Chapter 1- Introducing the Science and Methods of Social

Psychology

What Is Social Psychology?

- Social psychology is the scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate
to one another. Its central themes are listed below.

What Are the Major Themes of Social Psychology?

1. We construct our social reality.
2. Our social intuitions are often powerful but sometimes perilous.
3. Social influences shape our behaviour.
4. Personal attitudes and dispositions also shape behaviour.
5. Social behaviour is biologically rooted.
6. Relating to others is a basic need.
7. Social psychology’s principles are applicable in everyday life.

How Do Values Affect Social Psychology?

➔ Social psychologists’ values penetrate their work in obvious ways, such as their choice
of research topics and the types of people who are attracted to various fields of study.

➔ They also do this in subtler ways, such as their hidden assumptions when forming
concepts, choosing labels, and giving advice.

➔ This penetration of values into science is not a reason to fault social psychology or any
other science. That human thinking is seldom dispassionate is precisely why we need
systematic observation and experimentation if we are to check our cherished ideas
against reality.

Is Social Psychology Merely Common Sense?

➔ Social psychology is criticized for being trivial because it documents things that seem
obvious.

➔ Experiments, however, reveal that outcomes are more “obvious” after the facts are
known.

➔ This hindsight bias (the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon) often makes people

overconfident about the validity of their judgments and predictions.

Research Methods: How Do We Do Social Psychology?

➢ Social psychologists organize their ideas and findings into theories. A good theory will
distill an array of facts into a much shorter list of predictive principles. We can use those
predictions to confirm or modify the theory, to generate new research, and to suggest
practical application.
 ➢ Most social–psychological research is either correlational or experimental. Correlational
studies, sometimes conducted with systematic survey methods, discern the relationship
between variables, such as between the amount of education and the amount of income.
Knowing that two things are naturally related is valuable information, but it is not a
reliable indicator of what is causing what—or whether a third variable is involved.

➢ When possible, social psychologists prefer to conduct experiments that explore cause
and effect. By constructing a miniature reality that is under their control, experimenters
can vary one thing and then another and discover how those things, separately or in
combination, affect behaviour. We randomly assign (Figure 1−6) participants to an
experimental condition, which receives the experimental treatment, or to a control
condition, which does not. We can then attribute any resulting difference between the
two conditions to the independent variable.

➢ In creating experiments, social psychologists sometimes stage situations that engage

people’s emotions. In doing so, they are obliged to follow professional ethical guidelines,
such as obtaining people’s informed consent, protecting them from harm, and, afterward,
fully disclosing any temporary deceptions. Laboratory experiments enable social
psychologists to test ideas gleaned from life experience and then apply the principles
and findings to the real world.

Chapter 2- the self in a social world

Spotlights and Illusions: What Do They Teach Us About Ourselves?

➢ Concerned with the impression we make on others, we tend to believe that others are
paying more attention to us than they are (the spotlight effect).

➢ We also tend to believe that our emotions are more obvious than they are (the illusion of
transparency).

Self-Concept: Who Am I?
➢ Our sense of self helps organize our thoughts and actions. Self-concept consists of two
elements: the self-schemas that guide our processing of self-relevant information, and
the possible selves that we dream of or dread.

➢ Cultures shape the self, too. Many people in individualistic Western cultures assume an
independent self. Others, often in collectivistic cultures, assume a more interdependent
self. These contrasting ideas contribute to cultural differences in social behaviour.

➢ Our self-knowledge is curiously flawed. We often do not know why we behave the way
we do. When influences on our behaviour are not conspicuous enough for any observer
 to see, we, too, can miss them. The unconscious, implicit processes that control our
behaviour may differ from our conscious, explicit explanations of it.

➢ We also tend to mispredict our emotions. We underestimate the power of our

psychological immune systems and thus tend to overestimate the durability of our
emotional reactions to significant events.

What Is the Nature and Motivating Power of Self-Esteem?

➢ Self-esteem is the overall sense of self-worth we use to appraise our traits and abilities.
Our self-concepts are determined by multiple influences, including the roles we play, the
comparisons we make, our social identities, how we perceive others appraising us, and
our experiences of success and failure.

➢ Self-esteem motivation influences our cognitive processes: Facing failure,

high-self-esteem people sustain their self-worth by perceiving other people as failing,
too, and by exaggerating their superiority over others.

➢ Although high self-esteem is generally more beneficial than low, researchers have found
that people high in both self-esteem and narcissism are the most aggressive. Someone
with a big ego who is threatened or deflated by social rejection is potentially aggressive.

➢ Self-efficacy is the belief that one is effective and competent and can do something.
Unlike high self-esteem, high self-efficacy is consistently linked to success.

What Is Self-Serving Bias?

➢ Contrary to the presumption that most people suffer from low self-esteem or feelings of
inferiority, researchers consistently find that most people exhibit a self-serving bias. In
experiments and everyday life, we often take credit for successes while blaming failures
on the situation.

➢ Most people rate themselves as better than average on subjective, desirable traits and
abilities. We exhibit unrealistic optimism about our futures.

➢ We overestimate the commonality of our opinions and foibles (false consensus) while
underestimating the commonality of our abilities and virtues (false uniqueness).

➢ We also remember ourselves in the past in ways that flatter the current self.

➢ Such perceptions arise partly from a motive to maintain and enhance—a motive that
protects people from depression but contributes to misjudgment and group conflict.

➢ Self-serving bias can be adaptive in that it allows us to savour the good things that
happen in our lives. When bad things happen, however, self-serving bias can have the
 maladaptive effect of causing us to blame others or feel cheated out of something we
“deserved.”

How Do People Manage Their Self-Presentation?

➢ As social animals, we adjust our words and actions to suit our audiences. To varying
degrees, we self-monitor; we note our performance and adjust it to create the
impressions we desire.

➢ Sometimes, people will even self-handicap with self-defeating behaviours that protect
self-esteem by providing excuses for failure.

➢ Self-presentation refers to our wanting to present a favourable image both to an external

audience (other people) and to an internal audience (ourselves). With regard to an
external audience, those who score high on a scale of self-monitoring adjust their
behaviour to each situation, whereas those low in self-monitoring may do so little social
adjusting that they seem insensitive.

What Does It Mean to Have Perceived Self-Control?

➢ Our sense of self helps organize our thoughts and actions.

➢ Learned helplessness often occurs when attempts to improve a situation have proven
fruitless; self-determination, in contrast, is bolstered by experiences of successfully
exercising control and improving one’s situation.

➢ People who believe in their own competence and effectiveness cope better and achieve
more than those who have learned a helpless, pessimistic outlook.

Chapter 3- Social Beliefs and Judgments

How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds, Consciously and Unconsciously?

➔ We have an enormous capacity for automatic, efficient, intuitive thinking (System 1). Our
cognitive efficiency, though generally adaptive, comes at the price of occasional error.
Since we are generally unaware of those errors entering our thinking, it is useful to
identify ways in which we form and sustain false beliefs.

➔ Our preconceptions strongly influence how we interpret and remember events. In a

phenomenon called priming, people’s prejudgments have striking effects on how they
perceive and interpret information.

➔ We often overestimate our judgments. This overconfidence phenomenon stems partly

from the much greater ease with which we can imagine why we might be right than why
 we might be wrong. Moreover, people are much more likely to search for information that
can confirm their beliefs than information that can disconfirm them.
➔ When given compelling anecdotes or even useless information, we often ignore useful
base-rate information. This is partly due to the later ease of recall of vivid information
(the availability heuristic).

➔ We are often swayed by illusions of correlation and personal control. It is tempting to

perceive correlations where none exist (illusory correlation) and to think we can predict
or control chance events.

➔ Moods infuse judgments. Good and bad moods trigger memories of experiences
associated with those moods. Moods colour our interpretation of current experiences.
And, by distracting us, moods can also influence how deeply or superficially we think
when making judgments.

How Do We Perceive Our Social Worlds?

➔ Experiments have planted judgments or false ideas in people’s minds after they have
been given information. These experiments reveal that as before-the-fact judgments bias
our perceptions and interpretations, so, too, after-the-fact judgments bias our recall.

➔ Belief perseverance is the phenomenon in which people cling to their initial beliefs and
the reasons why a belief might be true, even when the basis for the belief is discredited.

➔ Far from being a repository for facts about the past, our memories are actually formed
when we retrieve them; they are subject to strong influence by the attitudes and feelings
we hold at the time of retrieval.

How Do We Explain Our Social Worlds?

➔ Attribution theory involves how we explain people’s behaviour. Misattribution—attributing
a behaviour to the wrong source—is a major factor in sexual harassment, as a person in
power (typically male) interprets friendliness as a sexual come-on.

➔ Although we usually make reasonable attributions, we often commit the fundamental

attribution error when explaining other people’s behaviour. We attribute their behaviour
so much to their inner traits and attitudes that we discount situational constraints, even
when those are obvious. We make this attribution error partly because when we watch
someone act, that person is the focus of our attention and the situation is relatively
invisible. When we act, our attention is usually on what we are reacting to—the situation
is more visible.

How Do Our Social Beliefs Matter?

➔ Our beliefs sometimes take on a life of their own. Usually, our beliefs about others have
a basis in reality. But studies of experimenter bias and teacher expectations show that
 an erroneous belief that certain people are unusually capable (or incapable) can lead
teachers and researchers to give those people special treatment. This may elicit superior
(or inferior) performance and, therefore, seem to confirm an assumption that is actually
false.

➔ Similarly, in everyday life, we often get behavioural confirmation of what we expect. Told
that someone we are about to meet is intelligent and attractive, we may come away
impressed with just how intelligent and attractive that person is.

What Can We Conclude About Social Beliefs and Judgments?

➔ Research on social beliefs and judgments reveals how we form and sustain beliefs that
usually serve us well but sometimes lead us astray. A balanced social psychology will
appreciate both the powers and perils of social thinking.

Chapter 4- Behaviour and Attitudes

How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behaviours?

➔ Attitudes do not predict behaviour as well as most people believe.

➔ Attitudes are better predictors of behaviour, however, when social influences are
minimal, attitudes are specific to behaviours, and attitudes are potent (strong and on
one’s mind).

When Does Our Behaviour Affect Our Attitudes?

➔ When taking on a role, our actions in that role often shape our attitudes.

➔ When we state a belief (even if we do not initially believe it), our words often shape our
attitudes.

➔ When we engage in small actions inconsistent with our attitudes, these small actions can
lead to larger actions that can dramatically shape our attitudes and behaviour.

➔ When we engage in moral or evil acts, these actions can powerfully shape our attitudes.

➔ When we participate in social movements, our actions can profoundly shape our
attitudes.

Why Does Our Behaviour Affect Our Attitudes?

➔ One reason our behaviours affect our attitudes is that we want to present ourselves to
others and ourselves as consistently rational people.

➔ Our behaviours also affect our attitudes because holding beliefs that are inconsistent
with our actions is arousing and uncomfortable. Because it is often easier to change our
 beliefs than our actions, we change our beliefs to match our actions and reduce the
discomfort.

➔ Cultures vary in what beliefs and actions arouse feelings of discomfort, but when
discrepancies between beliefs and actions cause discomfort, similar processes of
reducing this discomfort seem to occur across cultures.

➔ We also change our beliefs to match our actions because in observing our actions we
have powerful clues about our beliefs.

➔ Several theories have been proposed to explain how our behaviour shapes our attitudes
(i.e., self-presentation theory, cognitive dissonance theory, and self-perception theory).
All three theories account for important phenomena, but cognitive dissonance theory is
best at explaining what happens when the discrepancy between attitudes and behaviour
is large, while self-perception theory is best at explaining what happens when the
discrepancy between attitudes and behaviour is small.

Chapter 5- Persuasion

What Paths Lead to Persuasion?

➢ Sometimes, persuasion occurs as people focus on arguments and respond with
favourable thoughts. Such systematic, or “central route,” persuasion occurs when people
are naturally analytical or involved in the issue.

➢ When issues don’t engage systematic thinking, persuasion may occur through a faster
“peripheral route” as people use heuristics or incidental cues to make snap judgments.

➢ Central route persuasion, being more thoughtful and less superficial, is more durable
and likely to influence behaviour.

What Are the Elements of Persuasion?

➔ What makes persuasion effective?
- Researchers have explored four factors: the communicator (who says it), the
message (what is said), the channel (how it is said), and the audience (to whom it
is said).

➔ Credible communicators have the best success in persuading. People who speak
unhesitatingly, who talk fast, and who look listeners straight in the eye seem more
credible. So do people who argue against their own self-interest. An attractive
communicator is effective on matters of taste and personal values.
 ➔ The message itself persuades; associating it with good feelings makes it more
convincing. People often make quicker, less reflective judgments while in good moods.
Fear-arousing messages can also be effective, especially if recipients can take
protective action.

➔ How discrepant a message should be from an audience’s existing opinions depends on

the communicator’s credibility. And whether a one- or a two-sided message is most
persuasive depends on whether the audience already agrees with the message, is
unaware of opposing arguments, and is unlikely later to consider the opposition.

➔ When two sides of an issue are included, the primacy effect often makes the first
message more persuasive. If a time gap separates the presentations, the more likely
result will be a recency effect in which the second message prevails.

➔ Another important consideration is how the message is communicated. Usually

face-to-face appeals work best. Print media can be effective for complex messages; the
mass media can be effective when the issue is minor or unfamiliar and when the media
reach opinion leaders.

➔ The age of the audience makes a difference; young people’s attitudes are more subject
to change. What does the audience think while receiving a message? Do they think
favourable thoughts? Do they counter-argue? Were they forewarned?

Extreme Persuasion: How Do Cults Indoctrinate?

➔ The successes of religious cults provide an opportunity to see powerful persuasion

processes at work.

➔ It appears that the success of cults has resulted from three general techniques: eliciting
behavioural commitments (as described in Chapter 4); applying principles of effective
persuasion (this chapter); and isolating members in like-minded groups

Persuasion and Climate Change: How Do We Address Global Warming?

➔ There is overwhelming scientific evidence and consensus that global warming is a fact
and caused by human activity. Global warming has psychological costs in that people
must cope with the natural disasters, wars, and aggression that are promoted by global
warming. Many people in Canada, the United States and Britain accept that climate
change is caused by human activity.

➔ Humanity can prepare for a sustainable future by increasing technological efficiency. We

can also create incentives and change actions and attitudes to control population and
moderate consumption.
 ➔ Attending to concepts in social psychology that address our attitudes and our behaviours
may help accomplish those objectives. Rapid cultural change has happened in the last
40 years, and there is hope that in response to the global crisis it can happen again.

How Can Persuasion Be Resisted?

➔ Attitude strength is important: the stronger our attitudes, the more likely we are to avoid,
dismiss, forget, or counter-argue information that is inconsistent with our existing
attitudes.

➔ If we feel that our freedoms to think and behave in a certain way are being unreasonably
challenged, we will “react” (i.e., reactance) and often end up strengthening our
pre-existing attitudes and beliefs.

➔ How do people resist persuasion? A prior public commitment to one’s own position,
stimulated perhaps by a mild attack on the position, breeds resistance to later
persuasion.

➔ A mild attack can also serve as an inoculation, stimulating one to develop

counter-arguments that will then be available if and when a strong attack comes.

➔ This implies, paradoxically, that one way to strengthen existing attitudes is to challenge
them, though the challenge must not be so strong as to overwhelm them.

Chapter 6- Conformity

What Is Conformity?
➔ Conformity—changing one’s behaviour or belief as a result of group
pressure—comes in two forms. Compliance is outwardly going along with the
group while inwardly disagreeing; a subset of compliance is obedience,
compliance with a direct command. Acceptance is believing as well as acting in
accord with social pressure.

What Are the Classic Conformity and Obedience Studies?

Three classic sets of experiments illustrate how researchers have studied conformity:

Muzafer Sherif observed that others’ judgments influenced people’s estimates of the
movement of a point of light that actually did not move. Norms for “proper” answers
emerged and survived both over long periods of time and through succeeding
generations of research participants.

Solomon Asch had people listen to others’ judgments of which of three comparison lines
was equal to a standard line and then make the same judgment themselves. When the
others unanimously gave a wrong answer, the subjects conformed 37 percent of the
time.

Stanley Milgram’s obedience studies elicited an extreme form of compliance. Under

optimum conditions—a legitimate, close-at-hand commander, a remote victim, and no
one else to exemplify disobedience—65 percent of his adult male subjects fully obeyed
instructions to deliver what were supposedly traumatizing electric shocks to a
screaming, innocent victim in an adjacent room.

These classic studies expose the potency of several phenomena. Behaviour and
attitudes are mutually reinforcing, enabling a small act of evil to foster the attitude that
leads to a larger evil act. The power of the situation is seen when good people, faced
with dire circumstances, commit reprehensible acts (although dire situations may
produce heroism in others).

What Predicts Conformity?

➔ Using conformity testing procedures, experimenters have explored the
circumstances that produce conformity. Certain situations appear to be especially
powerful. For example, conformity is affected by the characteristics of the group:
People conform most when faced with the unanimous reports of three or more
people, or groups, who model the behaviour or belief.

➔ Conformity is reduced if the model behaviour or belief is not unanimous.

➔ Conformity is enhanced by group cohesion.

➔ The higher the status of those modelling the behaviour or belief, the greater the
likelihood of conformity.
➔ People also conform most when their responses are public (in the presence of
the group).
➔ A prior commitment to a certain behaviour or belief increases the likelihood that a
person will stick with that commitment rather than conform.

Why Conform?
➔ Experiments reveal two reasons people conform:
 ➔ Normative influence results from a person’s desire for acceptance: We want to be
liked. The tendency to conform more when responding publicly reflects normative
influence.

➔ Informational influence results from others’ providing evidence about reality. The
tendency to conform more on difficult decision-making tasks reflects informational
influence: We want to be right.

Who Conforms?
➔ The question “Who conforms?” has produced few definitive answers. Personality
scores are poor predictors of specific acts of conformity but better predictors of
average conformity. Trait effects sometimes seem strongest in “weak” situations
where social forces do not overwhelm individual differences.

➔ Although conformity and obedience are universal, culture and gender socialize
people to be more or less socially responsive.

➔ Social roles involve a certain degree of conformity, and conforming to

expectations is an important task when stepping into a new social role.

Do We Ever Want to Be Different?

➔ Social psychology’s emphasis on the power of social pressure must be joined by
a complementary emphasis on the power of the person. We are not puppets.
When social coercion becomes blatant, people often experience reactance—a
motivation to defy the coercion in order to maintain a sense of freedom.

➔ We are not comfortable being too different from a group, but neither do we want
to appear the same as everyone else. Thus, we act in ways that preserve our
sense of uniqueness and individuality. In a group, we are most conscious of how
we differ from the others.

Chapter 7- Group Influence

What Is a Group?
➔ A group exists when two or more people interact for more than a few moments,
affect one another in some way, and think of themselves as “us.

Social Facilitation: How Are We Affected by the Presence of Others?

➔ The presence of others is arousing and helps our performance on easy tasks but
hurts our performance on difficult tasks.
 ➔ Being in a crowd, or in crowded conditions, is similarly arousing and has the
same types of effects on performance.

➔ But why are we aroused by others’ presence? This occurs partly because we
worry about how we are evaluated by others. The presence of others is also
distracting, and that accounts for some of the effects as well. Still, the mere
presence of others seems to be arousing throughout the animal kingdom and
may be a part of our evolutionary heritage.

Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert Less Effort in a Group?

➔ When people’s efforts are pooled and individual effort is not evaluated, people
generally exert less effort in groups than individually.

➔ Such social loafing is common in everyday life, but when the task is challenging,
the group is cohesive, and people are committed to the group, social loafing is
less evident.

Deindividuation: When Do People Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?

➔ Deindividuation occurs when people are in a large group, are physically
anonymous, and are aroused and distracted.

➔ The resulting diminished self-awareness and self-restraint tend to increase

people’s responsiveness to the immediate situation, be it negative or positive.

Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?

➔ When researchers originally studied the ways that groups make decisions
differently from individuals, they found that groups make riskier decisions; but as
they examined more types of decisions, they found that groups make more
polarized decisions. If individuals would tend to be risky, then groups would make
riskier decisions, but if individuals would tend to play it safe, then groups would
make less risky decisions.

➔ Groups intensify decisions through group discussions.

➔ Group discussions intensify decisions by exposing us to new arguments and
through our comparisons with others in the group.

Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or Assist Good Decisions?

➔ Analysis of several international fiascos indicates that group cohesion can
override realistic appraisal of a situation, leading to bad decisions. This is
 especially true when group members strongly desire unity, when they are
isolated from opposing ideas, and when the leader signals what he or she
wants from the group.

➔ Symptomatic of this overriding concern for harmony, labelled groupthink,

are (1) an illusion of invulnerability, (2) rationalization, (3) unquestioned
belief in the group’s morality, (4) stereotyped views of the opposition, (5)
pressure to conform, (6) self-censorship of misgivings, (7) an illusion of
unanimity, and (8) “mindguards” who protect the group from unpleasant
information.

➔ Critics have noted that some aspects of Janis’s groupthink model (such as
directive leadership) seem more implicated in flawed decisions than others
(such as cohesiveness).

➔ Both in experiments and in actual history, groups sometimes decide

wisely. These cases suggest ways to prevent groupthink: upholding
impartiality, encouraging “devil’s advocate” positions, subdividing and then
reuniting to discuss a decision, seeking outside input, and having a
“second-chance” meeting before implementing a decision.

➔ Research on group problem-solving suggests that groups can be more

accurate than individuals; groups also generate more and better ideas if
the group is small or if, in a large group, individual brainstorming follows
the group session.

Leadership: How Do Leaders Shape the Group’s Actions?

➔ Some leaders focus more on tasks and other leaders focus more on the social
functioning of the group. Leaders who focus on tasks are often most effective for
very high- and very low-functioning groups.

➔ Some leaders, however, combine social and task leadership by listening to

followers and seeking to meet their needs but, at the same time, holding them to
high standards for performance. These transactional leaders are often very
effective.

➔ Other leaders gain a following through their charisma and by offering personal
attention. These transformational leaders inspire people to make self-sacrifices
for the sake of the group and can lead others to be committed and engaged in
the task at hand.
The Influence of the Minority: How Do Individuals Influence the Group?
➔ When minority group members are consistent, they are more likely to influence
the group.

➔ When minority group members have self-confidence, they are more likely to
influence the group.

➔ When minority group members are consistent and self-confident, they create an
atmosphere in which defection from the majority viewpoint can occur.

Chapter 8- Altruism: Helping Others

Why Do We Help?
➔ We help for the following reasons:
➔ Because of social exchange: We help those who have helped us
➔ Because social norms dictate helping in some situations
➔ To aid our survival—helping kin and those who may help us make it more likely for us to
pass on our genes.

When Will We Help?

➔ We will help under the following circumstances:
➔ When there are few bystanders
➔ When we observe someone else helping
➔ When we are not in a hurry
➔ When the person needing help is similar to us

Who Helps?
The following determines who will help:

➔ People high in emotionality, empathy, and self-efficacy

➔ Men in risky situations but women in less risky situations; overall, men and women do
not differ in helpfulness

How Can We Increase Helping?

We can increase helping by doing the following:

➔ Reducing ambiguity and increasing responsibility
➔ Evoking feelings of guilt
➔ Socializing prosocial behaviour

Chapter 9- Aggression: Hurting Others

What Is Aggression?
➔ Aggression (defined as behaviour intended to cause harm) can be physical (hurting
someone’s body) or social (hurting someone’s feelings or status). Social aggression
includes bullying and cyberbullying (bullying carried out online or through texting).

➔ Aggression (either physical or social) can be hostile aggression, which springs from
emotions such as anger, or instrumental aggression, which aims to injure as a means to
some other end.

What Are Some Theories of Aggression?

There are three broad theories of aggression:

➔ The instinct view, most commonly associated with Sigmund Freud and Konrad Lorenz,
contended that aggressive energy will accumulate from within, like water accumulating
behind a dam. Although the available evidence offers little support for this view,
aggression is biologically influenced by heredity, blood chemistry, and the brain.

➔ According to the second view, frustration causes anger and hostility. Given aggressive
cues, anger may provoke aggression. Frustration stems not from deprivation itself but
from the gap between expectations and achievements.

➔ The social learning view presents aggression as learned behaviour. By experience and
by observing others’ success, we sometimes learn that aggression pays. Social learning
enables family and subculture influences on aggression, as well as media influences.

What Are Some Influences on Aggression?

➔ Many factors exert influence on aggression. One factor is aversive experiences, which
include not only frustrations but also discomfort, heat, pain, and personal attacks, both
physical and verbal.

➔ Arousal from almost any source, even physical exercise or sexual stimulation, can be
transformed into other emotions, such as anger.

➔ Aggressive cues, such as the presence of a gun, increase the likelihood of aggressive
behaviour.

➔ Viewing violence (1) breeds a modest increase in aggressive behaviour, especially in

people who are provoked; (2) desensitizes viewers to aggression; and (3) alters viewers’
perceptions of reality. These findings parallel the results of research on the effects of
viewing violent pornography, which can increase men’s aggression against women and
distort their perceptions of women’s responses to sexual coercion.
 ➔ Television permeates the daily life of millions of people and portrays considerable
violence. Correlational and experimental studies converge on the conclusion that heavy
exposure to televised violence correlates with aggressive behaviour.

➔ Playing violent video games may increase aggressive thinking, feelings, and behaviour
even more than television or movies do because the experience involves much more
active participation than those other media.

➔ Much aggression is committed by groups. Circumstances that provoke individuals may

also provoke groups. By diffusing responsibility and polarizing actions, group situations
amplify aggressive reactions.

How Can Aggression Be Reduced?

➔ How can we minimize aggression? Contrary to the catharsis hypothesis, expressing
aggression by catharsis tends to breed further aggression, not reduce it.

➔ The social learning approach suggests controlling aggression by counteracting the

factors that provoke it: by reducing aversive stimulation, by rewarding and modelling
nonaggression, and by eliciting reactions incompatible with aggression.

Chapter 10- Attraction and Intimacy: Liking and Loving Others

What Leads to Friendship and Attraction?

➔ The best predictor of whether any two people are friends is their sheer proximity to one
another. Proximity is conducive to repeated exposure and interaction, which enables us
to discover similarities and to feel each other’s liking.

➔ A second determinant of initial attraction is physical attractiveness. Both in laboratory

studies and in field experiments involving blind dates, university students tend to prefer
attractive people. In everyday life, however, people tend to choose and marry someone
whose attractiveness roughly matches their own (or someone who, if less attractive, has
other compensating qualities). Positive attributions about attractive people define a
physical-attractiveness stereotype—an assumption that what is beautiful is good.

➔ Liking is greatly aided by similarity of attitudes, beliefs, and values. Likeness leads to
liking; opposites rarely attract.

➔ We are also likely to develop friendships with people who like us.

➔ According to the reward theory of attraction, we like people whose behaviour we find
rewarding or whom we have associated with rewarding events.
What Is Love?
➔ Researchers have characterized love as having components of intimacy, passion, and
commitment. Passionate love is experienced as a bewildering confusion of ecstasy and
anxiety, elation and pain. The two-factor theory of emotion suggests that in a romantic
context, arousal from any source, even painful experiences, can be steered into passion.

➔ In the best of relationships, the initial romantic high settles to a steadier, more
affectionate relationship called companionate love.

➔ What Enables Close Relationships?

➔ From infancy to old age, attachments are central to human life. Secure attachments, as
in an enduring marriage, mark happy lives.

➔ Companionate love is most likely to endure when both partners feel the partnership is
equitable, with both perceiving themselves receiving from the relationship in proportion
to what they contribute to it.

➔ One reward of companionate love is the opportunity for intimate self-disclosure, a state
achieved gradually as each partner reciprocates the other’s increasing openness
(disclosure reciprocity).

How Do Relationships End?

➔ Often, love does not endure. As divorce rates rose in the twentieth century, researchers
discerned predictors of marital dissolution. One predictor is an individualistic culture that
values feelings over commitment; other factors include the couple’s age, education,
values, and similarity.

➔ Researchers are also identifying the process through which couples either detach or
rebuild their relationships, and they are identifying the positive and nondefensive
communication styles that mark healthy, stable marriages.

Chapter 11- Prejudice

What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice?

➔ Prejudice is a preconceived negative attitude. Stereotypes are beliefs about another
group—beliefs that may be accurate, inaccurate, or overgeneralized but based on a
kernel of truth. Discrimination is unjustified negative behaviour. Racism and sexism may
refer to individuals’ prejudicial attitudes or discriminatory behaviour or to oppressive
institutional practices (even if not intentionally prejudicial).
 ➔ Prejudice exists in subtle and unconscious (implicit) guises as well as overt, conscious
(explicit) forms. Researchers have devised subtle survey questions and indirect methods
for assessing people’s attitudes and behaviour to detect unconscious prejudice.

➔ Racial prejudice was widely accepted until the 1960s; since that time it has become far
less prevalent, but it still exists.

➔ Similarly, prejudice against women and gays and lesbians has lessened in recent
decades. Nevertheless, strong gender stereotypes and a significant amount of gender
and sexual orientation bias are still found around the world.

What Are the Social Sources of Prejudice?

➔ The social situation breeds and maintains prejudice in several ways. A group that enjoys
social and economic superiority will often use prejudicial beliefs to justify its privileged
position.

➔ Children are also brought up in ways that foster or reduce prejudice. Those with
authoritarian personalities are said to be socialized into obedience and intolerance. The
family, religious communities, and the broader society can sustain or reduce prejudices.

➔ Social institutions (government, schools, the media) also support prejudice, sometimes
through overt policies and sometimes through unintentional inertia.

➔ What Are the Motivational Sources of Prejudice?

➔ People’s motivations affect prejudice. Frustration breeds hostility, which people
sometimes vent on scapegoats and sometimes express more directly against competing
groups.

➔ People also are motivated to view themselves and their groups as superior to other
groups. Even trivial group memberships lead people to favour their own group over
others. A threat to self-image heightens such in-group favouritism, as does the need to
belong.
➔ On a more positive note, if people are motivated to avoid prejudice, they can break the
prejudice habit.

What Are the Cognitive Sources of Prejudice?

➔ The stereotyping that underlies prejudice is a by-product of our thinking—our ways of
simplifying the world. Clustering people into categories exaggerates the uniformity within
a group and the differences between groups.

➔ A distinctive individual, such as a lone minority person, has a compelling quality that
makes us aware of differences that would otherwise go unnoticed. The occurrence of
two distinctive events (for example, a minority person committing an unusual crime)
helps create an illusory correlation between people and behaviour.
 ➔ Attributing others’ behaviour to their dispositions can lead to the group-serving bias:
assigning out-group members’ negative behaviour to their natural character while
explaining away their positive behaviours.

➔ Blaming the victim results from the common presumption that because this is a just
world, people get what they deserve.

What Are the Consequences of Prejudice?

➔ Prejudice and stereotyping have important consequences, especially when strongly
held, when judging unknown individuals, and when deciding policies regarding whole
groups.

➔ Once formed, stereotypes tend to perpetuate themselves and resist change. They also
create their own realities through self-fulfilling prophecies.

➔ Prejudice can undermine people’s performance through stereotype threat, by making

people apprehensive that others will view them stereotypically.

➔ Stereotypes, especially when strong, can predispose how we perceive people and
interpret events.