• i.e. hand washing, rioting, mass suicide
• Conformity

•  
  • 2 kinds of influence – normative and informational social influence

• Obedience
• Influences due the mere presence of others

•  
  •  do better because you’re being observed
    • (Triplett) classic string winding study – people wound string on a reel faster when being observed because of competition instinct rather than when alone
    • triplett attributed to the presence of others causing a competitive instinct to make them work harder

•  
  • Social loafing – do less well because you’re being observed
    • Social inhibition a.k.a. “choking” – why?
      • Arousal (due to evaluation apprehension – awareness of being judged)
      • Dominant response – Whatever aspect is best learned/most habitual takes over as a knee-jerk response

Presence of others >> evaluation apprehension >> arousal >> dominant response

• Social facilitation or inhibition
• Pool hall study – experts did better while in the presence of others while novices shooting pool did worse while people were observing

• Another possible effect on task performance:

• Social loafing

•  
  • Tug of war study – alone 85 kg/person; in groups 61-65kg/person
  
  

• Another reason to loaf:

•  
  • People in groups feel anonymous (in a crowd)
  • Lack evaluation apprehension

• Diener et al. trick or treat study (1976) - children took more candy while they has masks on - they were deindividualized and therefore were more willing to act out 

Deindividuation components: less self-aware, lose evaluation apprehension, feel anonymous, lack responsibility

Nag factor 

How much we like message – disagree: propaganda; agree: education

Techniques for Gaining Social Influence

i.e. persuasive techniques

scarcity – time or numbers

Persuasive techniques

scarcity

“commitment and maintaining consistency”

Pressure: live up to commitments, expectations

Exploit cognitive dissonance

• • • • Foot in the Door (First Step-Gain target’s compliance with a small request-’would you sign a petition to help feed the homeless?’ Second Step-make larger request-‘would you take work for 2 weeks in a soup kitchen?’)
      • Low ball (First step-get an agreement to a specific arrangment-‘get customer to agre to buy a new car for 15,000, Step two-change the terms of the arrangement ‘oh you want tires? 1,000 more dollars’

• Scarcity
• Commitment & consistency (dissonance)
• The norm of reciprocity
• Capturing/disrupting attention

•  
  • Duplex mind – keeps conscious busy
  • Pique technique
  • Disrupt-then-reframe
    • Half-cakes…they’re delicious! (cup cakes, curious!)

•  
  • Familiarity & similarity promote likeability
  • Attractiveness
    • The halo effect
  • Credibility
    • Expertise
    • Rapid speech

• Expertise or similarity – which is it?

•  
  • Personal preference – attitudinal – similar
  • Objective reality  – facts – expert

The communicator: speaking against self-interest (most reliable)

• Fear appeals

•  
  • Can backfire
  • Clear recommendation

• What channel is most persuasive?
• Message difficulty
• Chaiken & Eagly

•  
  • Hard or easy message (central route for difficult, peripheral route for simple)
  • Written, audio, or video message (for hard & easy)
  • DV: opinion change
  • For easy: video is best, written worst, audio = middle
  • For hard: written is best, video less good, audio = worst 
  • The more difficult, the more time you should give people to absorb
  
  

• Focus on central or peripheral route to persuasion?

•  
  • Need for Cognition (NCog Scale)
  • Quality of argument

• Minimal groups paradigm (exploring)

•  
  • Work over and over
  • Kind of astonishing? 
  • Go to people similar to us
  • Naturally categorize people in groups.
  • Make comparisons between ‘in’ group and ‘out’ group.
    • FAVOR ‘IN’ group.
      • Called prejudice.
      
      

• Assign people to groups
• See groups we belong to as importance of ourselves. 
• We want to feel good about the groups we belong to.

•  
  • Used minimal paradigm in classroom
  • Kids judged by color of their eyes.
    • Blue eyed is dominant—brown eyed is bad.
    • Children discriminated based on Jane Elliot's treatment on the eyes she chose to discriminate - blue eyed kids did better in class, had privileges while brown eyed children did worse 

•  
  • Need to belong
    • Basic psychological need is to have STRONG, STABLE RELATIONSHIPS
    • Psychological and physical well being
    • Group membership
    • Joanna Goplen’s group symbols work
      • Different group symbols could be difference in performance. (nole symbol---noles would do better)
  • Commitment over time
    • Escalation of commitment 
      • Cognitive dissonance
  • Social identity theory & ‘feeling good’
    • Jim Jones
    
    

• Some groups demand outgroup derogation (talk smack) or worse

•  
  • Nature of the commitment
    • Dehumanizing acts
      • Results of the cognitive dissonance in rollie pollie study
      • If killing is upsetting, you distance yourself even more from group you are committing acts too.
      • E.g. training of Greek military police tortures.
      
      

• Prejudice reduction

•  
  • Institutional level?
    • Fair institutional norms.
  • Personal level?
    • Practice-keep trying not to apply this information.
    • ‘ironic effects’ of suppression
      • obsessing about something you try to get rid of
      • stereotype rebound-resurgence of info we have tried to suppress.
      
      

• What would realistic conflict theory suggest?
  • Realistic conflict theory-tension when you see there is a competition.
  • Robbers Cave Sheriff and Sheriff 1954
  • Groups should mesh unless there are competition
  • 22 boys, 11 year olds to a state park. Split groups to go off and come up with a name for a group that was then put into t-shirts (rattlers and eagle) and made flags. Brought two groups together after being housed in separate cabins for a week. Just found out they existed. Name calling occurred. Started developing realistic conflict…more antipathy. Then made them compete in tug of war. Which led to even more conflict.  After they did this, they went to dinner and movies….still did not like eachother (contact hypothesis)….then told them they had to work together to repair something (superordinate goals) they saw them get along now.
    •  
      
      

• Merely being in a group…
  • See “social influence’
  • Task that makes groups cooperate – SUPER ORDINATE GOAL.
  • Note: ‘the commons dilemma’-super old phenomenon. Commons were shared area where people raised cattle. Shared pasture…they can take share and sustain it or keep putting cows on it. shared resource----overuse it and not take care of it.

• Groupthink
  • Group members think alike, self-censor, bad decisions
  • Cohesive groups- when people get together because they are all together (ENRON)
  • Strong , decisive leader
  • Isolation from contrary views
  • Elitism
  • Devil’s advocate-BEST WAY TO PREVENT IT. have one person who’s job it is to oppose the argument.  (expose to contrary views)
    •  
• Transactive memory-instead of going through what I need to remember…I remember who knows what of what I need to remember.
  •  
    
    

Stereotypes and Prejudices

Cognitive sources: can you fill in the blanks?

Dr. Devine’s Dissociation model

• Stereotype endorsement
• Stereotype knowledge

Step 1: automatic: activation

Step 2: controlled: 

• Why automatic activation?
• Socialization history (i.e., social sources)
• Personal beliefs more recent
• Prejudiced attitudes as cognitive networks

•  
  • Associations weaken with disuse

• When people DO NOT or CANNOT actively control stereotypes, they influence responses

•  
  • Motivation
    • IMS and EMS = scale of ability to respond without prejudice
    • Internally motivated people respond better to controlling stereotypes

• Prejudice = Attitude

•  
  • Affect
    • E.g., antipathy, interracial anxiety
  • Behavior: Discrimination
  • Cognition: Stereotype
  
  

• • Duplex mind

•  
  • Explicit prejudice
    • Overt bias
    • Policy decisions
  • Implicit prejudice
  •  
    • Unintentional responses
    • Uncontrollable, fast responses
      • E.g., nonverbal behavior
      • We pay most attention to controlling Explicit
      • We pay most attention to observing Implicit 
    • Dual attitude approach
    
    

• Explicit & implicit attitudes

•  
  • Ambivalence
    • Simultaneous attitudes conflict
    • Implicit often more negative than explicit
      • Aversive racism – only when given “policy” excuse/justification is it applied
    • Positively valenced evaluations are not always flattering
      • Warmth vs. competence
      • Particularly after criticism (Sinclair & Kunda)
      • Ambivalent sexism & elder speak
      
      

• Cognitive sources

•  
  • Does our thinking predispose us to prejudice?

• Social sources

•  
  • What social factors facilitate prejudice?

• Motivational sources

•  
  • Are we motivated to evaluate others negatively? 
  • Pre-existing expectations will exacerbate effect of illusory correlation
    • We notice & recall events consistent with our expectations
    • Called: confirmation bias (pay attention bc you want to)

• Out-group homogeneity - Tend to see in-group as high variability
• Music preference study
• Book says = CROSS-RACE EFFECT

•  
  • individuals show superior performance in identifying faces of their own race
  
  

• Prejudice is aided by authoritarian personality:

•  
  • Rigid adherence to norms, generalized hostility, and intolerance for different groups
  • Result of strict, domineering parents
  • As adults, displace hostility toward parents onto safe targets (i.e., minorities)
  • In Zimbardo study, authoritarian guards more likely to take abuse
    • People become the roles they are given - prisoners became depressed and passive - guards became abusive and sadistic 
    • ended study early because he lost all objectivity
    
    

• Social identity theory: 

•  
  • Group membership
  • Categorize
  • Identify with certain groups (ingroups)
  • Compare our ingroups to outgroups
  • Self-image maintenance
  • Favor our ingroup (ingroup bias)
  • Minimal group paradigm
    • Merely separating into groups produces ingroup bias
  • Modern art study:
    • Preference of modern paintings: Klee or Kandinsky
    • Asked pps to divide bonus points
    • Pps gave more pts to their own group
  • Self-image maintenance and outgroup derogation
  • Fein & Spencer
    • An ego threat should make people more likely to be prejudiced
    • Pps were given + or – intelligence feedback
    • Then read a story about a gay or straight actor
    • Rated liking for actor
    
    

Consequences of Prejudice:

For the Target

• For target

•  
  • Self-esteem; not lower in minority groups
    • Among Americans, highest in African-Americans
  • Vulnerability to stress
    • Direct (e.g., offensive comments)
    • Indirect (.e.g., DWB)
    • Stereotype threat
      • Cognitive load (less available)
      • Subtler consequences?
        • “headaches” associated with being the target of stereotypes?

Consequences of Prejudice:

For the Perceiver

• For perceiver

•  
  • stereotype lift
    • When stereotype is activated for you, you do worse
  • Distortion
    • Biased evaluation, self-fulfilling prophecies, biased memory (e.g., source monitoring errors, stereotypic attribution)
  • Interaction 
    • Verbal and nonverbal behavior
    • We fill in blanks based on how our stereotypes
    • (EXTERNALLY motivated people more worried about how they sound)
  • Ego depletion 
    • “When Prejudice Does Not Pay” Study (Richeson & Shelton, 2003)
    • IAT
    • Interaction
    • Stroop task
    • Also for observers!
    
    

• Stereotype suppression & rebound
• Practice non-prejudiced thoughts & behaviors

•  
  • Devine’s dissociation model: networks weaken when you practice over time not applying prejudice*
  • Unpleasant feelings (Monteith) - keep us motivated to be better
  • IMS vs EMS (Plant)*

• Institutional interventions

•  
  • Support from institution
  • Multicultural (equal value) vs. colorblind or assimilationist perspectives
  
  

DONT 

- leadership and power

*ON TEST no prejudice on arabs and muslims

*DEFINITION QUESTIONS ON EXAM 3!

LOOK IN BOOK:

REALISTIC GROUP CONFLICT THEORY

SCAPEGOAT THEORY

Out-group homogeneity: perceive all those not in your group as the same

• • • • Bait and switch (First Step-Advertise a low price on a new stereo, spur the target to take a course of action. Step two That stereo is junk but for 99 more dollars buy this beauty. Describe course as unwise suggest alternative.
      • Labeling (First Step- ‘you are a very generous person!’, assign the target a trait label. Second step-seek compliance with a label consistent request ‘can you contribute to the grad student fund?’)
        • Statement ensures its fulfillment due to the behavior it produces.
        • Expect behavior consistent with label. Interaction affected by expectations. Elicit label-consistent behavior.
        • Be careful how you label!!
        • Want a Tidier Roommate?
          • OPTIONS:
          • 1—you’re too messy
          • 2—some peoples roommates are messy but you’re a clean roommate
          • 3—thanks for (behavior) some roommates are messy…
            • 3 is operant conditioning.
            • Apparently 
            • Recollection 

Assign a person a label, statement ensures its fulfillment due to the behavior it produces