perspective

o      (2000) Study 1 – people overestimated how many others would notice they wore a Barry Manilow t-shirt. Study 2: Vanilla Ice t-shirt. Anchor on own perception, adjust for other’s but insufficiently