PSYC 104 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Equilibrium Point, Cockroach, Social Loafing
PSYC104 Midterm Study Guide
BACKGROUND ON SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
- Experimental methodology
oAsking a question has 2 follow up questions
Ex: are lectures an effective way of teaching?
Dependent variable: what do you mean by effective? How do you measure
effectiveness? Retention of material? Enthusiasm?
Independent variable: what comparisons are you making? Lectures compared to
what? Self-studying?
- Studies of social psychology
oBaby names: children with names that start at the beginning of the alphabet don’t do
better than those that start at the end of the alphabet (unless they go into economics)
Most people choose nice names for children, but don’t consider initials of children
Experiment: found people with good and bad initials and correlated age of death.
People with negative initials die younger than people with positive initials. People
with normal initials fall in the middle
More women tend to die with negative initials and less women tend to die with
positive initials because women can marry and change their names, causing a shift
from neutral to negative, or positive to negative, etc.
oConversations: almost everyone who talks says ‘um’ a lot
Experiment: went to lectures and tallied the amount of times professor said ‘um’
Number of ‘um’s depended on lecture subject
Sciences: 1.4 times/min
Social sciences: 4/min
Humanities: 6/min (choosing from bigger set of words)
oWhy are people fascinated by made up stories? (TV shows, plays, novels, etc.)
Argument: driven by desire for suspense
Experiment: found that spoilers enhance experience. Hard to gather individual data,
because can’t compare you watching spoiled movie vs. not spoiled movie. Only
know aggregate level of spoilers are enhancers
Relevant for mystery stories, literary stories, and stories with ironic twists
Why are spoilers enhancers? Watch things more deeply and ignore surface details
- Relationships
oPropinquity: tend to have relationships with people who are near you (location-wise)
o(Mere) exposure effect: You like things more if you are exposed to it more
Experiment: exposure to works of art/music. You usually rate things higher if you’ve
seen/heard them more often. Sense of familiarity becomes a sense of liking
faces you see more you will rate as more beautiful
Perceptual fluency: easier to process if seen more often so you like it more
more exposed to people near you (propinquity) so more attracted to them
ohalo effect: people are attracted to cuteness
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People rate attractive people better on other dimensions besides attractiveness
Juries are more lenient toward cute criminals than to unattractive criminals
Can drive the halo effect the other way
Experiment: Half the time, professor delivered lecture nicely. Other time,
professor delivered lecture badly. Then, students rated professor based on
cuteness. Professor rated cuter if they delivered the lecture nicely
Because you think one person is more attractive, you treat them better
Tends to concentrate in social domains, not intelligence. Beautiful people are more
charismatic, not necessarily more intelligent
oSelf-fulfilling prophecy: you bring out in people what you believe they are. How you
treat someone affects how they act
Experiment: man and woman talk over the phone. Man sees a picture of the girl. The
picture is either attractive or unattractive. The girl doesn’t know which picture he’s
seen and the man thinks the picture he’s seen is the girl. If the man thinks the girl is
attractive, the man tries to be charismatic to illicit positive behavior. This causes the
woman to feel more beautiful and talk more charismatically. A 3rd party hears how
the woman talks and believes she is more attractive if she thinks she’s beautiful
oAssortative mating: people tend to date similar people in attractiveness/interests
Can occur through mere exposure. You see yourself the most, so you are more
attracted to people that have the same attractiveness
Exception: rich and attractive people date. Wealth and beauty tied in value (equity)
You’re more interested in someone who is like you. Relationships work because
you’re interested in the same things
Parents love children more than their spouse because children are more like them
Study: tried facilitated speaking of autistic people, but falsified data. However, one
philosopher tried this with a 30-year-old man with the mind of a 1-year-old. She
believed that the facilitated speaking was working and fell in love with the man,
since she ‘spoke’ for him as herself, and fell in love with herself
oEquity: you’re more attracted to people that have traits that tie with your traits
Relationship works if the traits of mates have the same value
Buss theory: Wealth in men and beauty in women is the pairing that evolution
selects for, since older men and younger women can have children. Young men who
are attracted to older women can’t have children, so that trait is weeded out
Men have higher earning power through institutionalized sexism. So, they can afford
to get a cute partner because they make money through their job. As women’s
earning increases, the asymmetry decreases and wealth and beauty matchings
decrease. Not built into us, but a rational response with the situation we are put in
oJealousy: is jealousy wired into us?
Males are 50/50 bothered by sexual and emotional infidelity. Females are 25/75
bothered by sexual and emotional infidelity
Evolutionary argument: jealousy built into us. Strong desire to protect mate
oMen and women solve different evolutionary problems through jealousy. If
woman has someone else’s child, man has spent effort on someone else’s
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children and those children aren’t his. Men more bothered by sexual
infidelity. Women don’t want men to divert resources from woman’s baby.
They need resources, so more bothered by emotional infidelity
Non-evolutionary argument: occurs across cultures; people differ in their belief
about men and women’s willingness to have sex without being in love
oMost believe that men are more willing to have sex without being in love
oIf female commits sexual infidelity, more likely female partner is also in love.
If male commits sexual infidelity, not as likely to be in love
oDifferent risks involved with having sex without being in love. If women have
sex, risk of being pregnant. If men have sex and women become pregnant,
men do not have to stay to care for the baby. Not hardwired into us, since
sexual revolution closely followed the invention of contraception pill
Lecture 2
-Kurt Lewin: father of modern social psychology
oPeople are like particles and you can predict what they’ll do based on the forces that act
upon them. Sometimes forces act upon us in conflicting directions (attractive and
repulsive forces). Power these forces have on us is proportional to distance it is from us
in a non-linear fashion (inverse-squared)
- Types of conflicts
oApproach-approach: people tend to choose things that are closer, until they reach
equilibrium (same distance away), then they cannot decide. Putting you in the middle
causes an unstable environment
oAvoid-avoid: move away from things you want to avoid if closer to you. If you are at the
equilibrium point, you don’t move. Putting you in middle causes stable environment
oApproach-avoid: if there’s a tiger and a bowl of chips are in the same area, is it worth it
to go to the bowl of chips? If you are close, the force pushing you away from the tiger is
higher than the force pushing you toward the bowl of chips. However, change in force at
greater distances is different for tigers and bowl of chips. There is a point where the 2
forces in different directions intercept, where you are in stable equilibrium, since each
location you’re in has forces in direction of equilibrium
oDelay of gratification: approach-avoid conflict over time. if A is a big reward that is far
away in time, and B is a smaller reward that is not as far away in time, you’re attracted
to both. Initially, A’s attractiveness is higher because both A and B are far away in time.
But, when you get closer in time to B, the attractiveness of B increases more rapidly
than A’s attractiveness, so you choose route B. When B temptation is immediately
present, very hard to resist, though A is the better option overall
Can overcome temptations by preventing your temptation self from doing the
temptation while you are at the stage of pre-temptation. Can also reform
temptations in different, less appealing terms. Can distract oneself until temptations
have passed
- Social facilitation
oTheory: groups can either enhance or impair individual performance
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Document Summary
Experimental methodology: asking a question has 2 follow up questions. Studies of social psychology: baby names: children with names that start at the beginning of the alphabet don"t do better than those that start at the end of the alphabet (unless they go into economics) Most people choose nice names for children, but don"t consider initials of children. Experiment: found people with good and bad initials and correlated age of death. People with negative initials die younger than people with positive initials. People with normal initials fall in the middle. Experiment: went to lectures and tallied the amount of times professor said um". Number of um"s depended on lecture subject. Humanities: 6/min (choosing from bigger set of words: why are people fascinated by made up stories? (tv shows, plays, novels, etc. ) Hard to gather individual data, because can"t compare you watching spoiled movie vs. not spoiled movie. Only know aggregate level of spoilers are enhancers.
