PSY220H1 Study Guide - Final Guide: Availability Heuristic, Group Decision-Making, Reference Group
PSY220
Three Motivational Principles
People direct their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours toward three important goals:
○ People strive for mastery - safety and comfort, achievement, success, etc
We like to be able to understand our world and make accurate predictions about the
consequences of our actions
We want to be correct and know that our reality is correct
○ People seek connectedness - belonging and being accepted by others
○ People value "me and mine": Motivated to protect ourselves and the things/people that
matter most to us
Three Processing Principles
• These operate as we gather and interpret information about the world
○ Conservatism: established views are slow to change (attitudes, impressions, norms) One
reason: est'd knowledge tends to perpetuate itself (self-fulfilling bias)
Ex. Views on homosexual marriage has changed slowly over past twenty years
○ Accessibility: accessible information has the largest impact on our thoughts, feelings,
behaviours - we can't bring to mind everything we know about a person / topic
We have limited mental resources, so we rely on majority, heuristics, and the norm
○ Superficiality vs. Depth: we are cognitive misers - our default mode is to process things at a
superficial level, which goes along with the limited mental resources we have
It is neither good or bad as it is not always good to ponder greatly on whether you
should buy the chocolate-covered donut or the jelly-filled donut
Example would be a logic puzzle that requires much more thought than it appears
Social Cognition:
Social cognition refers to how we process, store, and apply social information. The three
processing principles are relevant to our understanding of social cognition. Conservatism is the
principle that established views, like attitudes and norms, are resistant to change. We often
ignore information that challenges our views and attend to information that aligns with our views.
Accessibility is the principle that highly accessible information has the largest impact on our
thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
- Priming increases accessibility (donald study)
The principle of superficiality vs. depth describes our tendency to process information at a
superficial level unless specifically motivated otherwise.
- Outcome-dependence motivates us to carefully process information (i.e., when our
success/failure is linked to another person’s success/failure)
- Neuberg & Fiske, 1987 “Frank” study: participants volunteered to participate in a
“patient reintegration program”; they were told that they were going to interact
with Frank, a former schizophrenic patient
- Independent variables:
i. Outcome dependency
- winning $20 either depended on partner or not
ii. Personal profile
: participants received profile of Frank which contained
either neutral
information (irrelevant to schizophrenic category) or positive
information that was inconsistent with schizophrenic category
- DV: whether participants would form attribute-based impressions or
category-based impressions of Frank
- Results: all participants given inconsistent personal information about Frank
formed attribute-based impressions (regardless of outcome dependence).
Participants whose success was tied to Frank’s success (outcome dependence)
formed attribute-based impressions of Frank. Only participants who were given
neutral information (could be interpreted negatively, schizophrenic label) and
whose outcome was not
dependent on Frank formed category-based
impressions → they were not motivated to engage in elaborate processing; only
used the “schizophrenic” label to form impressions of Frank
- We are also motivated to engage in more elaborate processing when we want to be
accurate or when we are suspicious of someone’s motives (Marchland 2006 study)
We are cognitive misers; processing information at a superficial level conserves time and
cognitive resources. One way to conserve resources is by depending on heuristics, or mental
shortcuts, to make judgments and understand social information. We rely on heuristics rather
than rational decision-making when we are under cognitive load or when we don’t care about
the issue at hand.
-Availability heuristic → related to principle of accessibility
: when we make judgments
based on how easy it is to bring certain pieces of information to mind
Conservatism:
Attitude heuristic → related to principle of conservatism
:
we use our attitudes about an object
to make a judgment or decision; we make biased judgments based on our attitudes about an
object - therefore we tend to perpetuate our existing beliefs (Ronald Reagan’s college grades
study; page 137 - students that liked Reagan predicted that he had better grades in college than
students that didn’t like Reagan).
Motivational principles
Mastery: we are motivated to strive for mastery in understanding the world around us, being
competent people. We categorize information into groups, or stereotypes, which allows us to go
beyond the information given → helps satisfy our motivation to feel like we are competent
people, we can make competent decisions.
Connectedness: when we make social categorizes, we divide them into the ingroup (“my”
group) and the outgroup. Being part of a social group is rewarding to us because it fulfills our
motivation for connectedness; we desire to feel like we belong. We may
Valuing “me and mine”: when we create ingroups and outgroups, we immediately show
preferential treatment towards members of our group -- ingroup favouritism. We are motivated
to see ourselves and our group in a positive light. Ingroup favouritism refers to the tendency to
see our own group as being better in many ways, and we allocate more rewards to members of
our own group.
- Minimal group paradigm (evidence): arbitrarily dividing people into groups → ingroup
favouritism is shown immediately. Subjects liked those in their group more and they
allocated more money and rewards to members of their group. (Tajfel study, pg 144;
lecture 9 pg 18-20).
- False consensus effect: we tend to overestimate the percentage of people that agree
with us on an issue; possibly because we surround ourselves with people that agree with
us because we want to see ourselves, our group in a positive light
- Self-serving bias: we want to see ourselves in a positive light, so we tend to attribute
our success to dispositional factors and failures to factors beyond our control
*there are tons of things you can talk about in relation to this topic- you can get into social
categorization, stereotypes, expectations (behavioral confirmation and such), in-group/out-group
effects but I think this is a good enough overview? Let me know if not!
Conformity
Motivational principles:
(1)(2) Mastery: Informational influences, Connectedness: Normative influences
(3) Value ‘me and mine’: identification with a group
(1)(2) When doing intellectual tasks, the need for mastery may take precedence over the
need for connectedness, because they require us to focus on facts and information.
Establishing mastery is more important in these tasks than expressing connectedness. In
judgmental tasks, the focus is on value-laden social and personal issues. The need for
connectedness is then more important than the need for mastery. Whenever connectedness
concerns are activated, it is the norms of “me and mine” in-groups that impact what people
think, feel, and do. But, most of the time, the need for mastery, the need for connectedness, and
the need to value “me and mine” are fulfilled simultaneously by conformity to group norms.
These functions make conformity to norms central to success in social life.
Conforming to group norms satisfies our need for mastery, because people believe that
consensus tells something about reality; and gives us feelings of connectedness, because
conforming to group norms results in attaining a positive and valued social identity, and in
winning respect from other group members. A group has informational influence when people
conform because of the need for mastery, and normative influence when conforming out of their
need for connectedness. The type of task influences which need is more important and which
people serve as a reference group. The presence of group members, identification, and the
frequency and closeness of interaction influence the amount of conformity to group norms.
(3)A reference group is the group of people you turn to when needing support for a
decision or evaluation. Because intellective tasks have a single answer, many people can serve
as a reference group; however, when making judgmental decisions, people turn to those who
have similar attitudes, values, and relationships. People are more influenced by in-group
members than by out-group members, because we do not expect to agree with out-group
members or people we dislike. Persuasive appeals from in-group members are more likely to be
accepted, and are processed more systematically than appeals from out-group members. When
messages from in-group members are strong, they are most likely to be accepted, while weak
messages are most likely to be rejected. Messages from out-group members are most likely to
be rejected, regardless of the quality of the argument. Conformity to group norms occurs even
when group members are not present, but the presence of group members increases conformity
