PSYC 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Fundamental Attribution Error, Cognitive Dissonance, Prosocial Behavior
24 May 2018
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Psych 101 – Post Exam #2
Social Psychology – someone else around, behavior in groups
Attitudes: 3 components
- Affect
- Behavior – you should behave similarly to the group
- Cognition – sometimes strong attitudes are prevalent
If you’re not sure about how you feel about something, or what you think about something consider your
behavior… (e.g. carrots)
Attitude formation: I don’t know I need to get this
The Facial Feedback Hypothesis: emotional experience is determined in part by feedback from facial
expressions
GET THE REST FROM THE SLIDES
- Attitudes: cognitive, affective, behavioral components
- Leon F – grandfather of social psych
- Cognitive dissonance theory: when our behavior doesn’t match up with our attitudes → this theory
states that you want your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to be consistent with one another
- Cognitive dissonance → an uncomfortable state that occurs when behavior and attitudes do not
match → how can this be resolved?
- “The Doomsday Cult” – small town in Ohio, 1960s, Miriam had been communicating with people
and telling them that the world was going to end → she believed that she could come back
- Leon F (John Carlsmith) was a professor at Yale studying social psych and they saw Miriam’s story
in the Ohio newspaper and he comes down to Ohio and uses an allius as John Carlsmith who is
actually his graduate student at Yale. The cult got bigger just to believe in Miriam. s
- Insufficient justification: attitudes toward a boring experimental task
- “Synanda” – the most boring experimental task until it becomes a social psych experiment
- External justification = a reason or an explanation for dissonant personal behavior that resides
outside the individual (eg in order to receive a large reward or avoid a severe punishment)
Attribution: young girl sees professor pearlberg falls and sees him….your reaction? Laughing and saying “wow
how clumsy is he!”
- Internal/external…dispositional/situational
- Fundamental attribution error (FAE)
◼ A tendency to attribute others’ behavior to internal factors
◼ Why is this woman yelling at her companion? A heuristic – a rule of thumb
◼ Self-serving bias – ourselves doing behavior – “it’s tricky” “that exam didn’t cover what he
talked about in class” – when a negative behavior happens you will attribute that to the
external factor
Attraction: 3 key factors:
- Physical attractiveness
- Similarity
- Proximity – “Propinquity Effect” – if you hear something more and more it changes the way you
feel about it → the more exposure to a stimulus the more you it changes you feel about it
o “college dorm study”
Altruism: doing good things simply for the sake of them being good
- Any external praise is not true altruism
- Prosocial behavior (def. actions that benefit others)
- What causes bystander effect?
- What factors influence helping behaviors?
- What motivates …..?
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- Why don’t we help?
o Ambiguity of the situation
o Diffusion of responsibility
- Why does the bystander effect occur?
o Ambiguity – “is this really an emergency?”
o IMPORTANT: IF IT’S A FAMILY MEMBER OF A FRIEND, THAT SENSE OF
RESPONSIBILITY GETS THROWN OUT THE WINDOW
o Pluralistic ignorance
o Fwkjfnkjwfn GET THIS!
o Bystander effect
▪ Does the person notice the event? → does the person interpret the situation as an
emergency? → does the person
o When will we help?
▪ Number of bystanders → if 2 people see you fall off a pier
• Noticing and understanding it as an emergency
• Assuming responsibility
▪ When someone else does
• Similarity
▪ Mood
o Altruism:
▪ Egoistic model: helping motivated by anticipated gain
- Groups:
o Two or more persons interacting with one another such that each person influences—and is
influended by—each other person
▪ Competition, bonding
o Roles: specialization of function within positions
▪ Formal vs. informal
o Norms:
▪ Unwritten rules of behavior accepted by members
▪ Productivity norms
o Group performance
▪ Social facilitation (zajonc)
• When task is simple or well-learned
▪ Social inhibition
• When task is complex or new
PAPER #2
Two page MAX , 1 ½ or double-spaced, 12-font
RQ: are people more emotional when they are tired?
Emotions you might use: anger, sadness, joy, irritability
** operationalize variables: pick one emotion and one type of tiredness
Emotional tiredness, physical tiredness, cognitive tiredness and sleep deprivation
** design a study or experiment: describe with appropriate terminology!
Describe: subjects, recruitment, cover story, paradigm to conduct your research
** procedure (in detail): precisely what goes on… IV manipulation, DV measurement
Discuss limitations (ext/confounding variables) to your story
Confounding/extraneous variable
know personality characteristics of any of those peple in your groups
1) Kff
2) Wkfw
3) Appariti
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4) Procedure
Irritability: insult
4/23/18
Social Psychology III
Paper details:
Method section: participants, locations, apparati, procedure → limitations to your study
Social Loafing
Behavior inside of a group –
Productivity = group potential = process loss
◼ Group potential – sum of individual inputs
◼ Process loss – faulty group processes
Rope pulling apparati – gives a measurement for how hard someone pulled the rope
If 4 people are pulling the rope with the same strength, they didn’t pull as hard → people pulling together makes
them lazier, not pulling as hard
Why does social loafing occur?
Possible causes:
1. Coordination loss
a. Riggleman made it that everyone was far enough away from each other that they wouldn’t step
on each other’s feet
2. Motivation loss
a. Researchers use cover stories
Individual variables
- Can’t be individually evaluated
- If they can’t be individually evaluated then social loafing goes away
- Involvement in task is low
- Contribution perceived as redundant
Situation variables
- Easy task
- Teammates seen as high in ability
- Cohesiveness is low
How Does Group Compare to Individuals?
**remember the chart that’s on this slide**
- Brainstorming (creative task)
- Good brainstorming happens when people do their task first individually and then after to put them
in a group
- Group problem solving
- Group decision making – “Risky shift” → individuals making assertions → gran Pri of Monacco →
if you win the race car competition, youre in 2nd place and you wanna finish first → when he made
the turn at the last turn, he either made the bold pass or he failed
The possibility of him passing is 6.
- Group polarization = not so much about shifting towards risk
Making the pass to the elementary school = 4
Group polarization = are more extreme than individual means
- Groupthink
A group of people is making a much worse decision than any of the individuals would have – none of the
people told JFK the truth, only informed of things that would confirm they were following his orders →
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Social psychology someone else around, behavior in groups. Behavior you should behave similarly to the group. Cognition sometimes strong attitudes are prevalent. If you"re not sure about how you feel about something, or what you think about something consider your behavior (e. g. carrots) Attitude formation: i don"t know i need to get this. The facial feedback hypothesis: emotional experience is determined in part by feedback from facial expressions. Leon f grandfather of social psych. Cognitive dissonance theory: when our behavior doesn"t match up with our attitudes this theory states that you want your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to be consistent with one another. The doomsday cult small town in ohio, 1960s, miriam had been communicating with people and telling them that the world was going to end she believed that she could come back. The cult got bigger just to believe in miriam. s. Insufficient justification: attitudes toward a boring experimental task.
