SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

CH-1
Motivational theories
Learning – social learning theory – Aronson Pg 371

CH-2
Schemas – Baron Pg 73 to 76
Mental frameworks which help categorize the social information we keep getting from
around us.
Impact on social cognition:

 Attention – what you notice. Schemas act as a filter when there is too much
information, so you only pay attention to info which falls in line with a schema.
 Encoding – what you manage to store in your mind is also inevitably info consistent
with a schema. However, sometimes highly inconsistent info also gets stored with a
special tag. Eg: a professor doing magic tricks.
 Retrieval – what you manage to retrieve. Generally, info consistent with schemas are
quickly retrieved when we have to report info, but if we are asked to recall and
remember something, inconsistent info may be retrieved too.
Priming – Generally, the stronger and more developed schemas are what influence our
thought. However, sometimes a situation itself could activate one specific schema –
priming. Movie and aggression example.
Unpriming – An activated schema could dissipate after it is expressed, and so their influence
disappears. Example of study where participants had to give wrong and then random
answers to easy questions.
Schemas have a strong perseverance effect and cannot be changed easily. They are also self-
fulfilling – they influence our responses and make it consistent to the schemas. Example of
teacher and blooming study.

Theory of correspondent inference – Baron Pg 111 to 112

Given by Jones and Davis. Explains how attribution of people’s behaviour can help us know
about their traits. Not always an easy task because sometimes people may do specific things
because they are forced and not because that is their true personality.
3 ways in which attribution happens:
  By focusing on behaviour that may have been freely chosen by him rather than
forced on him.
 By focusing on actions that show effects that can be produced by only that action
and nothing else (called noncommon effects). Hence revealing their true personality
 By focusing on behaviour that is not the most socially desirable one and hence
unique.

Theory of causal attributions by Kelly – Baron Pg 112 to 113

Understanding WHY people behave a certain way, or WHY events happen.

 Whether it’s because of internal or external causes or both. Depends on consensus

(the extent to which other people also behave in the same way as them), consistency
(the extent to which they behave in the same way in such a situation over time) and
distinctiveness (the extent to which they behave in the same way in other
situations).

Consensus and distinctiveness low Internal cause

Consistency high
All 3 are high External cause
Consensus is low Both internal and external cause
Distinctiveness and consistency are high

Waiter flirting with customer example to understand it better.

 Whether the behaviour is stable or unstable over time.

 Whether the behaviour is within their control or out of their control.
 Later addition – whether people attribute an event to fate or to their own actions.
This majorly depends on their religious beliefs, and on whether they believe in
complex causality (there could be multiple causes for an event, not just one).
Our interpretation of someone’s action could also make a difference – action identification.

Attribution biases – Baron Pg 115 to 126

1. Correspondence bias
Attributing others’ behaviour to their dispositions and personality (internal causes) without
considering the external situational causes. Also known as fundamental attribution error.
“He is just that kind of a person”.
Is actually very common even in cases where it’s been told that there are external causes.
Example of people having to read an essay about Fidel Castro’s rule and form an opinion
about the writer. Similarly, another study where people attributed their own behavioural
traits to ‘depends on the situation’, while those of their friends/family/strangers were clear
cut traits.
We are more likely to use the attribution bias in the case of women than men, especially
while reaching conclusions about whether they are emotional and so on. Study conducted
where they were shown pictures of facial expressions with captions about why they have
that expression. In spite of that, when asked to respond quickly, people thought that
women were emotional but men were having a bad day.
Why it occurs: not clear but 2 possibilities:

 We focus so much on the person’s actions that the situational factors fade into the
background.
 We initially attribute everything to internal factors and then attempt to correct it by
considering the external factors, but this correction hardly happens.
Interesting: we tend to think that we are less likely to fall victim to this bias than others.

2. Actor-observer effect
We tend to attribute our behaviour to internal causes and others’ behaviour to external
causes.
Why it happens: we know more about the situation when its our own behaviour, and less
about others.

3. Self-serving bias
We tend to attribute positive outcomes to internal causes and negative outcomes to
external causes. Why it happens:

 Cognitive model: we wish to succeed; hence we don’t want to accept that negative
outcomes are because of ourselves.
 Motivational model: to protect our own self esteem.
Cultural differences.

Impression formation and management – Baron Pg 126 to 129

When we have to form a first impression of someone, we often use implicit personality
theories – if we know one of their traits, we tend to assume that they have other related
traits too. Majorly differs based on cultures and societal beliefs. For instance, some
connected traits are kind-honest-sincere and intelligent-practical-ambitious.
Birth order traits – we often assume that depending on whether they are a first-born,
middle-born, last-born or an only child, they have specific traits.
Often, these implicit theories are so strong that our first impressions are more consistent
with them rather than what is actually true.
People put in a lot of effort into creating a good first impression, and research shows that it
makes a difference too. Common tactics of impression management:

 Self-enhancement: People focus on their personal appearance (looks, physical

beauty), professional appearance (dressing style, hygiene) or by talking about their
achievements, how they coped with struggles, about their qualities etc.
 Other-enhancement: Focusing on making the other person feel good and positive.
Agreeing with their pov, listening to them, helping them, asking for their opinion,
flattering and praising them etc.
These tactics are actually effective, especially in open ended job interviews because people
who make a good first impression tend to get hired. However, whether they will maintain
that impression with their performance is not assured. Such people generally have good
social skills, but there is no surety about the other factors in job performance.
However, overdoing these tactics could also backfire. Slime effect – people are respectful to
their seniors, but rude to their subordinates. Moreover, too much of flattery results in
suspicion and mistrust, hence ruining the impression.
We indulge in these tactics not just because we want to please others but also because we
feel good when we put effort into presenting ourselves (facial feedback hypothesis).
Example of study of committed people who were happier after interacting with a stranger.

CH-3
Personal vs social identity – Baron Pg 144 to 146

 Personal identity – intragroup comparisons – we see ourselves as unique and

describe ourselves in terms of how different we are from other people and groups. It
could differ majorly depending on who you are comparing yourself too. Eg.: more
liberal than my family, more conservative than my friends
 Social identity – intergroup comparisons – we see ourselves as part of different social
groups and describe ourselves on the basis of the similarities we have with other
members of that specific group.
In both cases, the group we are talking about determines which aspect and self-concept is
salient. Sometimes could be contrasting views about ourselves too, but they don’t conflict
because not all of them are salient all the time.

Self-awareness – Aronson Pg 140 to 143

The amount people have started thinking about themselves has increased in the past few
years.
Self-awareness theory – when outside circumstances force you to look at yourself, you tend
to become self-conscious and start introspecting on and judging your inner values. For eg, if
we see ourselves smoking in a shop window, we tend to start thinking of whether to quit it,
and it directs our behaviour accordingly. If you can’t change your behaviour, your mood gets
affected because you have disagreeable feedback about yourself.
Studies show that being more self-aware has resulted in people feeling worse about
themselves. Some use mechanisms to cope with this, either in bad ways (alcoholism, sexual
machoism) or good ways (religion, spirituality).
Being self-aware doesn’t always have to be bad – when you have achieved something good,
being self-focused is a good thing. Moreover, when you’re self-aware, you also tend to be
more aware of your moral standards to keep yourself in line.
However, all of the above based on western culture studies, where self-awareness is outside
perspective based. In Asian cultures, it is internal perspective based (people look at
themselves as another person would).

Self-esteem measurement – Baron Pg 152 to 153

Self-esteem – general attitude towards ourselves
Knowing about our successes – self-esteem goes up. Vice versa for failures. Moreover,
getting negative feedback about ourselves, being told that we didn’t live up to the ideals –
self-esteem goes down.
Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale – most famous scale, 10 items, explicit self-esteem. Criticism
– people could fake their responses for self-preservation, in order to look like they have high
self-esteem.
Hence, greater emphasis on implicit self-esteem in recent times. Participants don’t know coz
the items of the test are not direct. Implicit Associations Test. Implicit self-esteem can also
change depending on circumstance. Test conducted connecting it to classical conditioning –
participants shown ‘I’ with positive words very quickly – their self-esteem was higher, even
when they took negative feedback about themselves.
Parental styles – nurturing parents means higher self-esteem. Overprotective parents in
adolescence means lower self-esteem.

Self-serving biases – Baron 159 to 160

Among Americans and Japanese too – people have positive illusions – unrealistic optimism
expectation that they are at least slightly better than the average and their peers – above
average effect. This boosts self-esteem
Generally, tend to refuse taking responsibility for negative outcomes, but instantly note and
remember when someone says/points out that you are responsible for the positive
outcome.
Higher positive illusion – higher motivation to do the task – higher persistence when there
are problems. However, having very high self-esteem could be harmful and could increase
chances of failure when you are doing something.

Self-esteem sex differences – Baron Pg 156 to 157

General notion – men have a higher self-esteem than women. Mainly because historically,
women have been targets of prejudice and have had lower social status positions. But some
important points to be noted:

 Women have lower self-esteem in countries where they are still excluded from life
arenas. In other countries, insignificant differences in the levels between men and
women.
 In places where women face discrimination at workplace and physical
violence/harm, their self-esteem is lower.
 Among prepubescents, very negligible differences found. Only from early
adolescence, when discrimination becomes more, women’s self-esteem also drops.
 After about 65, the self-esteem levels are kind of at the same level for both men and
women.

Self-presentation – Baron Pg 135 to 140 (excluding the boxes)

 All of us feel that we know ourselves the best. But contrary to popular belief, the fact
that we know our intentions may actually be the reason why we are inaccurate
about ourselves. For eg, I am late all the time, but my perception about myself is not
that because I feel like I am at least trying to be on time.
 Taking behavioural self-reports are also misleading, because I would still not say that
I am late in a test. Only others would say that about me.
 One way to solve this – experiment where people were given an audio recorder,
recording sounds from their life for 4 days. Alongside, they had to give a self-report
about their behaviour, along with some of their close friends and family members. In
some cases, close ones seemed to know more, while sometimes, they seemed to
know more about themselves.
 Self-presentation tactics – self-promotion, self-verification perspective (processes we
use in order to make other believe in the same views we believe in), ingratiation
(praising others to make them feel good) and self-depreciation. It is very common for
people to lie to present themselves in a specific way.

Self-regulation – Baron Pg 382 to 383

  Some say that it takes cognitive effort to regulate your behaviour. For this, self-
control is necessary, which often gets depleted after a while, which is why many of
us don’t use the cognitive effort for self-regulation.
 Some others say that only implicit positive attitudes matter for self-regulation. In
fact, having prosocial attitudes and thoughts in the mind to help others can help
regulate aggressive behaviour.
 Solutions for self-regulation – focusing on internal mechanisms and making them
stronger – observing non-aggressive models and how they remain calm – teaching
individuals when their cognitive resources are getting stretched and when they are
losing their calm.

CH-4
Attitudes and its components – Ciccareli