PSYC 215

WEEK 6 - SELF CONTROL

WEEK 7 - SOCIAL INFLUENCE (CH.8 p.346-395)
SOCIAL INFLUENCE
- Social influence can take up many forms and vary along the implicit-explicit continuum.
- Example: How a lot of people now have tattoos even though they used to be frown upon.
- Either be directly copying others and comply with requests or unknowingly copying others (not
knowing they are being influenced).
- Who you surround yourself with can influence you. Can be due to shared genes and partly
homophily.
- Example: You are more likely to happy if your friend is happy, even more likely to be
happy if friend of friend is happy, etc.
- Seen in studies of drinking behavior, smoking and obesity
- Definition of homophily: Tendency for people to associate disproportionately with people who
are like them.
- Not all social network effects result from homophily and genetics = can be due to social
influence!
- Study: Examine an individual behavior (selfish or altruistic) ⇒ behavior depended on
how their group mates in round 2 acted (they acted in line to their group mates)
What Is Social Influence?
- Definition of social influence: Many ways people affect one another, including changes in
attitudes, beliefs, feelings and behavior resulting from the comments, actions or even presence of
others.
- People influence us: Friend pressure, advertisers, charities, parents, priest, etc.
- We influence others: Smiling at something we like, frowning at something we dislike,
trying to coax someone in doing a favor
- To effectively naviguate social influence: Learn when to either yield or resist others and how to
resist and to influence others.
- 3 types of social influence (definitions):
1. Conformity: Changing one’s beliefs or behavior to more closely align with those of
others, in response to EXPLICIT or IMPLICIT pressure (real or imagined) to do so.
a. Implicit: Trowing old jeans to fit the new trend (trying to fit in with others)
b. Explicit: Peer members encourage certain behaviors (bad: do drugs, vape, drink
and good: volunteer, reduce carbon footprint)
2. Compliance: Responding favorably to an EXPLICIT request from another person.
a. Powerful people (authority figure): Compliance attempts aren’t that careful or
subtle but more BLUNT and DIRECT. Easier to persuade you.
b. Peers: Compliance attempts are more THOUGHTFUL and PERSUASIVE
since they don’t have authority over you.
3. Obedience: Powerful person (authority figure) demands something (NOT request) to
which a less powerful person submits.

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CONFORMITY
- Is conformity good or bad? ⇒ Western society focuses on autonomy and uniqueness, therefore
conformity can seem negative.
- There’s nuances to conformity: Bad (harmful), neutral (indifference) and good (greater
good/beneficial).
- Evolutionary psychologies and anthropologist argued that the tendency to conform is adaptive
⇒ Often well served by doing what the rest are doing
- Adaptive: helps people fit in social groups, allows to quickly adapt to new environment,
help reduce conflict and strengthen social bond with others.
- Conformity plays a part in: Making people pay taxes, form lines in public spaces, etc.
Automatic Mimicry
- Subtle form of autonomatic conformity ⇒ Mimic/Mindlessly imitate other’s behavior and
movements (body language like yawning, laughing, etc.) = We are COPYCATS !
- Study by Chartrand & Bargh: Demonstrate nonconscious mimicry
- Student paired with another “student” (actually a confederate) for 2x 10min sessions.
Each took turn describing photographs from popular magazines. Confederates were
tasked to either rub their face or shake their leg = participants were found to mimic the
performed action (experimenters only see participating student = no bias)
- Two reasons for mimicry:
1. Thinking about the behavior makes performing it more likely to occur ⇒ brain regions
for perception OVERLAPS with region for action. FOR MIMICRY, see others do
behavior = brings it into mind (consciously or not) = more likely for us to do behavior
too.
2. Mimicking others helps create smooth, pleasant interactions and fosters social bonds.
People generally like those who subtly mimic them, even if they don’t realize it’s
happening. When people are mimicked, they’re more likely to be kind and helpful
afterward (prosocial behavior). We tend to mimic more when we want to connect with
others, especially if we like them.
- Mimicry can be:
- Asynchronous: Yawn and then someone yawns after.
- Synchronous: Both yawn at the same time ⇒ creates feelings of closeness and bonding
- Study: Students were tasked to tap their pencil in time with metronome ⇒ half were
synchronous with experiment, half were not = those in time with experiment reported
liking experiment more than those who weren’t in time.
- Synchronous walking ⇒ feel more connected and trusted one another ⇒ explains why
armies practice marches (foster cohesive/commited fighting force)
Informational Social Influence and Sherif’s Conformity Experiment
- Some people conform more consciously ⇒ Muzafer Sherif was interest in how groups influence
the behavior of individuals by shaping how they perceive reality.
- FRAME OF REFERENCE influence perceptions !
- Example: 5’11 NBA player vs 6’5 NBA player (both tall but 5’11 in comparaison seem
shorter even though it’s more than average)
- Result: Other people can behave as social frame of reference to change our perception of
reality.

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- Sherif’s experiment: Based around autokinetic illusion (dark room and moving stationary point of
light, no frame reference given). Ambiguous experiment (light didn’t actually move)
- Individuals (alone) had to estimate how much the light moved = later share estimations
with group = Overestimation led to underestimation in second trial (vice versa, converge
data) = people’s thoughts influenced others (even a year later, still see influence) = result
of INFORMATIONAL SOCIAL INFLUENCE !
- Definition of informational social influence: Reliance on other’s comments and actions as an
indication of what’s likely to be correct, proper and effective.
- People want to be right.
- Drawing off of people’s comments/actions/opinions = more pronounced when we are
unsure if something is correct (we don’t know much about a certain topic, etc.) and
unfamiliar/unsure on how to behave in a situation (how to behave in a foreign country,
etc.).
- Example: Informational social influence on contemporary music. One group chooses
(with no social influence) songs they liked and downloaded them (list of unknown
songs). Others were assigned to 1 of 8 “markets”. They are able to see what songs were
downloaded by peer in that specific market ⇒ resulted in participants being more likely
to download songs that were previously downloaded by peer.
Normative Social Influence and Asch’s Conformity Experiment
- Psychologist Solomon Asch thought that Sheriff’s experiment didn’t cover instances where
there’s a clear conflict between the individual vs group.
- Clear conflict b/w both parties: there’s LESS conformity ⇒ When participants in control
group made judgments by themselves (no social pressure) = almost never made a mistake
- Seen in Asch’s conformity study (normative social influence): Individual alongside other
“students” (confederates) were tasked to determine which of the 3 lines is the same length
as the target = each person say their answers out loud (confederate purposely say wrong
answers) ⇒ study had less ambiguity and more certainty so students more often kept
their answers for most part and were right.
- Those that changed their answers (confederate only off by 0.5-0.75in)
- Main cause of conformity was not informational social influence but normative social
influence
- Definition of normative social influence: Desire to avoid being criticized, disapproved of or
shunned. ⇒ Fear to depart from social norms and norms of groups they care about
- Normative social influence diminishes in situations where you don’t know others/care
less of their opinions.
- Change information or normative social influences = change rate of conformity
- Informational social influence: Majority’s opinion leads us to internalize that opinion/private
acceptance = no longer simply mimic but we adopt the group’s perspective.
- Normative social influence: Greater impact on public compliance than on private acceptance =
sometimes say/do things but continue to believe another.
- CONSTRUAL EFFECT on informational and normative social influence:
- Pinpoint reason our opinions are different: DECREASE in informational (bc diminishes
group validity in being a source = i.e biased) and normative social influence (bc assume
everyone is aware of why we differ from them = won’t think we are crazy, simply shared

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different values, biases). ⇒ CONSTRUAL, we react to our subjective interpretations of a

situation.
- Why did Asch's experiment lead to more conformity? ⇒ Confront fact everyone saw
things differently than they did + no basis to understand why everyone saw differently.
Participants faced reasonable fear of not wanting to part with the group’s opinion.
Factors Affecting Conformity Pressure
- Factors that influence the tendency to conform: Characteristics of the group, surrounding context
(eg. cultural influences), task/issue at hand, etc.
- GROUP SIZE: Bigger the group = more likely to conform. Effect of group size levels
off pretty quickly.

- Group effect on information social influence: More people express a certain

opinion = more you deem it correct = BUT only to a certain point.
- Validity of consensus increases only if individual opinions are
independent from each other.
- Bigger the group = more likely of people just following along and
agreeing = no new information
- Group effect on normative social influence: Person can only feel so much
embarrassment
- 2v4 (the difference is psychologically more powerful)
- 12v14 (not that much different between the two)
- GROUP UNANIMITY: Having an ally (someone else with same or opposing view with
group) = DECREASE in both informational (maybe I’m right after all) and normative
social influence (At least I got someone by my side) = Protect independent thought and
action

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- ANONYMITY: Anonymity REMOVES normative social influence = reduce

conformity. No one is aware of your opinion = no fear of group’s disapproval
- EXPERTISE AND STATUS: Expertise and status of group members INCREASES
conformity.
- Typically: grant status to those with expertise + high status = experts
- Expertise: Primarily affects informational social influence because experts tend
to be right = take their opinions more seriously
- Status: Primarily affects normative social influence because high status can cause
more harm in our social standing than someone with lower-status.
- Experiment: Pilot > navigator > gunner ⇒ if pilot gave his reasoning
first = group reported the same answer 91% of the time.
- CULTURE: Interdependent culture (concerned about relationships with others and fitting
in social context) are susceptible to informational AND and normative social influence.
- Interdependent: More expected to conform than independent culture.
- Tight culture: Strong social norms (don’t tolerate deviation), autocratic or
dictatorial governments. If tight on one dimension, usually tight on everything
else. Conformity HIGHER in tight culture.
- Behavioral constraints are associated with ecological constraints: few
natural resources, reliable food supplies, safe water, etc.
- Loose culture: Norms aren’t as strong, members tolerate more deviance
The Influence of Minority Opinion on the Majority
- Although conformity pressure is powerful ⇒ minority opinion can still win (eg. same-sex
marriage is now accepted by many).
- Study: Border b/w blue and green is ambiguous ⇒ by themselves, participants thought
blue but when confederates (minority) say green consistently, participants responded with
green as well 8% of time.
- Second trial: those exposed with confederate more often reported green when viewing the
stimuli.
- Minority opinion was consistent: Had immediate effect on participant’s responses and
latent effect on their private judgment.
- Minority can influence majority opinion by consistent/clear messages that persuade them to
systematically examine and reevaluate their opinions.
- Minority (PRIVATE ATTITUDE CHANGE) vs Majority (ELICIT CONFORMITY, PUBLIC
ATTITUDE CHANGE)
- Minority uses INFORMATIONAL SOCIAL INFLUENCE.
- CONSISTENCY !! ⇒ makes people reevaluate their opinions
- Majority uses NORMATIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE
- Not scared to voice opinions because they have the majority on their side ⇒ but wonder
why minorities display deviance ⇒ consider their opinions more carefully ⇒
informational !
- People are motivated to align with group norms.

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COMPLIANCE
- Inconsistency, norms and moods ⇒ play a role in compliance
Consistency, Commitment, and the Foot-in-the-Door Technique
- We perform actions that is consistent with our self-image (eg. environmentalist recycles even
when tempted not to)
- One way to appeal to a person’s self-image ⇒ employ FOOT-IN-THE-DOOR TECHNIQUE
- Definition of foot-in-the-door technique: Ask for small request which most will comply ⇒ foot in
the door ⇒ able to later ask for larger request that involves the real behavior of interest
- Target person first agreement ⇒ changes their self-image as someone who does things
like that / someone who contributes to those causes ⇒ more likely to do the bigger
request
- DANGER: Slippery slope, our behavior is subject to momentum = can agree do to bigger
things later (sometimes questionable)
- Study: Asked first round of homeowners to put up an unattractive and large billboard ⇒
most said NO. ⇒ then asked another group to put small display on their windows = they
said yes = later asked to put big billboard = most said yes
- Example: Asking them to test the car ⇒ more likely to buy car
Norm-Based Compliance
- Tendency to act like people around us (explicit requests or implicit suggestions).
- See students around drink = more likely for us to drink
- Neighbors are on board = so I should be too
- Example: Using norms to combat climate crisis. Homeworkers were told they were either
energy saver or waster ⇒ also told how they compared with their neighbors.
- Norm information only: Waster changed their habits and REDUCED their
energy use BUT saver INCREASED their usage.
- Norm information with approval/disapproval: Waster REDUCED MORE and
saver INCREASED LESS.

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- Informing people about social norms is most effective when information is surprising (eg
misunderstanding about a norm).
- Definition of pluralistic ignorance: People act in ways that conflict with their true attitudes or
beliefs because they believe others don’t share them. When many people does that, their behavior
reinforces erroneous group norms
- People mistakenly believe everyone holds a different opinion to them ⇒ lead them to a
false consensus, where people conform to the “majority opinion” even though the
majority don’t actually believe it.
- Example: Overestimating students likes to binge drink ⇒ they don’t actually feel
comfortable drinking
- Study: Discrepancy b/w private attitudes and public norms about use at Princeton
University. Pluralistic ignorance: students say they are less at ease with drinking than
other students ⇒ belief makes them censor their actual opinion about drinking ⇒
furthers illusion that alcohol is popular

- Discrepancy due to visibility of drinking on campus: Eating clubs (center social life on campus)
has alcohol available 24/7 ⇒ makes student assume drinking is common at Princeton
- To rid of excessive alcohol consumption: Provide students with peer’s actual drinking
habits ⇒ corrected misunderstanding and students reported to DRINKING LESS.
- Norm-based also used to combat harassment and bullying at schools. ⇒ schools who had
students speak up about bullying ⇒ DECREASE in disciplinary reports than control schools.
- MORE POPULAR THE KID = BIGGER INFLUENCE EFFECT !
- STATIC AND DYNAMIC NORMS: When relevant norm is counter to behavior you want to
see (eg. students are fine with bullying) ⇒ Need to highlight that NORMS ARE CHANGING
- Example: Male survey respondents in STATIC NORM condition (told 35% of men are
feminist) vs in DYNAMIC NORM condition (nb of feminist men are increasing…up to
35%) ⇒ Dynamic condition were MORE LIKELY to identify as a feminist
- People are influenced not just by numbers BUT by norm. + influenced by trends (how
norm is changing)

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- DESCRIPTIVE AND PRESCRIPTIVE NORMS:

- Descriptive norms: Descriptions of what is typically done in a given context. Correspond
to WHAT IS
- Prescriptive norms (injunctive norms): What one is supposed to do. Correspond to
WHAT OUGHT TO BE
- Example: Students need to sleep 8-9 hours (prescriptive) but they actually sleep less than
that (descriptive)
- Example: Petrified Forest National Park ⇒ shouldn’t take wood (prescriptive) vs people
do that them (descriptive) ⇒ showed a DECREASE in theft when sign showed people
NOT TAKING wood.
- Increase compliance: Both norms CAN’T BE IN CONFLICT WITH EACH OTHER !
- Mistake: Don’t try to strengthen the prescriptive norm by saying how little
people do it (eg. shame that people don’t vote as often). ⇒ can make others less
likely to vote than more likely.
- Pointing out that others are not doing it ⇒ makes you think why should I
do it as well? INSTEAD say look how many people ARE doing it.
- NORM OF RECIPROCITY: Someone does something for you ⇒ feel compelled to do
something back (if you don’t do something back ⇒ might be seen as bad)
- Definition of norm of reciprocity: Norm dictating that people should provide benefits to
those who benefit them.
- Derogatory terms for those who don’t help: Freeloader, bum, leech, deadbeat, etc.
- See it as mutualism (symbiotic relationship): Bird picks at crocodile teeth ⇒ help form
social bond
- Tend to help back if person had previously helped you
- Reciprocity PROMOTES group living and REDUCES aggression
- Study: Confederate either brought back and gave participant a Coke or came back empty
handed ⇒ confederate asked participant for help (trying to sell most tickets), if they want
to buy one ⇒ those who got a soda bought TWICE as many raffle tickets than those who
received nothing. ⇒ the created debt made participants MORE COMPLIANT.
- THE RECIPROCAL CONCESSIONS (DOOR-IN-THE-FACE) TECHNIQUE:
- Example: Boy was stealing tickets (5$) for a Boy Scouts circus (large favor) ⇒ Man
refused ⇒ Boy then asked if he wanted chocolate bars for 1$/each (small favor) ⇒ Man
bought two even though he doesn’t like chocolate bars.
- Result: People feel the need to respond to concession (give up and give what they
want) by making a concession themselves
- Drop in size of favor is seen as a concession ⇒ a person will be compelled to
honor the norm of reciprocity + most available concession is to accept a second
offer.
- Definition of reciprocal concession technique (door-in-the face): Compliance approach
where we ask a large favor they WILL refuse and then ask for a smaller favor.
- Both favors must be asked by the SAME PERSON ⇒ if not, both favors are seen as
separate requests
Seizing, or Creating, the Right Mood
- Positive mood ⇒ people feel open and charitable ⇒ more likely to agree to reasonable requests

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- Study: People called participants for help to relay a message as they misdialed and have no more
dime. ⇒ when participants received prior a free gift ⇒ more compliant to do request ⇒
Compliance decrease with TIME

- Positive mood increase compliance for two reasons:

- Mood colors how we interpret events: Good mood makes us view favors as less
instructive and threatening + more inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt.
- Someone asked for nots: Good mood (they must have a lot going on) vs Bad
mood (they are lazy and irresponsible)
- Mood maintenance: Wanting to feel good longer = increase in compliance ONLY
WHEN request prolongs positive mood and don’t hinder it
- Study: Some given cookies and some not ⇒ some told they are going to help or
hurt participant ⇒ those that got a cookie increase compliance BUT ONLY if
they were to help and not hinder.
- Negative mood: it can INCREASE AND DECREASE COMPLIANCE !
- Negative mood increase compliance:
- When feeling guilty ⇒ people motivated to do whatever is asked to get rid of the
awful feeling
- When feeling bad ⇒ people don’t want to feel like it so they help others (help
others to help ourselves)
- Example: Someone who didn’t eat and feels cranky = less likely to comply
- Definition of negative state relief hypothesis: People engage in certain actions, like
agreeing to a request, to relieve negative feelings and feel better about themselves.
OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
The Setup of the Milgram Experiments
- Milgram wanted to see how powerful conformity can be ⇒ ended with him learning about
obedience
- Remote-feedback version: Learner was in another room ⇒ can’t be heard except when he
pounded on wall after a big shock
- Voice-feedback version: Participants can hear the learner’s increasingly desperate pleas (screams
until silence)

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Opposing Forces
- Forces compelling them to complete experiment ⇒ Forces include sense of fair play (i.e agreed
to participate, had received payment, greater good of science ⇒ feel the need to fulfill their part)
- Normative influence was at play: Didn’t want to cause a scene, wanted to avoid
disapproval of experimenter
- Forces compelling them to terminate experiment ⇒ Moral imperative to stop suffering.
- Desire to not hurt the man they had met earlier, some concerned about if something were
to go wrong/who’s to blame, some concerned about learning with suffering learner and
having to deal with the embarrassment or retaliation from the learner.
- Change the strength of these opposing forces ⇒ how does the rate of obedience change? ⇒
Milgram studied it through variations of original experiment
Would You Have Obeyed?
- Failure of prediction and failure of after-the-fact insight (people think after hearing result, they
would not do that)
- Experiment didn’t pass empathy test: People can’t empathize with obedient participants and what
they did ⇒ truly think they wouldn’t do that if they were in their position.
- Incomprehensible cruelty vary along “exceptionalist-normalist continuum”: Crimes are
perpetrated only by “exceptional” people (sadistic, desperate, ethnocentric).
- Normal-thesis: Most people are capable of destructive obedience when given the right
circumstances. ⇒ Anyone can commit this act
- Milgram’s experiment follows the normalist view.
- Explains why events like Holocaust can happen ⇒ exceptionalist view
- THEY TRIED BUT FAILED:
- Many think participants in Milgram’s experiment were blindly obeying but they weren’t.
- A lot tried to stop: Asking experimenter to stop, getting in and out of their chair ⇒ didn’t
succeed ⇒ demonstrate INEFFECTIVE AND INDECISIVE DISOBEDIENCE, not
destructive obedience (people following orders that hurt others)
- Milgram’s experiment: Confused and uncertain how to act ⇒ can’t act decisively
⇒ end up conforming
- Good intentions but can’t translate them into effective action (want to reach out/speak up
but can’t)
- Example: German soldiers during WW2 didn’t want to kill ⇒ some purposefully
missed when shooting, some did petty errands (**some fully embraced the war)
- RELEASE FROM RESPONSIBILITY: Participants told that blame where to go on
experimenter ⇒ Used this to justify their act ⇒ stress was REDUCED
- Blame can only be placed on legitimate authority (experimenter were associated with
Yale, representative of science)
- History: Authority figures (eg Nazis in Germany) took responsibility ⇒ they would
support their action with a belief system (nationalism, religion, ethnic identity) ⇒ tying
awful actions with ideology, they tried to make it seem morally right ⇒ convinced others.
- STEP-BY-STEP INVOLVEMENT: Deliver the shocks in increments ⇒ makes it seem less bad
+ hard to stop (eg telling a white lie ⇒ cascade)
- Nazi Germany: Stripped away slowly rights, then closed businesses, travel constraints,
then encampment ⇒ wouldn’t work if they did last step first

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- LEGITIMIZING THE EXPERIMENT: Initially conducted at Yale ⇒ even when changed to

more rundown, sketchy business ⇒ Obedience rate SLIGHTLY DECLINED, but relatively was
still HIGH.
Would Milgram Get the Same Results Today?
- Intense media coverage on certain events caused people to be less trusting of authority.
- Issue of ethical concerns ⇒ Few IRB would approve for direct replication
- Burger’s experiment version: only went to 150V.
- After 150V, people were more disobedient (now or never moment)
Opposing Forces in the Milgram Experiments
- Opposing forces: Worried about learner’s well-being vs Worried about disappointing
experimenter
- Tuned in the learner: Making participants more aware of learner’s suffering.
- Remote feedback version: Participant CAN’T HEAR OR SEE learner
- Voice feedback version: Participant CAN HEAR BUT CAN’T SEE
- Proximity version: Participant and learner sat IN THE SAME ROOM
- Touch proximity version: Participant had to FORCE LEARNER’S HAND onto the
shock plate.
- As learner became more real and present ⇒ less shock was delivered + decrease in
willingness to deliver max shock

- Tuned in the experimenter: Strengthening or weakening the signal of what the experimenter
represented.
- Baseline version: Experimenter stood next to participant
- Absent version: Experimenter left the room and communicated by telephone
- Ordinary person version: Instructions given by confederate acting as another participant.
- Contradictory experimenters version: 1 of 2 experimenters present announced that he
found proceedings objectionable.

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- Weakened signal by experimenter ⇒ less shock was deliver ⇒ less willingness to deliver
max shock
- Tuning out experimenter had a BIGGER EFFECT than tuning in learner.
- Making it easier to disobey is more effective than increasing desire to disobey.
- Result: 70% willing to administer next level of shock (165V) after hearing learner’s protest ⇒
Milgram was 82% ⇒ not statically significant difference
- Men and women are equally likely to continue + our reaction to pressure to obey is the
same as 50 years ago.
Resisting Social Influence
- Definition of reactance theory: People reassert their prerogatives in response to unpleasant state
of arousal they experience when they believe their freedoms are threatened.
- When you feel your freedom is being taken away = seen as precious = desire to maintain
it INCREASES
- Tendency to resist attempts that restrict freedom of action/thought ⇒ diminishes likely to
succumb to others.
- To increase someone’s ability to stand firm ⇒ Need to PRACTICE HOW TO DISOBEY
(history of doing it: disobeying, helping others, etc.)
- If participants in Milgram’s experiment knew and practice how to disobey ⇒ could’ve
done a better job
- To increase ability to resist social influence ⇒ Need an ALLY
- Many social influence attempts are based on appeal to emotion
- Important to not get caught up in particular emotion ⇒ compulsion to give in
DIMINISHES BY WAITING TO RESPOND
Chapter review (p.393-394)

WEEK 8 - MILGRAM TERROR MANAGEMENT (CH.7 307-345)

PERSUASION
- Example: “Don’t mess with Texas” ⇒ Motto used alongside iconic Texan men to disseminate
anti-littering message ⇒ campaign touched on Texan pride
Dual-Process Approach to Persuasion
- Two ways to persuade people: Central vs Peripheral route
Elaboration Likelihood Model
- Definition of elaboration likelihood model (ELM): Model of persuasion that maintains that there
are two routes to persuasion: Central and Peripheral route. ⇒ mode explain how people change
their attitudes in response to persuasive messages.
- Process these messages either MINDLESSLY and EFFORTLESSLY OR DEEPLY
and ATTENTIVELY ⇒ some persuasive appeals is more effect when people are on
autopilot and some when people are alert.
- Definition of central route: People think carefully and deliberately about content of persuasive
message, attending to its logic and strength of arguments and to related evidence and principles.
- Rely on presented evidences and own information (experiences, memories, knowledge)
to evaluate the message.
- Definition of peripheral route: People attend to relatively easy-to-process, superficial cues related
to a persuasive message, such as length or expertise or attractiveness of source of message.

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- Rely on RELATIVELY SIMPLE HEURISTICS (rule of thumbs)

- Heuristic: mental shortcut (availability and representativeness)
- Routes are determined by DIFFERENT LEVELS OF MOTIVATION AND ABILITY to
attend to the message.
- Source’s expertise: BOTH CENTRAL AND PERIPHERAL
The Roles of Motivation and Ability
- MOTIVATION and ABILITY determines if we engage in central or peripheral processing.
- Going central:
- Message has personal consequences: bears on our goals, interests, well-being ⇒
motivated to go central ⇒ work through arguments/infos
- Sufficient cognitive resources and time ⇒ can process more deeply and thoughtfully
scrutinize
- NEED BOTH motivation and ability
- Affected by argument’s strength = SWAYED BY STRONG but not weak
- Going peripheral:
- Message presented too quickly/hard to comprehend ⇒ rely on easy-to-process peripheral
cues (eg. Credentials of message source)
- Tired or distracted
- LACK BOTH motivation and ability
- Whether or not they change attitude = less affected by argument strength
- Study: Students asked to consider implementations of policy that requires graduating seniors to
take a comprehensive exam
- Read either 8 strong or 8 weak argument
- Implemented next year or in 10 years ⇒ influence personal relevance
- High schoolers wrote arguments or Carnegie Commission on Higher education ⇒
influence source expertise
- PERSONALLY RELEVANT ⇒ STRENGTH OF ARGUMENT MATTERED
- Had to take it = motivated to pay attention to the argument's strength and NOT
source expertise.
- Central route
- NOT PERSONALLY RELEVANT ⇒ STRENGTH OF ARGUMENT DID NOT
MATTER
- Don’t need to take it = strength of argument did not matter BUT expertise did.
- Peripheral route
- **Expertise and argument strength are NOT characteristic of peripheral or central ⇒ can
play a role in either**

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- Expertise: Peripheral (readily discerned ⇒ change attitude without engaging in thoughtful

response) vs Central (Expertise function as argument whose strength is carefully evaluated ⇒ can
influence people’s generated thoughts about the issue)
- For long-lasting attitude change: CENTRAL ROUTE because thinking through it more
systematically/thoughtfully ⇒ more chance for it to integrate in our belief system
- Influencing unmotivated and not attentive group: PERIPHERAL ROUTE
External Validity
- Sublimation stimuli: Stimuli presented below conscious awareness ⇒ can activate certain
concepts + shape our thoughts, feelings, and actions.
- Exposed to positive stimuli prior: provide later favorable evaluation
- Study: Participants couldn’t drink anything 3 hours prior. Upon arrival, half could quench
their thirst, half couldn’t. ⇒ all primed with words related to thirst or neutral words ⇒
thirsty participants who were primed with thirst DRANK MORE than thirsty participants
primed with neutral words
- Subliminal stimulus CAN’T induce people to do something they are opposed to (eg. A
song can’t make you kill yourself)
- Recap: internal validity (confident that cause-effect relationship found in study has no other
factors) and external validity (extend that study result can apply to other situations)
- Experiment on persuasion: HIGH INTERNAL VALIDITY and LOW EXTERNAL
VALIDITY
- Subliminal effects weak in daily like ⇒ in lab: no competing messages while real life,
ads EVERYWHERE
- Labs usually shift attitudes/behaviors towards neutral stimuli and NOT psychologically
significant stimuli
The Elements of Persuasion
- Persuasion can be broken down into 3 components:
- “Who”: Source of the message
- ”What”: Content of the message
- “To whom”: Intended audience of the message
- Specific elements influence whether a persuasive attempt works and whether it’s likely to use
peripheral or central route. ⇒ used to understand Nazi propaganda campaigns before and during
WW2.
Source Characteristics
- Definition of source characteristics: Characteristics of person who delivers a persuasive message
(attractiveness, credibility and certainty)
- ATTRACTIVENESS: Attractive people can promote attitude change through the peripheral
route. ⇒ people like seeing pretty people ⇒ more likely to accept what they endorse
- Many campaigns use celebrities
- Attractiveness of a source is ESPECIALLY PERSUASIVE when people need to focus
on peripheral cues (when message isn’t important to them and they don’t have much
knowledge about topic)
- Attractiveness can also be used to for central route ⇒ make people’s thinking more
favorable toward the position being endorsed.

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- CREDIBILITY: Credible sources are persuasive because they seem expert and trustworthy (eg
health related ads ⇒ cite testimonials from doctors).
- Used in both peripheral (eg. picture shows a doctor) and central (eg. Marther Luther King
Jr. as credible leader of Civil Rights Movement ⇒ source credibility can be taken as
argument in favor of moving toward source’s position)
- Example: Highly credible physicist vs non credible journalist ⇒ people believed
physicist even though both written works were similar in content. ⇒ greater attitude
change by physicist
- Definition of sleeper effect: Effect that occurs when a persuasive message from an
unreliable source initially exerts little influence but later causes attitudes to shift.
- Over time, (non credible) source and (strong) content dissociates from each other
⇒ can later influence your attitude/opinion.
- Credible source with weak content dissociates ⇒ source can be persuasive later
on.
- CERTAINTY: Source expressed with certainty and confidence ⇒ seen as more credible ⇒ more
persuasive
Message Characteristics
- Definition of message characteristics: Aspects or content of a persuasive message, including the
quality of the evidence and the explicitness of its conclusions.
- MESSAGE QUALITY: High quality content are persuasive for people with strong motivation
and ability.
- Strong message: Appeal to audience’s core values, straightforward, clear, logical
articulate desirable consequences of taking the actions, refute the opposition, argue
against own self-interest (eg. Prisoners advocating for longer sentences)
- Message makes its CONCLUSION EXPLICIT ⇒ MORE attitude change.
- VIVIDNESS: Colorful, interesting and memorable.
- For vividness to have impact ⇒ central argument must be vivid and NOT whole
message/irrelevant background features.
- Definition of identifiable victim effect: Tendency to be more moved by the vivid plight of
a single individual than by struggles of a more abstract number of people.
- Rather see people (elicit more empathy) than numbers ⇒ CAN HAVE
NEGATIVE connotation in cases where it’s possible to blame the victim for the
situation.
- Study: Vivid info can affect judgements even when it is known to be atypical/misleading
- Vivid story of a women exploiting the welfare system ⇒ after reading, some
given statistics indicating she was TYPICAL or ATYPICAL ⇒ story stucked
to them (statistics didn’t matter) ⇒ continue to believe she’s a freeloader.
- FEAR: Can BOTH DISRUPT careful/thoughtful processing of message (reduces chance of
long-lasting attitude change) and HEIGHTEN motivation to attend to message (increase chance
of attitude change)
- Better to make frightening ad campaigns BUT important to have fear WITH
INSTRUCTIONS on how to respond to fear ⇒ attitude change is more likely
- Example: Reducing smoking habits through 3 ways ⇒ Video, pamphlet and
\video+pamphlet ⇒ pamphlet < video < video+pamphlet

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- CULTURE: Message needs to fit norms, values and outlook of cultural groups ⇒ independent vs
interdependent (can change over time)
- Study: American ads emphasized individual’s benefits while Korean ads focuse on
collective benefits. ⇒ American ads won’t be effective to Koreans
- Westerners (promotion focus) vs East Asians (prevention focus) ⇒ flossing ads (benefit
of flossing vs effect of not flossing)
- High socioeconomic = independent themes are more effective
- Low socioeconomic = interdependent themes are more effective
Audience Characteristics
- Definition of audience characteristics: Characteristics of those who receive a persuasive message,
including need for cognition, mood and age.
- NEED FOR COGNITION: Some people have a stronger/weak need for cognition.
- High cognition people are less persuaded by peripheral cues
- MOOD: People in a good mood are more likely to be persuaded ⇒ change their attitudes.
- Pessimistic, counterattitudinal messages (arguing against prevailing attitude of the
audience) tend to prompt greater message processing in sad/depressed people.
- Uplifting, optimistic, pro-attitudinal messages prompts greater message processing in
happy people.
- Guilt can be used to persuade BUT needs to have ways to alleviate some of guilt follow
alongside it.
- Example: No climate legislation ⇒ due to Replicant’s skepticism about climate change
and political polarization (disagreement about policies that other side’s support).
- What one party endorse/oppose = serve as PERIPHERAL cue which leads people
to “place party over policy”.
- Democrats believers of climate change ⇒ more than Republicans BUT majority
of Republicans believes that it exists.
- Given two policies (framed it so that each is supported by one side) ⇒
Democrats supported policy if they thought other Democrats supported it too. ⇒
PARTY OVER POLICY !
- Participants slightly exaggerated how much their own party would be swayed by
if policy is supported by their side or not AND overexaggerate other party
placing party over policy (expect others to be more polarized)
- Result: Believing in partisanship for climate policies affect people’s stance on
these policies.
- AGE: Younger people are MORE EASILY influenced than older people
- Example: Relying children to be witnesses in legal cases ⇒ easier to influence them and
their attitudes KNOWING YOUR AUDIENCE: Knowing if audience is central or
peripheral (ads will then be different depending on the group)
The Media and Persuasion
- We live in a heavily media-saturated world (broadcast, online, print media, etc.)

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The Power of the Media

- Wanted to compare if position given in ads and those exposed to those ads have aligned opinions
than those with less exposure ⇒ Retrospective self-reports are UNRELIABLE !!
- How can you be sure they saw the ad.
- Self-selection effect: Highly motivated people are more in tune to ads than less
motivated.
- Definition of shared attention: Attending to stimulus at the same time as others ⇒ inclined to
process stimulus more deeply ⇒ persuasion via central.
- Social media provides news, people’s opinions, etc. ⇒ Exposure of this can sway our
opinions/behaviors.
The Media and Conceptions of Social Reality
- Definition of agenda control: Efforts by the media to emphasize certain events and topics, thereby
shaping which issues and events people think are important.
- Example: News media cover crime, traffic, economic downturns ⇒ because the public
perceive them as important issues.
- Issue PROMINENCE influences people’s beliefs about issue’s IMPORTANCE
- Participants either saw 0,3 or 6 stories about foreign energy ⇒ more stories you
watch = more you think it’s a pressing/important issue.
- Example: People who heavily watch TV construe social reality as reality.
- Tend to endorse racially prejudiced attitudes, assume men are better than women
in some skills, overestimate the prevalence of violent crimes ⇒ COULD BE
SELF-SELECTION (maybe more prejudiced/uninformed people watch news).
Perceptions of Bias in the Media
- Definition of hostile media phenomenon: Tendency for people to see media coverage as biased
against their own side and in favor of their opponent’s side.
- Seeing media as bias is regularly seen in presidential politics.
- Example: Jimmy Carter supports thought media coverage supported Reagan more and
vice versa.
- Most have naive realism ⇒ when media covers both sides ⇒ going to be seen as biased by both
sides
Misinformation and the Media
- False news spread quicker than truthful news ⇒ due to greater novelty of fake news and greater
emotional reactions it elicits.
- Misinformation can persuade people into misguided decisions.
Resistance to Persuasion
- Media has a small effect on our behaviors ⇒ due to us having independent thought (perceptual
biases, previous commitments, prior knowledge) ⇒ significant forces that resist persuasion
- A lot of fake news in media ⇒ some are misleading and some outright false
- Don’t believe in people that say something is fake news (eg Donald Trump and the
presidential election)

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Attentional Biases and Resistance

- When learning about about that opposes our stance, generally we SHOULD be altering our
attitudes BUT our mind respond selectively to the new info in a way that maintains our initial
stance. ⇒ Responses broken down into 3 types: selective attention, selective evaluation and
selective framing.
- Little effect by media due to 3 responses.
- We tune in into information that confirms our original attitude and tune out those that
contradicts it.
- Study: Students were either pro/anti-legalization of mariguana. Each was going to listen to 7
strong arguments and 7 easy to refute arguments for legalization of mariguana. They also had a
continuous buzz playing ⇒ can stop it for 5sec if they press the button
- Pro-legalization stopped buzzed during strong arguments and anti stopped buzz at easy to
refute arguments.
- Example: Echo chambers ⇒ watch and absorb information that only supports your view/opinion.
- Presidential election: Democrats were shocked that Trump won because they only
watched source that supported their side (i.e news that kept saying Clinton was going to
win).
- Studies showed that selective attention online is not as widespread as thought ⇒ more
than 50% of Twitter users had overlapping ideological content. ⇒ People who didn’t
have overlap tend to be more politically active.
- People evaluate information (credibility and quality of argument) in ways that support existing
beliefs.
- If you don't believe in climate change ⇒ you’d think an article about it is exaggerating
and you’d point out its flaws.
- Selective evaluation: Personally motivated people will be more skeptical of information that
challenges cherished beliefs
- Can relate to one’s personal health. Receiving unhealthy diagnoses ⇒ DOWNPLAY
seriousness and validity of test.
- Study: Undergrads given test for fictions conditions, had to put saliva on yellow paper
and see if it changes in 20sec. Deficiency condition (remained yellow = have condition)
vs No-deficiency (changed to dark green = have conditions) ⇒ Yellow for everybody.
- Deficiency group were confronted that they “have” conditions ⇒ took 30sec
longer than no-deficiency group.
- Selective framing: Shine positive light on position we support, negative light for opposition.
- Example: Framing abortions under pro-choice and pro-life.
- Example. Gun control. In favor, they frame it as gun-related death vs opposed, frame it as
who’s shooting the guns.
Previous Commitments and Resistance
- Persuasion fails when faced with people’s previous COMMITMENTS !
- Way of life, community of friends, HABITS ⇒ hard to change people’s attitude on it
when it’s so ingrained in their life.
- Genetics (eg. Political allegiance are passed down to a degree) ⇒ hard to change people’s
opinion

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- PUBLIC COMMITMENTS INCREASE RESISTANCE TO PERSUASION: hard

for us to back down on existing belief + they engage us in more extensive thoughts about
the particular issue ⇒ produce extreme attitudes.
- We declare our opinion/attitude on something in public (friend, etc.) ⇒ hard to
change opinion (might be more likely to keep believing it)
- Definition of thought polarization hypothesis: Hypothesis that more extended thought
about particular issue tends to produce more extreme/firm attitude.
- Example: Share opinion about legalizing prostitution ⇒ when stating opinions a
second time, people were given stronger ratings/versions of original positions
(holding their stance EVEN MORE).
Knowledge and Resistance
- PRIOR KNOWLEDGE ⇒ make us engage in central route, scrutinizing message carefully
(resistant to persuasion)
- Example: Environmental preservation. Students are divided into 2 groups: Know a lot OR little of
pro-preservation. Knowledgeable people slightly changed stance, but not a lot WHILE less
knowledgeable SHIFTED ATTITUDE considerably towards anti-preservation.
The Genetic Basis of Attitudes
- Strong attitudes/resistance to persuasion is in our genes ⇒ opinions/beliefs are partly inherited.
- Study: Identical twins shared similar attitudes MORE THAN fraternal twins.
- Heritable attitudes were more accessible, less susceptible to persuasion and predictive of feelings
of attraction to strangers with similar attitudes.
- NO GENE FOR ATTITUDE: Hereditary transmission occur through element of
temperament (impulsivity, preference for risk taking, distaste for novelty)
- Gene influences politically relevant attitudes AND political participation (identical twins
more often share the same party affiliation and likelihood of voting). ⇒ which is why its
hard to change people’s political opinions.
Moralization of Attitudes
- Attitudes backed by moral conviction (grounded in fundamental beliefs about right/wrong) ⇒
resistant to persuasion ! They are VERY hard to sway but CAN BE USED to sway others.
- Attitude about income inequality ⇒ grounded in beliefs about social justice.
- Moral reframing (framing in terms of target values) ⇒ useful persuasion tool
- Example: Gay Américains are patriotic Americans vs should have equal rights ⇒
conservatives against gay people BUT VALUE patriotism.
Attitude Inoculation
- Definition of attitude inoculation: Small attacks on people’s beliefs that engage preexisting
attitudes, prior commitments, and back group knowledge, enabling them to counteract a later
larger attack = RESIST PERSUASION !
- Thinking of counterargument is a form of inoculation
- Can be used to go against misinformation.
- Example: Game was to think of ways on how to refute media misinformation
techniques and then having to rate reliability of news headlines ⇒ found fake
news as less reliable AFTER game than before (control groups had no
comparable effect).
- Think of virus and immune system !!

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- Study: Participants asked participants to endorse different cultural truism (eg brushing
teeth after every meal is good) ⇒ later read essay refuting them ⇒ HUGE EFFECT on
their belief (persuaded)
- Persuasion has less effect when they were given prior to big attacks some
mild/easy to refute attacks.

Chapter review p.343-344

WEEK 9 - PREJUDICE AND STEREOTYPE THREAT (CH.10 p.452-506)

Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination
- Stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination ⇒ Form the intergroup bias
- Causes of the 3 are due to 3 perspectives (economic, motivation, cognitive)
- Stereotyping (beliefs), prejudice (attitudes) and discrimination (behavior)
- Example: AAPI-directed racism throughout US history ⇒ yellow peril (role of economic factors
in prejudice and discrimination), people were not pleased seeing Chinese laborers come and work
& COVID-19.
Characterizing Intergroup Bias
- Definition of stereotypes: Belief that certain attributes are characteristic of members of a
particular group.
- Seeing people not as individual but member of a group ⇒ lead to prejudice and
discrimination
- Some stereotypes are positive/negative and true/false.
- Definition of prejudice: Attitude or affective response (positive or negative) toward a group and
its individual members.
- Definition of discrimination: Favorable or unfavorable treatment of individuals based on their
membership in a particular group.
- All three often go together BUT not always
- Example: Being prejudiced about something but not engaging in discrimination for
social/legal reasons & Jewish people don’t want kids marrying outside their faith
(discriminating but not prejudice ⇒ nothing against other groups, just don’t want to lose
culture/religion).

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Contemporary Prejudice
- Prejudice and discrimination changed throughout the year ⇒ people not as open to express these
ideas as before ⇒ conflict between how they FEEL/THINK and how they SHOULD
FEEL/THINK
- Subtle prejudice is common BUT old-fashioned racism is still very much present.
- Definition of modern-racism: Prejudice directed at racial groups that exists alongside the rejection
of explicitly racist beliefs.
- Although many reject EXPLICIT racist beliefs, many have ingroup favoritism and desire
to defend the status quo ⇒ unconsciously have negative feelings about certain groups.
- Prejudice/discrimination is expressed depending on if there’s a suitable REASON
available to justify their act (can also be nonconscious) ⇒ NO GOOD REASON, they
treat them fairly.
- Study: White participants had to help either a White or Black person who are in
need of medical assistance. Participants ONLY helped Black person if they are
the only one who can help BUT if they have a reason to not help (eg thought
other more qualified people would intervene) ⇒ helped Black people LESS than
White people.
- Study: White participants rater White or Black students’ college applications. ⇒
all students excelled, no difference in rating BUT when idea of some excelling in
SAT more than GPA ⇒ prejudiced participants rater Black students lower than
unprejudiced, because they had an available REASON (i.e fell short on GPA
part).
- Subtle racism has a negative effect on stigmatized groups ⇒ need to cognitively discern
intentions of majority’s behavior (impacts their cognitive resources)
Finding the Proper Comparison
- When trying to assess gender stereotype bias ⇒ can have underlying reason of sexism
- Study: Same essay but one under female or male name. Some names have pre existing
sentiment around it (eg. the name Adolf) ⇒ researchers then tried using similar names
(eg Paul and Paula) ⇒ Essay by men rated HIGHER than women BUT not due to
sexism.
- Evaluating performance can introduce sexism BUT this case, may be NO sexism
when evaluating essays.
- Example: Though women had less musical talent than men ⇒ put them
behind a screen = female players rated much higher than once thought.
- Definition of nameism: Tendency to like certain names than others.
- Study also may contain societal sexism (some female names are derived
from man’s name ⇒ more tolerant of derived women’s names than men).
“Benevolent” Racism and Sexism
- Stereotypes can be POSITIVE while also being harmful !
- Definition of ambivalent sexism: Type of sexism that includes BOTH positive and negative
feelings towards women. It comprises two parts: Benevolent sexism and hostile sexism.
- Benevolent sexism: Positive form of sexism (but harmful). Belief women should be
cherished, protected ⇒ enforces that women NEED men, are weaker, emphasizes gender
roles. It helps MASKED true men’s beliefs.

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- Hostile sexism: Openly negative form of sexism. Sees women as inferior, emotional,
manipulative. Negative behaviors towards nontraditional women.
- Ambivalent sexism ⇒ resistant to change, inhibits progress toward equality
- Benevolent can sometimes generate bigger effects than hostile and no sexism.
Measuring Attitudes About Groups
- Self-reports to determine people’s attitude on various groups are not as trustworthy because they
DON’T express how they truly feel + some have unconscious feelings towards groups they are
NOT AWARE OF.
- There are two types of indirect/non-self report measures of prejudice and stereotyping: Implicit
association test AND different types of priming procedures
- Definition of implicit association test (IAT): Technique for revealing unconscious attitudes toward
different stimuli, particularly groups of people.
- How it works: Given a series of words or pictures, the respondent needs to press with
their left hand if the picture/word conforms to certain rule and right hand for the other
rule. ⇒ Faster to press key for members of particular group and stereotypical words
RELATED to group than key for members and words that CONTRADICTS stereotypes
- Can also be used for assessing IMPLICIT PREJUDICE
- Press one key for positive words and photos of group 1, another key for negative
words and photos of group 2 ⇒ then repeat with pairings switch
- Nonconscious prejudice towards old people ⇒ faster at clicking when related
with negative words than positive words
- Study: Participants had to view Black and White faces. IAT responses to Black faces was
HIGHLY CORRELATED to HEIGHTENED neural activity in the AMYGDALA
(brain region associated with fear and emotional learning) ⇒ scores on
traditional/conscious measure of prejudice (eg. Modern Racism Scale) did not correlate in
difference in neural activity ⇒ IAT allows to assess part of someone’s attitudes that they
are unable/unwilling to articulate.
- Can be used as an indicative of behavior ⇒ Participants interacted with a White
experimenter, then took the IAT and then interacted with a Black experimenter ⇒ IAT
predicted difference in how much they talked, smiled and speech errors/hesitation they
made.
- IAT predicting meaningful behaviors related to level of CORRESPONDENCE b/w
specific attitude assessed by IAT and exact behavior of interest.
Priming and Implicit Prejudice
- Priming (activate concept and make it accessible) to measure prejudice people they might
know/are denying.
- Study: Given prime (faces of members in particular group) and then given real and made up
words that positive or negative ⇒ Association !
- Faster at responding to negative words after seeing a Black face than when given positive
words.
- Definition of affect misattribution procedure (AMP): Priming procedure designed to assess
people’s implicit associations to different stimuli, including their associations to various ethnic,
racial, gender and occupational groups.
- Measures how people evaluate stimulus after given prime INSTEAD of reaction time.

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- Participants are shown picture of member of a particular group (trasngender person,

Muslim, etc.) and then a neutral/unfamiliar image (belt buckle, Chinese pictograph) ⇒
feelings towards member is transferred to neutral subject (eg negative feelings against
Muslim people will lead to less favorable rating of Chinese pictograph)
- AMP can also assess political attitudes, other measures of racial bias, significant personal
habits, etc.
The Economic Perspective
- Definition of economic perspective: Identifies the root of intergroup hostility in competing
interests that shed light on these issues.
- Definition of motivational perspective: Emphasizes the psychological needs that lead to
intergroup conflict.
- Definition of the cognitive perspective: Traces origins of stereotyping to the same cognitive
processes that enable people to categorize. Takes into account frequent conflict b/w people’s
consciously held beliefs/values and their quick/reflexive and sometimes subconscious reactions to
members of other groups.
- All 3 perspectives ⇒ NOT SHARPLY DEFINED CATEGORIES
- They are complementary to each other. Often influence one another. They happen in
different orders.
- Example: Economic element changes people cognitive element = perceive groups as
fundamentally different.
Realistic Group Conflict Theory
- Economic perspective: Prejudice and discrimination forming due to competition for material
resources.
- Definition of realistic group conflict theory: Theory that group conflict, prejudice, and
discrimination are likely to arise over competition b/w groups for limited resources.
- Predicts that economic difficulty (recession and high unemployment) leads to
INCREASE in prejudice/discrimination.
- Strong conflict when one group loses due to another group’s economic advance.
- Example: White people have the most anti-Black prejudice during the Civil
Rights Movement.
- Can also have conflict over IDEOLOGY and CULTURAL SUPREMACY
- Some thinks their religion should be more value than others = therefore, should be taught
more
- Definition of ethnocentrism: Glorifying one’s own group while slandering other groups.
- Loyalty of ingroup is high and “circle the wagon” (unite in defense of common of
common interest).
- During 9/11, everyone of all groups came together.
- Study: Told White students the attacks were directed towards ALL Americans
(regardless of race/class) = REDUCED prejudice toward Black Americans.
- Outgroup are intolerable but once they enter your ingroup, you like them.
- Outgroup are mistreated even though it opposes your ingroup’s values (you treat people
differently)

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The Robbers Cave Experiment

- Intergroup competition creates ethnocentrism.
- Study: 22 5th graders boys were taken to Robbers Cave State Park for 2.5 weeks of summer
camp. All had nothing usual (i.e no problems at school, from intact middle-class families, no
notable ethnicity group differences among them). Both groups did not know of each other's
existence at the start.
- Competition and intergroup conflict: Both groups did camp activities to foster group
unity (develops cohesion). One group called the Eagles, the other the Rattlers.
- Created a tournament: Winner gets a medal and coveted pocketknife, the other
nothing ⇒ see each other as an obstacle/enemy.
- Called opponents mean words, said endearing words to their own teammates. Not
only verbal but physical violence (stealing, throwing, fights).
- Reducing intergroup conflict through superordinate goals: Simple noncompetitive
contact led to hostility by both groups ⇒ to reduce this, both groups had to unknowingly
undergo cooperative activities (disrupted water supply ⇒ need to check length of pipe
from reservoir = easier with everyone together & truck with supplies broke down ⇒ all
came together to pull it out)
- Joining for a common goal: Led to less hostility and friendship forming b/w both
groups
- Definition of superordinate goals: Goal that transcends the interests of any one
group and that can be achieved more readily by two or more groups working
together.
- Cooperation in the Robber Cave Experiment: Number of crises led to both groups
working together ⇒ Reduce in hostility
- Intergroup hostility does NOT NEED differences in background or appearance or amount of prior
conflict to develop BUT simply two groups in competition for a reward.
- Competition against outsiders = INCREASES group cohesion.
The “Jigsaw” Classroom
- Study: Students are divided into small groups of 6 ⇒ each were given a specific subtopic to an
overall topic and had to teach their parts to the rest of the group ⇒ forces students to learn the
lesson via help of their peers ⇒ REDUCES competitive nature of school and INCREASES
cooperativity toward a common goal.
- Groups are diversified (ethnicity, gender, ability, etc.), groups are ethnically
heterogeneous (seen as individual and not member/representative of a group)
- Jigsaw classroom fosters positive attitudes towards different ethnic groups + students
perform better than traditional classes.
The Motivational Perspective
- Hostility b/w groups can happen without competition ⇒ simply having a group separation
(knowing another group exist) can create intergroup hostility.
- Group boundaries is sufficient to initiate group discrimination
The Minimal Group Paradigm
- Definition of minimal group paradigm: Experimental paradigm in which researchers create group
based on arbitrary and seemingly meaningless criteria and then examine how the members of
these “minimal groups” are inclined to behave toward one another.

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- Participants performed trivial task ⇒ then divided into two groups based on response.
One task was estimating number of dots on the screen ⇒ created a group of
overestimators and underestimators ⇒ REALITY: people were RANDOMLY assigned to
groups + don’t know who else in their group.
- Each separately were asked to assign points to pairs of fellow participants (ex. 18
points to ingroup will give 3 points to outgroup or 15 points to ingroup which
gives 15 to outgroup).
- RESULT: Majority are interested in maximizing the relative gain for their
ingroup over outgroup THAN maximizing ABSOLUTE gain for ingroup.
- Ingroup favoritism demonstrates how easy is to slip into “us vs them”
mentality.
Social Identity Theory
- Does ingroup favoritism have to do with prejudice being driven by motivation (we are better than
them) or driven by cognitive tendency (me vs them ⇒ sorting)?
- Can be explained through cognitive tendency but what explains us treating ingroup better
than outgroup? ⇒ Due to motivation like economic reasons? ⇒ Not necessarily so as
seen in the minimal group paradigm (there wasn’t any actual reward).
- DIFFERENT MOTIVATIONAL PERSPECTIVE IS SEEN !
- Definition of social identity theory: Person’s self-concept and self-esteem derive not only from
personal identity and accomplishments but also from status and accomplishments of various
groups that the person belongs to.
- Can have both positive and negatives sides ⇒ Americans are proud of their economic,
Bill of Rights, athletes, etc. BUT ashamed of history of slavery.
- Study: Some Canadian participants had their identity made salient ⇒ then had to rank
honey and maple syrup ⇒ identity in mind rated maple syrup higher (since it’s closely
related to Canadian identity)
- BOOSTING THE STATUS OF THE INGROUP: Self-esteem is tied in with group ⇒ we want
to BOOST status of group we belong to ⇒ causes ingroup favoritism
- When allowed to display ingroup favoritism ⇒ people had higher self-esteem than those
who hadn’t.
- When group looks good = we feel good
- Criticism to group feels like criticism of the self.
- BASKING IN REFLECTED GLORY:
- Definition of basking in reflected glory: Taking pride in accomplishments of other people
in one’s group (eg. Sport fans identifying with winning team).
- Study: After football game, if the team won ⇒ students tended to wear school colors
more than after defeat.
- Use of first-person (we won) vs third-person (they lost). ⇒ Distance ourselves in group
lost
- DENIGRATING OUTGROUPS TO BOLSTER SELF-ESTEEM: Criticizing other group
makes you feel better about your own group and therefore, yourself.
- Study: Participants had their self-esteem threatened by being told they did good or bad on
IQ test. Then told to watch interview tape (some see no religion, some see applicant is
Jewish) ⇒ Threatened self-esteem people negatively rated them if thought they were

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Jewish ⇒ Later experienced an INCREASE in self-esteem from beginning to end of

experiment.
- Unthreatened self-esteem did not negatively rate applicant.

- Outgroups can be used strategically to enhance self-esteem.

- Study: Non-Black participants were either praised or criticized by a White or Black male
doctor. Participants are motivated to cling onto praise but challenge criticism + they use
race of doctor to do so.
- Praise from Black doctor ⇒ sees him as DOCTOR
- Criticism from Black doctor ⇒ sees him as BLACK MEN
- Participants were giving list of words/non-words and had to indicate if it was a word as
fast as they can (words are related to doctor or Black American stereotypes)
- If saw him as doctor = faster to recognize medical profession words
- If saw him as Black men = faster to recognize stereotypes
- From White doctor: regardless of positive/negative feedback or words relation ⇒ equally
as fast recognizing terms in both categories.
THE COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE
- We categorize everything ⇒ simplifies the task of processing LOADS of stimuli.
- Stereotypes (schemas) helps us do it.
- Allows us to efficiently process information when we are tired, overloaded, etc. = Need
of a shortcut.
Stereotypes and the Conservation of Cognitive Resources
- People are more LIKELY to use stereotypes when they lack mental energy (eg asking a morning
person at night OR night person in the morning).
- Low point of circadian rhythm
- Intoxication & low mental capacities
- Stereotypes gives a mental shortcut ⇒ Free up mental capacity for other task
- Study: Participants had two tasks — form an impression of a person (given traits on a
screen like rebellious, dangerous, etc.) & listen to a lecture about Indonesia and later do a
quiz on its content

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- Half were given a stereotype that accompanies the traits, other half given just
traits.
- RESULT: Stereotype provided ⇒ Able to recall MORE trait-relevant information
AND scored HIGHER on the quiz.
Construal Processes and Biased Assessments
- Stereotypes can lead to mistaken judgments
- Study: Students were either told Hannah was from upper-middle or working class ⇒ then
showed her answering questions (performance was ambiguous) ⇒ if thought she was
from upper-middle, you would estimate that she performed better than average.
- Fact: Working-class children typically have less resources than upper-middle class =
perform worse in school = in experiment, reasonably expect a certain outcome.
- Biased observations ⇒ construe information that confirms stereotype ⇒ strengthens stereotype
- Distinctiveness and illusory correlations:
- NOTE: Illusory correlation is when we make correlations b/w events, characteristics, or
categories that are not actually related. ⇒ Can arise due to how we process
unusual/distinctive events
- Distinctive events capture our attention and they become more memorable (eg. Coming
into the classroom dressed as a clown) ⇒ May become overrepresented in our memory
- Minority groups are distinctive to majority
- Negative behaviors are distinctive
- Minority groups + negative behaviors ⇒ Double distinctive !
- Minority group are MORE likely to be stereotyped as more likely to engage in
NEGATIVE behavior.
- Definition of paired distinctiveness: Pairing two distinctive events that stand out even
more because they occur together
- Study: Group A and Group B, don’t know much about them but you read stories
about people in each group. Most had positive (helped someone) but some
negative (talks about himself a lot) stories ⇒ no correlation b/w group
membership and likelihood of positive/negative behaviors.
- Group A had MORE stories ⇒ become the majority.
- Overestimation that Group B performed more negative behaviors & rated
minority less favorably (brain notice negative behaviors in smaller group ⇒
made a false connection) ⇒ Shows how people believe stereotypes even though
there’s no difference among both groups.
- Novel (minority) groups are linked to unusual/rare behaviors (eg. negative behaviors)
- Expectations and biased information processing:
- Stereotypes can be SELF-REINFORCING: If group does an action that is consistent
with the stereotype ⇒ people will notice/remember BUT if contradicts the image, people
will ignore/forget. ⇒ Effect the way we construe
- Study: Showed either video of White or Black man shoving (not ambiguous) ⇒ If had
White guy, see him as playing around BUT if got Black men, see it as aggressive
behavior

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- Self-fulfilling prophecies:
- NOTE: Self-fulfilling prophecies is one’s belief/expectation makes one act in a way to
confirm it.
- Having a stereotype about a group ⇒ makes you act in a way that elicit that
behavior in group
- Example: If you think group is hostile ⇒ you act cold towards them ⇒ they also
will act cold ⇒ “proof” of their hostility
- NOTE: Interviewing White vs Black applicant ⇒ change in body language
- Explaining away exceptions:
- Response to disconfirmation of stereotype depends on person’s emotional investment in
stereotype AND whether it is specific to person who holds it or is widely shared.
- People DON’T give up on stereotypes easily !
- Definition of subtyping: Explaining away exceptions to a given stereotype by creating a
subcategory of the stereotyped group that can be expected to differ from the group as a
whole.
- We stereotype and believe people act that certain way on AVERAGE ⇒ creates
a LOOPHOLE = allows people to stand firm on belief even with evidence against
it (see person who doesn’t align with stereotype as an exception).
- Example: Sexist would subtype independent women as strident/militant (harsh,
agressive)
- People like evidences that support their belief but not those that contradicts it.
- We attribute behavior consistent with stereotype to dispositions (personality/traits) of the
person BUT inconsistent behavior are attributed to external causes.
- Concrete terms (eg. Lifting) say nothing about a person, but more abstract (eg. Helpful)
does.
- Study: When desirable events, used abstract terms to describe ingroup BUT for
undersirable events, used abstract terms for outgroups.
Accentuation of Ingroup Similarity and Outgroup Difference
- Dividing a group into two arbitrary groups ⇒ everyone is the same yet we thing people in our
group is more similar to us.
- The outgroup homogeneity effect:
- Definition of outgroup homogeneity effect: Tendency to assume that within-group
similarity is much stronger for outgroups than for ingroups (i.e you think we are
different/diverse but THEY are very similar/homogenous).
- Generalizing that all Asians are the same
- Study: Princeton and Rutgers students were given videos of other students
deciding b/w rock or classical music OR waiting alone or with others. Half of
them were told students were from Princeton, other half from Rutgers ⇒
participants assumed more similarity in outgroups than ingroup.
- Do it because we generally interact with ingroup more ⇒ ENCOUNTER more
diverging habits/opinions. & we see ingroup members as individual and not
member of a group.
- Definition of own-race identification bias: Tendency to be better able to recognize and
distinguish faces from their own race than from other races.

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Automatic and Controlled Processing

- Cognitive processes that give rise to stereotyping/prejudice are:
- Deliberate, conscious and controlled
- Rapid, automatic and not much conscious attention ⇒ Distinctiveness-based illusory
correlations and Outgroup homogeneity effect ! ⇒ we are highly guided by automatic
processes
- Electroencephalogram (EEG) assesses event-related potential (ERP) which is the measure of
electrical potential, generated by firing of cortical neurons in response to a particular event (i.e
presentation of a stimulus). ERP signals are amplified when brain detects something out of place.
- Study: Participants had their ERP recorded. Tasked to read sentences including pronouns
that countered gender types (eg firefighter - she) and sentences that did not counter
stereotypes ⇒ High amplitude ERP when reading sentences including counter pronouns.
- Unprejudiced people still holds stereotypes but employ more cognitive processes ⇒ suppress
them
- Study: Primed participants with stereotypes of Black Americains ⇒ given description of
someone acting ambiguously hostile (hostile is a stereotype of Black Americains) ⇒
because it’s so automatic, non-prejudice and prejudice equally said he seemed more
hostile/negative ⇒ activated non conscious stereotypes of unprejudiced people
- Demonstrate unprejudiced people having cognitive processes ⇒ asked both to list
characteristics of Black Americains ⇒ prejudice listed more negative traits
- Study: Primed with Black or White face. White participants were faster to identify weapon after
seeing a Black face and the tool after a White face.
- Do White people have automatic prejudice (dislike) towards Black people and guns? OR
they have automatic stereotyping (facilitation caused by stereotypical association, even
activated in people who have nonprejudiced attitude toward Black people) ? ⇒
AUTOMATIC STEREOTYPING !!
- Study: 4 stimulus (2 positive - sport equipment and fruit & 2 negative - handguns &
insects) ⇒ Black faced help recognition stereotypical items (handguns and sport
équipements) and NOT non-stereotypical items (insects and fruits).
- Study: Unarmed vs armed ⇒ shot more Black unarmed targets and shot less White armed targets
Reducing Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
- Ingroup and Outgroup interactions improved due to increase of interactions b/w them.
Individual Approaches to Prejudice Reduction
- People hold beliefs not in isolation but with social group ⇒ RESISTANT to media, school
programs, convincing people that peers are against that belief ⇒ can work as reducing
stereotypes short term
- Study: School reading programs (had to read about friendships b/w children with and
without disabilities OR stories completely unrelated to people with disabilities) ⇒ those
who read stories about friendship with someone disabled ⇒ expressed more favorable
attitudes and willingness to interact with them in real life.
- Study: People who listened to soap opera were open to intermarriage b/w Hutus and
Tutsis than those exposed to a control soap opera ⇒ Interacting with outgroups leads to
more favorable attitudes.

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- Study: Social media reduced intergroup tensions ⇒ if someone said racial slurs and got
called out ⇒ tended to reduce racist behavior BUT ONLY if high-status person
criticized them (eg another white person with a lot of followers) ⇒ effects mainly short
term
- Study: Cognitive and emotional training interventions ⇒ putting yourself in someone
else shoes + doing loving-kindness meditation ⇒ inclined to carry positivite attitudes
toward outgroup members.
Intergroup Approaches to Prejudice Reduction
- Definition of contact hypothesis: Prejudice can be reduced by putting members of different
groups in frequent contact with one another.
- Example: During WW2, segregation b/w Black and White soldiers ⇒ when had mixed
teams ⇒ White people from mixed teams were less resistant in having Black soldiers
fight with them, White soldiers (never in mixed team) were RESISTING !
- Integration/frequent contact with groups is not a definite method (i.e sometimes leads to increase
in prejudice), they only allow for groups to be MORE LIKELY to reduce previous prejudice.
They need certain conditions for it to work:
- Equal status b/w groups
- Need a shared goal that requires cooperation (superordinate goal)
- Community support
- Encouraging 1 on 1 interaction b/w different groups.
- Definition of personalization: Seeing outgroups members as individuals and not
stereotype/undifferentiated members of a group.
- Personalization makes it easier to empathize
Conflict Remediation
- Seeds of Peace: 3 weeks camp for Israeli and Palestinian teenagers ⇒ attitudes toward each other
tend to improve by the end.
The Role of Diversity Ideologies in Prejudice Reduction
- Definition of multiculturalism: Ideology that encourages the acknowledgement and appreciation
of people’s unique cultural and ethnic identities.
- Culture and ethnicity is central to people’s identity
- Increase perspective takin, enhance support for pro-diversity policies, encourage positive
behaviors to outgroup, reduce anxiety in interactions with outgroup.
- Multiculturalism leads to engagement of color people in organization.
- CONS:
- Elicit feelings of exclusion among White people
- Identity threat for high-status group members (threatens value and relevance of
their group)
- Increase race essentialism & belief that racial-group differences are biologically
based/immutable.
- White peoples using multiculturalism approach in interaction with other racial
groups ⇒ (2) negative interpersonal consequences
- Minority spotlight effect: Minority-group identities become
uncomfortably salient

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- Identiy denial: Whereby people from underrepresented groups feel

precluded from embracing other group identities.
- Can conceal and delegitimize claims of racial discrimination.
- Framing multiculralism that includes majority (white peoples) ⇒ better receptiveness of
majority group (who often show resistance)
- Definition of color-blindness: Ideology that encourages treating others as unique individuals and
downplaying or ignoring cultural and ethnic group differences.
- Culture and ethnicity is down played and we should treat others as unique individuals.
- Should foster equality, inclusiveness, acceptance of everyone BUT this deliberate
blindness to cultural differences lead to MORE prejudice/discrimination.
- GREATER Color blindness support over multiculralism ⇒ stronger
ethnocentrism and greater ingroup favoritism.
- Avoiding race ⇒ mentally taxing ⇒ White peoples will express more negative
nonverbal ⇒ Black people judging them as more prejudiced.
- Color-blind message at school ⇒ students expect more racial bias and see less
diversity.
- Less able to detect racial discriminations and less likely to well explain
discriminatory instances.
- Helps White people to see themselves as unprejudiced ⇒ ligimitize/maintain
inequality.
- Both pros and cons but multiculralism seems to be more effective in reducing prejudice.
Diversity Training
- Positive benefits of these programs may be limited primarily to improved attitudes toward
underrepresented groups among women and White people who are low in prejudice to begin with.
- Majority groups may feel alienated by being required to do diversity training.
- Minority groups may doubt their competence when company emphase diversity initiatives.
- If discrimination were to happen, undermine it by saying there are diversity trainings.
- WHAT THEY SHOULD DO: hire more minority groups, have them work with majority groups
in collaborative tasks, etc.
Chapter review p. 504-505

WEEK 9 - PREJUDICE AND STEREOTYPE THREAT (CH.11 p.507-557)

LIVING IN A PREJUDICED WORLD
- Example: Christian Cooper (Black men, bird watcher) and Amy Cooper (White lady with a dog)
⇒ He asked her to leash her dog but she refused ⇒ Got heated and she threatens to call the
police ⇒ Says an “African American man threatening my life” ⇒ Didn’t mention birdwatcher
because of her prejudice. + later she got vilified and seen as a Karen.
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY
- Definition of social dominance theory: Theory about the hierarchical nature of societies, how they
remain stable, and how more powerful or privileged groups in a society maintain their advantage.
- Hierarchy is based on age (adults > children), gender (men > women) and “arbitrary set”
(different for different societies, can either be ethnicity, religion or race).

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- Hierarchy are kept in place with (3) social and psychological structures:
1. Individual discrimination: Individuals in dominant groups act to preserve their
advantage and to keep those in subordinate groups “in their place”.
- Example: Mistreatment of racial, ethnic, sexual and religious minority groups
such as locking door when seeing certain groups of people past by, police officers
unfairly treating stigmatized groups, etc.
- White Americans are scared/relunctant to loose privileged status (largest racial
group but not majority) ⇒ INCREASES negative attitudes against Asian, Black
and Hispanic people + INCREASES discrimination towards White people.
2. Institutional discrimination: Laws and norms preserve the hierarchy
3. Behavioral asymmetries: Deference is shown to members of dominant but not
subordinate groups and self-fulfilling prophecies undermine the achievements of
members of subordinate groups.
- Definition of great replacement theory: theory that White peoples will be “replaced” by
non-White people.
- Definition of social dominance orientation: Personality trait that corresponds to a person’s support
for socioeconomic hierarchy and the belief that different groups should occupy higher and lower
positions in society.
- People in dominant group differ in their concern of losing their status/priviledge
(murderes to simply expressing prejudice ⇒ varies).
- SCORE HIGH: More LIKELY to express prejudiced attitudes toward different groups
and are MORE FAVORABLE of policies that preserve hierarchies.
- SCORE LOW: Can remain untroubled when seeing clear discrimination IF they believe
into ideological tenets or legitimizing myths which make unequal treatment seem
reasonable AND high desirable.
- Ideological tenets: Beliefs and values that make up an ideology
- Legitimizing myths: Culturally held beliefs/stereotypes that justify oppressive
actions and institutional discrimination.
- Example: People believed that kings’ powers were given by God ⇒ cannot be
questioned.
- Stereotypes about who is deserving/hardworking influences who receives fair treatment and
opportunities.
- Example: Possession of crack cocaine (used more in Black neighborhoods) than powder
cocaine (used more in White neighborhoods).
(P.515)
Believing In Strict Meritocracy, a Just World, and Economic Mobility
- Meritocracy connotes that one people merit more than others do (i.e some people work hard and
are talented & more competent ⇒ they deserve merit & status)
- Strict meritocracy:
- DOES NOT acknowledge the role of luck and being given opportunity/priviledge.
- People can have wrong ideas + stereotypes of who is hard working/talented ⇒ ex.
Dominant groups help their own members to suceed ⇒ look at subordinate groups’

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failures ⇒ think they don’t have what it takes (they simply don’t have the same
opportunities as dominant groups).
- Definition of just world hypothesis: Belief that people get what they deserve in life and deserve
what they get.
- Believe that something bad happened due to one’s past life.
- Invalidate victim ⇒ blame them over the situation they had no control in
- Example: Viewing victims of rape and domestic abuse as the one in fault.
- Just world belief stems in part to us wanting to reassure ourselves that bad things won’t
happen to us ⇒ reducing anxiety of things happening by chance or fate (i.e if we don’t do
anything wrong, nothing bad will happen).
- In meritocracy, there’s a belief that enough talent and drive, you will receive no matter where you
started ⇒ FALSE, makes society seem more meritocratic but it’s not (i.e other factors needed to
be successful like opportunities, connections, money, etc.)
- Belief in mobility: Example is USA being seen as a land of opportunity and a place with high
economic mobility (reality: it is false)
- Belief in meritocracy, just world and pronounced mobility ⇒ makes it easier to ACCEPT
INEQUALITIES and REMOVE INCENTIVE TO CHALLENGE systems that produce
them.
Justifying Status Differences Through Dehumanization
- Study: Studying dehumanization. Participants were short photos of most groups (majority groups)
but when shown of objects or people from notable outgroups (homeless, drug addicts, etc)
⇒ NO activation in medial prefrontal cortex (area associated with social cognition)
- They see notable outgroups as non fully human
- Definition of anthropomorphism: Attribution of human traits, feelings, and intentions to
nonhuman entities. OPPOSITE of dehumanization
- Example: Seeing robots, mammals as human
- Tend to anthropomorphize when: Feel in need of social connection & feel helpless
- Anthropomorphize gives us a sense of ORDER and PREDICTABILITY to the world
around us.
- Random acts/outcomes can seem more predictable if we imagine someone
responsible for them ⇒ We give names to hurricanes ⇒ feel like it’s caused by
someone ⇒ gives us a sense of control (hurricane seem less random, we
expected it) & easier to understand/feels more real (feels like someone is
coming).
- People are more likely to dehumanize when:
- They have a strong ingroup loyalty and connection
- They see the world as chaotic and threatening (dehumanization more likely to occur in
periods of conflict/turnmoil).
THE STEREOTYPE CONTENT MODEL
- Definition of stereotype content model: Model that describes the nature of common group
stereotypes, positing that they vary along the two prominent dimensions of warmth and
competence.
- We judge others based on warmth and competence ⇒ both considerations that are key to
our survival.

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- Warmth: Need to understand person/group’s likely intention (friend or enemy).Will they

provide benefits or inflict harm? ⇒ seeing if they are moral, trustworthy, kind, friendly,
etc.
- Competence: Able to act on their kind or bad intentions. ⇒ seeing if they are intelligent,
determined, creative, etc. (Competent friend is useful, competent enemy is harmful)
- Example: Positive in both warm/competent (Black professionals, Americains, etc. ⇒
admired) and negative in both (homeless people, poor people ⇒ contempt/disliked)
- Study: Participants asked to give honest opinion about how different groups are viewed by others.
- Ambivalent stereotypes: Groups that are high on one dimension but low on another
- High warmth & low competence: Pitied
- Low warmth & high competence: Envied

- Ambivalence is also seen in gender stereotypes !

- NOTE: Benevolent sexism is sexism that seems “positive” but it just reinforces
traditional gender roles.
- Double standard: Women acts competent ⇒ seen as lacking warmth (too bossy,
inconsistent with female stereotype) BUT Women acting warm ⇒ seen as not competent
(cannot take form of a leader, not assertive/strong enough)
- Proposition: Female candidates should project strength on behalf of others
(middle class, military families) ⇒ communally oriented ⇒ warmer
- Allies (warm, have your back) vs Competitors (cold)
- High-status (competent, privileged position gives them resources + meritocratic beliefs assume
competence of high-status people) vs Low-status (less competent)
- We connect competence & status but not competence & warmth (i.e if warm/cooperative, not
seen as competent BUT if successful in business, not seem as warm)

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Stereotypes of the Rich and Poor in a Polarized World of Increasing Economic Inequality
- Stereotypes on poor people is variable: We favor working poor than homeless or welfare people.
- Low socioeconomic status (SES) people: People looked down on them/see them as worthless
BUT with a paternalistic sympathy (feel sorry for them, might think they are warm but not
competent).
- Higher the difference in inequality in a society ⇒ more likely to see lower-SES people as lacking
competence. ⇒ can be explained through social dominance theory: they deserve that status
because they lack competence.
- Politicians and rich people: High in competence but cold
- People also started doubting elite institutions and professions (scientists, universities,
health professionals) ⇒ seeing them as rigged
- Science once seen as impartial/detailed ⇒ now seen as calculating
- Stereotypes of high and low socioeconomic people have of each other creates misunderstandings:
- Working-class: Don’t want to seem incompetent ⇒ try to earn respect from high status
people
- High SES trying not to seem cold ⇒ seem patronizing and condescending to low SES ⇒
create resentment
THE EFFECTS OF STEREOTYPES AND PREJUDICE ON THE INDIVIDUAL
Individual Discrimination and Direct Mistreatment
- (2) common forms of prejudice and discrimination:
1. Commission: Individuals engaging in actions that disadvantage or harm members of
certain groups.
2. Omission: Absence of things (resources, opportunities, attention) that are available to
members of dominant groups.
- Bias in law enforcement: Members of some demographic groups (Black American, Indigenous
American and Hispanic people) are killed by police in proportionally greater numbers than
members of other groups.
- Randomized controlled experiment was used to measure how stereotypes of Black
Americans being “troublesome” can influence how police officers interact with them.
- If you think they are troublesome ⇒ you will spend more time looking at them.
- Study: Participants were primed with Black face, White or no prime ⇒ then were given
blurry/degraded pictures of objects (either crime-related or not). They had to signal when
it was clearly defined. ⇒ Black face prime led to detect crime-related objects (but not
other objects) MORE READILY ! (Primed guided their attention)
- Bias in hiring: Black-named applicants were given fewer follow-ups for interviews than White-
named applicants. ⇒ Black names are associated with low SES
- Same applies for foreign-sounding names
- Gender bias and bias against members of sexual minor groups had mixed and ambiguous
result ⇒ some cases, women was preferred over men ⇒ depends on context !

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- Bias in what is absent or withheld: Not only active mistreatment but harm can be harm in not
doing anything ⇒ Not giving attention to marginalized group (eg. people who are unattractive,
obese, older, with disabilities, etc.)
- Those who have multiple nondominant identities (intersectional identities) ⇒ often are
invisible because they don’t align with prototypical members of their identity groups.
Half-Life of Prejudice, No Irish Need Apply
- Irish people moved to US and were mistreated (stereotypes included illiteracy, alcoholism,
depicted as apes in newspaper, etc.) ⇒ stereotypes eliminated/lessened when John F. Kennedy
was elected president (Irish American).
- Some groups like Italians, Jews and Poles were not treated as White by public (except for middle
class Germans, English and Dutch ⇒ assimilated easily).
Institutional Discrimination and Life in a Harsher World
- Definition of systemic inequities: Historical or contemporary laws, policies, practices and norms
that advantage some groups in society and disadvantage others (eg. Genders, racial or ethnic
groups) when it comes to such things as wealth, education, housing, and health care.
- Example: There are more parks (leafier areas) in upscale neighborhoods while lower ones
have more highways and industrial sites ⇒ during heat waves, lower-income areas have
to deal with a hotter environment than rich people do.
- Example: Systemic bias in legal systems and laws ⇒ Black peoples are punished more
severely than White people. For drug use, they are sent out to federal prison MORE
OFTEN than White people, but equally sent out to state prison.
- Example: In newspapers, photographs of men have their face take up most of the space
⇒ people seen as MORE COMPETENT if face is prominent BUT in photographs of
women, mainly their body was in frame.
- Dominant groups are advantaged in systemic financial ⇒ You get HEAVILY taxed on money
from labor (working at a job) than money coming from capital gains (passive money from having
in the bank or owning stocks). ⇒ Favors rich people ! ⇒ widens gap b/w rich and poor.
- Institutional discrimination in terms of what’s absent: Underrepresentation, lack of role
models (eg in boardrooms, media, etc.) ⇒ disidentification (dissociate) with society (eg.
Indigenous people in US) ⇒ no sense of belonging
- Multiracial/Intersectionality (eg being Blasian) was not recognized ⇒ had to choose one
or the other (not aligning with prototypical image of groups)
- Example: Librarian have a book on Black women’s history ⇒ Do you put it
under Women’s History or Black’s History ⇒ Have to choose one
- Problem with representation in history ⇒ some things cover men’s stories but not
women.
- Invisibility can be a blessing ⇒ if intersectional individuals is not a prototypical member
of either of their identity groups ⇒ can act in ways that depart from stereotype and not be
questioned on it.
- Study: Black women is not prototypical of Women and Black people ⇒ in work
setting, she can act assertive and not be seen as a less effective leader in
comparison to a White women. Black male and White women scored lower in
leadership when they acting in dominant manner.

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- Language as a determinant of what’s present or absent: Things that come to mind first means
we’re more often exposed to them (eg politicians, CEO, film directions being mainly male).
- Can lead to gender inequality being self-fulfilling (see their gender in those fields ⇒
makes them want to be that too ⇒ perpetuate balance even more)
- Real world-frequency and language can determine what springs to mind first.
- Language is androcentric ⇒ masculine terms are more used than
gender-inclusive
- Study: Changing the title of an academic/residential leadership role from master
to head ⇒ master has a female counterpart (mistress) but head no (i.e neutral
term)
- In 2015, students then asked to assign the imagine master a name ⇒ 77%
thought of men
- In 2018, student asked to assign the image head a name ⇒ only 56%
thought of a man.
- Also were tasked to indicate if the faculty member is a master or not (in
2015) & head or not (in 2018) ⇒ 2015 students accurately identified
which men were house masters than which women were BUT 2018
students were equally accurate at identifying which men and women
were house heads.
Stereotypical Facial Features and the Death Penalty
- “One-drop rule”: Any Black ancestry will consider the individual as Black.
- Now: difficulty assessing who counts as Black, White, Asian, etc. ⇒ genetic variation
(especially more in Asian than Europe)
- Stereotypical African features lead to more prejudiced reactions + led to harsher
sentences + more likely to be on death row.
- Motivational perspective on stereotyping: Primed with the idea of economic scarcity ⇒
more likely to categorize ambiguous faces as Black.
The Inner Life of Members of Stereotyped Groups
- Knowledge about stereotypes (their content) and meta-knowledge of stereotypes (who holds
them) affects our inner lives in many ways. Such as:
1. Attributional ambiguity: Hard to understand whether the situation happened due to the
same cause as for a majority-group person OR due to prejudice (eg. Did I get hired
because I am Asian? Did my officemate get the promotion instead of me because I am a
woman?)
- Study: Black and White students received flattering or unflattering feedback from
a White student. ⇒ Half were told the student can see them, half told they
couldn’t see them. ⇒ Seeing or not had no effect on White students BUT Black
student thinking they are hidden self-esteem went down from unflattering and up
with positive ⇒ Black student who think they are seen, self-esteem was neither
diminished (unsure if due to own failings or prejudice) or enhanced (unsure if
due to own skill or condescension).
2. Stereotype threat: Fear that members of stigmatized groups have that they will confirm
stereotypes others have of them and group.

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- Study: Women’s math test score affected when the stereotype that women don’t
perform as well as men in math was brought to mind (either told no gender
difference in score or there was a gender difference in which favored men). ⇒
told there WAS a gender difference ⇒ test scored DROPPED
- Greater the threat effect when the threat is more obvious !
- Examples:
- Female students took a math test alongside two other women or two
other men ⇒ scored worse alongside men.
- Verbal exam given to Black and White students. Some told the test
measures intelligence, others that the test can’t measure intelligence ⇒
White students unphased in both cases, Black students performed
WORSE when they thought the test tested their intelligence.
- Writing race on top of an exam caused Black students to perform worst.
- White men performed worse in math exam when reminded of Asian’s
proficiency in math & Asian American women did better when race was
highlighted than when gender was highlighted.
- Stereotype threat can undermine performance ⇒ leads to them being
frazzled ⇒ affect performance on tasks ⇒ more susceptible to stereotype
threat (CYCLE !)
3. The cost of concealment: Many people had to conceal their true identity (eg. Hiding that
one is gay).
- Hiding in the closet, Black people trying to pass as White, older adults getting
plastic surgery
- Concealing can affect both physically (more stress, depression, etc.) and mentally
(mentally taxing to keep up concealment ⇒ perform less well on tasks).
- Concealing any of variety of significant identities ⇒ développement of “divided
self” (aspects of oneself that are public and private are mentally divided).
THE EFFECTS OF STEREOTYPES AND PREJUDICE ON SOCIAL INTERACTION
- Encounters with others different from us can lead to a sense of self-expansion ⇒ People find it
gratifying/rewarding + socially connected
- Encounters with different demographics can also be stressful (everyone shares different opinions
on politics, religion, etc.)
- Interactions b/w members of different groups can be challenging due to:
- Interaction with outgroups are rarer than ingroups ⇒ can be self reinforcing (eg. White
people think Black people don’t want to interact and vice versa ⇒ both end up not
interacting ⇒ reinforces their beliefs of each other)
- Concern that past tensions b/w groups can arise in their now interactions.
- Study: White people were scared to be seen as prejudiced during an interracial
interaction ⇒ HIGH CORTISOL LEVEL (stress-related hormone)
- Study: Interact with person that doesn’t obviously belong to a marginalized
group ⇒ physiologically responded as if interaction was a challenge BUT with
marginalized group (Black person, Socio-economically disadvantage) ⇒
treated interaction as a threat

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 PSYC 215

- Concern with being liked ⇒ White people during interracial interactions would use LESS
expressions of competence in their language (“downshift” their language) ⇒ Seen by others as
patronizing
- Study: White liberals asked to describe themselves to someone with a White-sounding name ⇒
chose words that cannote competence (competitive, assertive, etc.) BUT described themselves to
Black-sounding name person with words that cannote warmth (supportive, compassionate, etc.)
- Conservative White did OPPOSITE.
- Another study: Conservative Black and Hispanic people emphasize competence when
describing themselves to White public.
- Another study: Black conservatives and liberal DID NOT differ in self-presentation when
they thought they were interacting with a Black person. Black conservative thought they
were interacting with a White person emphasized high status MORE than Black liberals.
- Study: White participants were asked to arrange 3 chairs for conversation on either racial
profiling OR love and relationships. They are either interacting with 2 White or 2 Black people.
⇒ If talking about racial profiling with Black partners, the chairs are further apart (interactions
induced anxiety) ⇒ no pattern observed for non racially sensitive topic & no difference if with
White partners.
- Study: Trying to play Guess who. Photos were half men and half women, half had a red and half a
blue background, Half were Black and Half were White. ⇒ When faced with a Black opponent,
they were LESS LIKELY to ask about race questions due to their anxiety and carefulness
during interracial interactions.
- Study: With children (one older and one younger) ⇒ Older performed BETTER when
the target photos were White BUT performed WORSE when the target photo was a
Black person ⇒ demonstrates that they know the sensitivity around the topic of race.
- Intergroup interactions heavily affect members of marginalized groups.
- Study: Examining performance of cashiers, some had a French-sounding name, others
had North Africa/sub-Saharan Africa sounding names. Randomly assigned to work some
days with biased managers (implicit bias towards Africans) and other days with unbiased
managers. ⇒ African-named cashiers worked better than French peers when working
with unbiased managers (stricter hiering standard for African applicants than for French
applicants) BUT, when working with bias managers, African-named cashiers worked
more slowly than French peers ⇒ biased managers interacting less with African-named
cashiers ⇒ created self-fulfilling prophecy (had low expectations) ⇒ LOW
EXPECTATION + LOW INTERACTION ⇒ LOW EFFORT by African-named
cashiers.
- Study: 11 TV show were edited so that one character (Black or White) were off-screen +
audio was removed. ⇒ Participants had to rate how the unseen characters were treated by
on-screen character + how well-liked is the off screen character ⇒ Off-screen Black
characters were rated LESS well-liked and treated MORE POORLY by on screen
characters than for White off-screen characters ⇒ Black characters depicted in negative
light
THE EFFECTS OF STEREOTYPES AND PREJUDICE ON SOCIETY
Support for the Social Safety Net

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 PSYC 215

- INCREASING openness and diversity in society ⇒ INCREASES wealth and productivity

(creative, innovative, etc.) ⇒ “expand the pie”
- Greater diversity has an effect on how “pie is split”
- People are more generous to people who are from their own ethnic, racial and religious
groups.
- Internationally, greater ethnic diversity leads to DIMINISHED SOCIAL TRUST (how much
citizens trust people in general and neighbors in particular)

Reactions to Changing Demographics

- Study: Told that USA was becoming a majority-minority country (White people are not majority)
led White respondents to express LESS WARMTH to Black, Latino and Asian Americans BUT
NOT White Americains.
- Changing demographics has political implications ⇒ Saying California is becoming a
majority-minority state made respondents lean more Republican (conservative) than Democrat.
Control conditions: told Hispanic people are equal to Black population ⇒ leaned toward
democratic.
Beliefs About Progress and Privilege
- Members of dominant and marginalized groups disagree on level of inequality in society and
progress that’s been made in overcoming it ⇒ Because they measure it differently.
- Men underestimate male/female wage gap & White Americans underestimate
White/Black gap in access to health care.
- Dominant measure progress by WHERE IN PAST VS NOW
- Marginalized measure progress by WHERE NOW AND WHERE IDEALLY (aiming for
equality)
- Definition of Marley hypothesis: Different racial groups make different assessments of the
amount of racism in society today because they differ in their knowledge of racial history.
- Study: White and Black students were given true and false statements about event of
racism ⇒ Black students were better at distinguishing true and fake ⇒ difference in
perception of contemporary racism b/w both groups.
- Study: Survey respondents had to estimate wealth of average Black family relative to every 100$
accumulated by average White family ⇒ Respondents underestimate the White/Black wealth gap
(past and now)
- Conflict when talking about privilege and disadvantage (eg. White Cristian men complaining that
the world caters to women but women don’t share this thought)
- Availability heuristic (assess likelihood based on how fast it came to mind) ⇒ own
hardships and bundens come to mind faster than benefits and privileges.
- Many advantages enjoyed by dominant groups comes in the form of absence of
burdens rather than presence of perks (eg. Walking outside and not being
followed)
- Present stimuli draw more attention than invisible ones.
- People with privilege don’t like to admit that they have it ⇒ they start citing personal hardships

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 PSYC 215

- To help them see their own privilege, don’t tell ways they’ve been lucky BUT how
they’ve been lucky ⇒ start recounting times they benefited from luck
Chapter review p.555-556
WEEK 10 - SYSTEM JUSTIFICATION AND MORALITY (CH.14 p.655-701)

41
 Chapter 14 Morality, Altruism, and Cooperation

Kindness during the pandemic: people taking care of elderly before they die (even tho they are at
risk) and some helped create donation = this is a pattern in human behaviour known as:

- When human face with life-threatening situation, the better angels of our nature emerge
o E.g. economic depression, heat of combat = three types of “better angel”
- 1. Sense of morality: what is right and wrong
- 2. Altruism or sacrificing to improve the lives of others
- 3. Cooperation, coordination of action with others to bring about better social ends
Morality

Moral judgment refers to what we consider right/wrong about humans + punishment/reward

- In a legal context, ignore your feelings and base your moral judgement on pure reasoning
- Moral psychology: when making moral judgement = guided by feeling and intuition
- Moral dumbfounding: gut feelings/intuitions guide many of our moral judgement
o Study: Participants were given a scenario about a brother and a sister having sex =
they automatically said its wrong “they can’t explain why it feels wrong”
o Image of a shit ton of smoke coming out of an industry gas shit = it feels wrong
- Jonathan Haidt’s: The social intuitionist model of moral judgment: the idea that people
first have fast, emotional reactions to morally relevant events that, in turn, influence their
process of reasoning toward a judgment of right or wrong.
o After we use reasoning to justify or explain our feelings (we feel and then think)

Moral Intuition and Reason in the Brain

- Study: Used Fmri to explore people moral decisions = discovered brains respond diff
when a moral decision feels personal/impersonal aligns with Haidt’s theory
- Two types of dilemmas
o Impersonal (logical) scenario: The trolley dilemma (TD), train that can either kill
one person instead of 5  Participants hit the switch to kill 1 life to save 5
 fMRI: activated brain areas linked with working memory and deliberative
reasoning (ind. approach this decision in a rational way)
o Personal (emotional) scenario: The footbridge dilemma, to save 5, you have to
push a fat stranger to the rails  same response as T.D, but participants tend to
have a strong emotional resistance, often answering “no” to this option
 fMRI: linked to emotional processing (decision were emotionally driven)

Moral Foundations Theory

- Social intuitionist theory by Haidt does not specify what kinds of things trigger these gut-
level moral feelings = as a response to this, Haidt developed the Moral Foundation theory
 - Moral foundations theory proposes that there five evolved, universal moral domains in
which specific emotions guide moral judgments.
o These foundation form a universal blueprint for human morality (variation based
on social, economic and religious influence in each culture) = and explain why
people respond to certain situations with immediate feelings of wrong/right and
are linked to particular emotions that prompt moral judgment
o 1. Care/harm foundation: desire to protect others (vulnerable) from harm
 Triggered by signs of vulnerability/pain and evokes emotion like
sympathy and compassion
o 2. Fairness/reciprocity foundation: others should act fairly and justly
 Violations of fairness provokes anger and desire for justice
o 3. Ingroup loyalty: allegiance to groups, strong/cohesive social collectives
 Evokes group pride (loyalty) or rage (betrayal)
o 4. Authority/respect: honoring ones place in social hierarchies
 Embarrassment, shame and pride reinforce this intuition (authority)
o 5.Purity/sanctity: avoiding dangerous diseases and socially impure ideas/actions
 Disgust
- Study by Hofmann asked adults to report if they themselves or someone did something
immoral or moral = 80% of these report align with one/or more of these foundation
o Care/harm were common
- Purity/sanctity category = most studied moral foundation= arise from threat of purity
o emotion like disgust can increase moral condemnation
 Ex. Smoking, eating meat = condemn the act as immoral
Moral Foundations and Political divisions

- Liberals prioritize fairness and freedom (sometimes harm and care)Conservative

prioritize loyalty, authority and purity alongside harm and fairness =moral outlook seems
broader
o Pro-vaccine page emphasizes harm/care for other (lib) anti-vaccine page (cons)
focused on freedom and liberty
o Needle exchange program: Lib support this program out of care for druggies but
cons opposed due to concern about purity
- Climate change: lib believe that burning fossil fuels= human caused climate change
o Lib more compelled to issues frame trhough harm (extinction) /care (land,ocean)
o Cons respond positively to the framing of purity (showing polluted water, toxic
cloud) = expressing pro-environment attitudes
- Asymmetry in moral understanding: lib and cons differ in their understanding of each
other’s value
o Cons awareness of lib values even if they don’t prioritize them as strongly
 o Lib misunderstands cons’ values, and often overlooks the role of authority, loyalty
and purity + fails to recognize why cons prioritize them
 Talaidar and Swann : This difference leads to polarization where lib sees
cons as overly rigid/traditional, whereas cons see them as disregarding
values important to social cohesion and order
 Authors: found that when liberals identify strongly with the United States
and feel a deep connection to the nation, they are more likely to endorse
values like loyalty and authority (cons values)
Altruism

Altruism: Prosocial behaviour that benefits others without regard to the consequences for
oneself. (rise from feelings of sympathy and compassion)

- Ex: Alfredo Aguiera opened a resto, but COVID happened, and he was going bankrupt,
so instead of wasting food gave to first responders = generosity was noticed by World
Central Kitchen (WCK) = continued to serve 1 million and the Hungries during pandemic
- We experience prosocial behaviour but we don’t always act on it
o Many forces can trigger this altruism like self-preservation

Empathic Concern: A Case of Pure Altruism

- Motives related to altruistic action such as selfish (egoistic) or unselfish

o 1. Selfish motive is social reward: A benefit, such as praise, positive attention,
something tangible, or gratitude, that may be gained from helping others and thus
serves as a motive for altruistic behavior.
 Study showed that being esteemed by others activates circuits in the brain
associated with rewards and personal safety
 Can be so powerful that they can trigger “arm races” of altruism known as
competitive altruism = where people wants outdo each other in their act
 Tries to be the most higly self esteem
 Example: hunter/gathering = those who bring more food= greater status
o 2. Selfish motive for helping is personal distress: tendency to help people in need
so it can reduce their own personal distress
 Study on baby: baby hears either their own cries or other new born baby
cries = the baby cried the most hearing other babies cries
 Ex. Real life situation, we cry when we see others in distress
 Neuroscience study showed that seeing someone in pain activates the
pain region in our brain, and in order to return to a peaceful state we tend
to have a helping behaviour to reduce the distress of others
o 3. Empathic concern: the feeling people experience (sympathy/compassion) when
identifying with someone in need, accompanied by the intention to enhance the
other person's welfare.
  The case of Alfredo Anguiera is an example

Green box figure: “It feels good to give”

- General Willingness to Give:

o 39% of people choose to give, even when they have the option to give as little as 1% of their resources.
- Extent of Generosity:
o 71% of people voluntarily give between 30% and 90% of their resources when asked to decide how
much to share.
- Effect of Decision Speed on Giving:
o When people make quick decisions, they give 65% of their resources.
o When given time to deliberate, the average drops to 50%, suggesting impulsive decisions might lead to
greater generosity.
- Early Signs of Altruism:
o Nearly 70% of 14-month-old infants spontaneously assist an experimenter by picking up a pen,
indicating an early instinct to help.
- Brain's Reward System:
o When people give, their brain’s reward circuit activates similarly to when they receive money, making
giving feel as rewarding as receiving.
- Link Between Trust and Economic Growth:
o The bottom chart shows a positive relationship between societal trust levels and income growth,
suggesting that communities with higher trust tend to have better economic outcomes.

How Selfish Are We?

- Western thought believe humans are fundamentally selfish = eager to achieve desire for
whatever it takes (theft, dishonest and violence)
o Freud stated we do things to maximize personal pleasure
o Niccolo Machiavelli characterized the human race as "fickle, hypocritical, and
greedy of gain."
o Rand and Epstein (2014), extreme altruist refer to people risking their lives for
others. Why? bc they are driven by an automatic, emotion impulse to help without
thinking, not even for personal gains = demonstrate how deeply rooted empathic
concern can be
- Empathy Versus Personal Distress
o Batson and his colleagues wonder if altruistic actions can be motivated by only
empathic conscience (independent of egoistic motives)
 o Study: The goal is to see if people would still help without social reward and if
they could alleviate personal distress without helping
 Participants had to watch a confederate get electrocuted when they get the
answer wrong
 Two conditions were introduced:
 Easy-Escape Condition: Participants had to observe only the first
two of ten shocks before being allowed to leave.
o Results: more likely to leave bc of personal distress
(egoistic response)
 Difficult-to-Escape Condition: Participants were required to watch
the confederate endure all ten shocks unless they volunteered to
take some of them. (this cond. Was hard to avoid without helping)
o Results:
 They later increase emotional response by making the confederate
yapabout a sob story = after the first two shocks they were asked to report
their feelings and they categorized them
 1. Egoistic distressing: anxiety, a desire to get away = primarily
motivated by personal discomfort
 2. Empathic concern: sympathy, compation = desire to alleviate the
Confederate suffering
 They were asked if they would take some shock from them = those who
felt distress were more likely to leave in comparison to those who felt
empathetic and were more willing to take some shock
 This demonstrates that their motivation came from genuine concern for the
confederate rather than reducing their own discomfort
o Limitation: social reward bias = behaviour might have not been natural bc of exp.
 Self-report biases: some might have been naturally empathetic before
study = may helped either way not because of the situation they were in
- Anonymous Altruism
o Study by Batson: Would ind. engage in altruism if their action is anonymous?
 All participants were woman = who interacted with a Confederate named
Janet Arnold
 Janet was in another cubicle and shared two written notes of hers with the
women (the notes were personal and emotional)
 Note 1: Wrote her feelings of loneliness/discomfort at her new uni
 Note 2: desire for friendship =asked participants to hang with her
 Empathy manipulation = two conditions
 Low-empathy condition: particpants were told to remain
objective while reading the notes = focus on factual content
  High empathy condition: were told to imagine Janet feelings and
put themselves in her shoe= fosters empathic concern
 Social evalutation manipulation = two conditions
 Low social evaluation condition: They received and sent sealed
envelopes that the experiment and Janet cannot read (anonymity of
decision)
 High social evaluation condition: They know janet and
experiment can read their decision
 Results: high empathy condition volunteered to spend a lot of time with
Janet than those with low empathy condition = shows that empathic
concert led to greater altruistic behaviour
 Low social evaluation condition: participants in high empathy
condition still volunteered compared to low empathy= shows that
its not motivated by egoistic motives
 High-social-evaluation condition, low/high empathy participants
still volunteered more time compared to low social evaluation
(social approval and fear of social judgment)
o Other study supported Batson’s thesis that empathic concern promotes altruism
 Those who showed increase in self reported empathy over three years =
more likely to later donate to charity when given the opportunity
 Those who donates kidneys to stranger=higher reactivity in amygdala
 Across cultures = ↑empathic concern =behave altruistically in diff context
- The Evaluation and Physiology of Empathic Concern
o After Batson’s discoveries= scientist wanted to prove, we are wired from altruism
 One evidence is the observation of chimpanzees/bonobos = engage in
altruism like care for cripples and share food with non-kin
o Evidence includes studies with young children and neurophysiological study
 1. 18-month-old children exhibit altruistic tendencies = 40-60% of
toddlers saw an adult struggle to pick up a pen, and they helped.
 But in control cond. =adults don’t show struggle = no help
 2. Frontal lobes activate when people feel compassion = shows that brain
is wired to recognize and respond to others needs
 Activation of the vagus nerve linked to altruistic actions and
empathic concern
o This nerve promotes social bonding, deep breathing, heart
rate deceleration, vocal communication, and eye contact,
supporting a "tend-and-befriend" response that aids social
connection and reduces stress.
- Empathic Concern and Volunteerism
 o Volunteerism: Assistance a person regularly provides to another person or group
without expecting compensation.(mentoring, feeding poor, caring for the sick)
 30% of people in the US engage in volunteerism
o Study by Omoto: self-reported feelings of empathic concern ↑volunteerism
 Volunteerism has many motives, including desire for social rewards and
reduce personal distress
o Olivola and Shar highlight that people are willing to endure hardship for
charitable acts that give them a sense of purpose = sense of community
o Health benefit: Study by Brown found that older adults who engage in
volunteerism were less likely to die over a five-year period of the study
 Results: helping others = lived longer / receiving help=no influence
o Samuel and oliner provides insight on how empathic concer and altruism can be
cultivated based on interviews with individuals who risked their lives to save jews
during the Holocaust
 Discovered that altruism and compassion were highly valued in their
household +parents/grandparents frequently share stories (of their
lives/culture), books they read, teach and during dinner= altruism themed).
 Altruism is explicitly promoted as an ethical value= provides a moral
framework that encourages prosocial behaviour

Situational Determinants of Altruism

- Kitty Genovese’s life was taken away in 1964 because she was stalked, stabbed and
raped. People heard her cries, but no one helped (window and light opened)
o This leads social psychologists to understand what inhibits empathic concern and
altruistic action = that makes people less likely to intervene
- The Presence of Other People
o When individuals witness an emergency, the likelihood of intervening depends on
the number of people present
 This is known as the bystander intervention: Assistance given by a witness
to someone in need
o Studies found that people are less likely to help when others are around
 This is known as the diffusion of responsibility: A reduction of the sense
of urgency to help someone in an emergency or dangerous situation based
on the assumption that others who are present will help.(better positioned)
o The case of Kitty Genovese inspired Darley and Latane to investigate the effects
of bystander presence on altruistic behaviour
 Study: participants was in a “group discussion” about urban life over an
intercom = a confederate (part of the disc.) faked a seizure=calls for help
 Conditions: Participants were randomly assigned to groups of different
sizes to see how the number of bystanders would influence helping
behavior:
 Two-Person Condition: Only the participant and the victim (the
confederate)
o 85% helped (only witnessed and felt strong responsibility)
  Three-Person Condition: The participant, the victim, and one other
bystander.
o 62%, slightly ↓sense of responsibility bc of bystander
 Six-Person Condition: The participant, the victim, and four other
bystanders.
o 31% helped, big reduction since a lot of bystanders present
o Neuroscience research: the presence of others weakens the strength of the
communication between the regions of the brain involving action and the outcome
of of the action
- Victim Characteristics
o Altruism isn’t blind people are most likely to help when the harm to the victim is
clear = study showed if victim scream, bystanders help 75-100%/silent=20-40%
o People are more likely to help their own racial/ethnic group/similar background
 Study by Chiao: Black Americans had greater empathy and altruism when
seeing black americans suffer as opposed to European American
 It activated the medial prefrontal cortex (a region in the brain)= involved
in an empathetic response
o Other species do the same, several nonhuman primates won’t eat if it will trigger
an administered shock to a member of their species (wont do it for others)
o Cross species helping does occur frequently tho

Construal Processes and Altruism

- What are the construal processes that influence whether we help or not? = In everyday
life, instances of distress are ambiguous (boy getting beat up, but could be playful?)
- Helping in Ambiguous Situations:
o Emergency is sometimes ambiguous= helpers interpret whether help is needed
 Clarity from victims (vocalizing distress) = ↑intervention=reduce
ambiguity
o When bystanders are vividly aware of the full events leading to emergency =more
likely to intervene (Kitty case, people saw half of what happened=no help)
o Study on Vividness of the Emergency: participants encountered a confederate
who was unconscious  two conditions
 More vivid condition: saw them faint and slowly regain consciousness
 89% help cuz they clearly understood the unfolding situation
 Less vivid condition: only saw aftermath (regain consciousness)
 13% helped, they didn’t see it as an emergency
o The role of pluralistic ignorance: occurs when individuals in a group misinterpret
a situation as non-threatening bc no one else is reacting (inaction to emergency)
 Due to social norms: they are conditioned to stay composed in public
(avoid embarrassment)
o Study on pluralistic ignorance: 3 conditions = smoke in the room
 Alone
 75% reported smoke to experimenters
 Two passive confederates: remained calm and unconcerned of smoke
 10%, made the participants believe the situation was normal
  Two other genuine participants were present
 38%, looked at others to react, lacked of response= not dangerous
 Those who didn’t report the smoke, rationalized as a non threatening=
even offering creative explanation like “truth gas”
- Combating Pluralistic Ignorance:
o Study by Darly, Teger and Lewis: particpants passed by a worker performing
repairs in a hallway before entering the lab to draw a horse = heard a loud crash
during their drawing task “OHHH MY LEGGGGG” (IN PAIN)
 Three conditions
 1. Alone (worked individually)= 90% helped, no conflicting social
cues to deter action
 2. Face to face= 80% helped, as they see the other participants
emotional reaction= situation is serious
 3. Back to back= 20% helped, as the lack of visible emotional cues
reinforce pluralistic ignorance
o Overcoming pluralistic ignorance: Practical strategies
 Make your need clear (eliminate ambiguity) and select a specific helper
(eliminate diffusion of responsibility)

Culture and Altruism

- Altruism in Urban and Rural settings:

o People in rural areas report higher levels of empathic concern
o Steblay reviewed 35 studies concerning of helping rate in rural and urban ranging
from a population of 1000-1mil
 Researchers examined whether people would grant simple request,
intervene to stop a crime, and would help people in need
 Results: more likely in rural communities than urban areas
 The effect of population size matters, for instance more likely to get
helped in a town of 1000 than 5000; 5000 than 10000 and so on.
o Steblay found participant's current context, rural or urban, was a much stronger
predictor of helping behavior than the person's rural or urban initial background
o Reasons for Urban to be less likely to help:
 1. stimulus overload (city stree, traffic, construction, swarm of people =
too much to take fully)
 leading you to narrow your focus on whats relevant= you don’t
have the mental capacity to help other
 2. Diversity Hypothesis: helping people similar to you, urban has diversity
and rural doesn’t ( shares more similarity with its community) = meaning
rural are likely to help other who resemble them than urban
 3. Diffusion of responsibility= urban has a bigger population than rural
- Social Class and Altruism
o Bill Gates and Buffet (committed to give 99% by the end of his life) encourage
billionaire to donate most of their wealth= those two are the only exception
 Wealthy people donate smaller percentage compared to lower income
  Ex. People earning less than 25k, donate 4.2% of their income in
comparison to those 100k annually, only 2.75%
 Reasons: lower income ind. experience scarcity = empathically attuned to
others, in contrast, wealthy enjoy abundant of ressources =less attuned
o Dictator Game Study: participant receive 10 points and decide how much to give
to stanger = points retained impacted participants chances in a lottery
 Participants fonated 41% of their points = lower income gave more
o Impact of inequality: wealthy shared less and only share to their circle
o Enhancing empathy to wealthy people through emotional priming= STUDY:
 Participants watched either a neutral or emotional film about impoverished
children
 Neutral clip: lower income participants helped more than wealthy
 Emotional clip: wealthy match the altruism of lower income ind.
- Religion, Ethics and Altruism
o Many people who follows different religion, those who don’t are affiliated to
spiritual belief in forces that defies the law of nature
 Similar to social class, religion can shape diff aspect of social life (ranging
from moral beliefs to marriage partners)
o Major religion emphasize altruism and treating others how you want to be treated
(kindness) = known as the golden rule
 Although some religion mentions revenge and shi
o Study by Norenzayan and Shariff
 Participants unscrambled sentences containing religious words (divine,
sacred and prohphet) = two conditions:
 Neutral priming condition:
 36% of participants gave 12% to strangers.
 Religious priming condition:
 Only 16% gave no money, and 52% shared half their money with
strangers.
 Overall being near any religious shit increase your prosocial behaviour
 A similar study was made but with secular ethics = similar result
o Psychological Mechanism: The Effect of Being Watched
 Perception of Observation in Religions:
 Many religious practices emphasize the idea of being watched
(e.g., by a divine entity).
 This perception fosters accountability and prosocial behaviors.
o Dot Experiment (Rigdon et al., 2009):Participants allocated money to strangers.
 Conditions:
 "Face-like dots" condition:
o Only 25% kept all the money.
 "Non-face dots" condition:
o 40% kept all the money.
 Subtle visual cues of being watched enhance generosity and altruistic
actions

Evolution and Altruism

Altruism poses a challenge to evolutionary theory = natural selection favours behaviour that
increases our chance to survival and reproduction, whereas altruism includes sacrificing oneself
for others. Despite contradiction, two evolutionary explanations: kin selection and reciprocity

- Kin selection: An evolutionary strategy that favors the reproductive success of one's
genetic relatives, even at a cost to one's own survival and reproduction.
o Perspective of kin selection, help those who share more of their genes
 Found that many non human species help kin than non-kin
o Study, people were more likely to donate kidney to relative than stranger
 Twins are more likely to cooperate than fraternal (94%vs46%)
- Reciprocity: altruistic behaviours towards non kin such as friends and stangers
o Doing things for friends highlight strong social bond that human forms with non-
kin
o Reciprocity and cooperation are introduced as evolutionary explanations for these
behaviors.
o Helping others, even strangers, may yield indirect benefits (such as reputation or
future reciprocation) or contribute to group survival, which benefits individuals in
the long term.

Cooperation

Cooperation to achieve a common goal is a defining attribute of humans (part of our

evolutionary heritage)

- Cooperative child care (both parents)= share burden in raising their dependent offsprings
- Archelogy evidence:early human hunted in groups=demonstrating teamwork for survival
- Human relationship can shift between conflict and coopereation
o After World War II, former enemies (the U.S., Germany, and Japan) became
allies.

Reciprocity and Cooperation (Reciprocity=universal trait among humans)

- Reciprocal altruism: Helping others with the expectation that they will probably return
the favor in the future
o Benefits: reduces conflict, helps overcome the problem from scarce resources,
enables the formation of alliances and challenges dominant member of the group
(creating balance)
- Cooperation with a non-kin = boost chance of survival and reproduction for all
- Reciprocal altruism in Nonhuman animals: bats would regurgitate (vomit) blood to feed
other bats that have shared their blood before (and not to those who didn’t help)
o Same with chimpanzees/bonobos = grooming, sharing food
- Study: Involving card game where participants can choose to cooperate of compete
o More likely to cooperate if the other ind. cooperate in the earlier round
  Reciprocity strengthens social bond+encourage future collabs
- Christmas Card Experiment (human tendency to reciprocate)
o Research sent cards to stranger= 20% sent one back = demonstrate the norm of
reciprocity
- Grant and Gino argue that the expression of gratitude =reinforces cooperative behaviour
o Ex. someone is thanked for their altruism = they feel socially valued (feels like a
gift)
o Study: Participants were asked to help edit a letter online:
 In the gratitude condition, participants received a thank-you email.
 66% agreed to help with a second letter
 In the control condition, they received a polite but neutral message.
 Only 32% of those in the control condition agreed to help again.
 Gratitude increases the likelihood of future cooperative behavior
The Prisoner’s Dilemma

- Prisoner’s dilemma: A situation involving payoffs to two people who must decide
whether to cooperate or defect. In the end, trust and cooperation lead to higher joint
payoffs than mistrust and defection do = often structured as a type of economic game
- Two participants, in separate rooms, must independently choose to either:
o Cooperate: Benefit both parties equally.
o Defect: Act in self-interest, benefiting disproportionately.
o Payoff Matrix: (The rewards depend on both players’ choices)
 Both Cooperate: Each receives $5.
 Both Defect: Each receives $2.
 One Cooperates, the Other Defects: The defector gets $8, the cooperator
gets $0.
- The dilemma: Acting selfishly maximizes individual gain in the short term, but mutual
cooperation would benefit both parties more.
- Real world application allow more complex negotiations and interaction (Arms Races
(ex. India vs Pakistan)
o Each country can either spend more on weapons (defect) or agree to disarmament
(cooperate)
 Outcome: If one disarms while the other arms, the armed country gains a
military edge.
 If both arm, both waste resources for no real advantage.
 If both disarm, both save money and improve economic
conditions.
o The dilemma: fear of vulnerability lead to defect = excessive spending

Box 14.2 The Cooperative Brain

 - Cooperation risk of exploitation by others who defect + cooperation is long term benfits
rather than immediate gratification
- Using MRI scans, researchers observed that specific brain regions were activated when
participants cooperated. (triggers brains reward system = inherently satisfying)
o These regions are associated with reward processing: Nucleus accumbens, Ventral
caudate, Ventromedial/orbitofrontal cortex
o These areas are rich in dopamine receptors, a neurotransmitter linked to pleasure
and reward.
- Same brain region activates in response to sweet tastes and pleasant smell (anything nice)
- Parallel findings have been obtained in nonhuman species in the way dopaminergic
regions of the brain relate to cooperative behavior

Situational Determinants of Cooperation

- Prisoner dilemma game was only one round = but our lives is more complex than that =
repeated interaction leads to the likelihood to cooperate
- People assess others Nonverbal Cue to determine trustworthiness and potential
cooperation
o Cues that trigger cooperation: friendly smile, warm laugh, resemblance
- More likely to cooperate if individuals act quickly and reflexively rather than strategic in
their actions
- Definition: Reputation refers to the collective beliefs, evaluations, and impressions
people hold about an individual within a social network.
o People develop reputations in social contexts like work = strongly influence social
interaction
o Cooperation reputation (trust/receive help) and Defection repuation
(suspicion/receive less help)
- Gossip involves discussing someone’s reputation in their absence and is a key mechanism
for spreading reputational information (assess whether others contribute positively to the
group or create conflict)
o Experiment by Feinberg et al. (2014):Participants played an economic game
where they could share money with others in their group Conditions:
 Gossip Allowed: Participants could discuss each other’s generosity.
 No Gossip Allowed: Participants had no opportunity for gossip.
o Group that can gossip became more cooperative overtime = because threat of
gossip encourage ind. to act generous = protect ones reputation

Construal Process and Cooperation

- If situations are framed as competitive = they lead to self-interest beh. / collab =work tgt
- Study by Liberman, Samuels, and Ross (2002): Participants played the Prisoner’s
Dilemma, but the name of the game varied:
o “Wall Street” Game: Emphasized competition and self-interest.
o “Community” Game: Emphasized collaboration and collective outcomes.
 o Results: Participants in the Community Game cooperated on the first round twice
as often as those in the Wall Street Game =These differences persisted throughout
subsequent rounds.

Box 14.4 Focus on Positive Psychology (Is cooperation Contagious)

- Fowler and Christakis discovered that smoking, hapiness, obesity and anxiety=contagious
o We are mimetic species, prone to copy eachother behaviour
- Study: played an economic game in groups of four with many rounds =each round=new
set of participants (will demonstrate a chain reaction of cooperation)
o Everyone states with 20 units, can either keep or share money
 They found that when someone give money it starts a chain reaction where
the next round they continue to give money , etc. Person AB to BC…

Culture and Cooperation

- Ultimatum Game Study:

o Researchers tested cooperation in 15 small-scale societies using a game where
participants decided how much of a resource (e.g., money or goods) to share with
strangers.
o Average offers were 39%, with Western participants offering 40-50%.
- Interdependence and Generosity:
o Cultures relying heavily on collaboration for survival (e.g., fishing communities)
were more generous:

 Machiguenga (Peru): Low interdependence, offered 26%.

 Lamerala (Indonesia): High interdependence, offered 58%.

- Cultural Influences on Cooperation:

o Religion, poverty, and exposure to violence increase cooperation by fostering
interdependence.
o Examples: More cooperation in war-torn areas and among religiously primed
individuals.
- Economics and Self-Interest:
o Training in economics promotes selfish behavior: 72% of economics majors
defected in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game vs. 47% of non-economics majors.
o Economists were less likely to donate to charity, reflecting a subculture
emphasizing self-interest.

Evolution and Cooperation: Tit for Tat

- Tit-for-Tat-Strategy: A strategy in the prisoner's dilemma game in which the player's first
move is cooperative; therefore, the player mimics the other person's behaviour, whether
cooperative or competitive. This strategy fares well when used against other strategies.
 - Axelrod argued that cooperation is part of human evolutionary heritage because it
emerges even in hostile or competitive environments.
- Axelrod’s Tournament
o Axelrod invited participants (academics, mathematicians, and others) to submit
computer programs for a Prisoner’s Dilemma tournament.
o Each program played 200 rounds against every other program.
o Strategies were scored based on overall performance across all opponents
- Results: The winner was Tit-for-Tat, a simple yet powerful strategy submitted by
psychologist Anatol Rapaport = second tournament =it won again
- The Tit-for-Tat Strategy: On the first round, cooperate with the opponent.
o Reciprocate: After the first round, mimic the opponent’s previous move:
o If the opponent cooperates/defect, cooperate/defect in the next round.
 It works bc of Adaptability: It rewards cooperation and punishes defection.
o Balance: It avoids being overly aggressive or too forgiving, maintaining a
balanced and effective approach.
- Axelrod identified five key principles of Tit-for-Tat effectivness and applicable to real-
life interactions:
o Cooperative: Encourages mutually supportive actions toward shared goals
o Non-Envious: Allow success without competing for dominance.
o Not Exploitable: It resists exploitation. If an oppo defect, response is to defect
o Forgiving: If the opponent returns to cooperation =quickly resumes cooperation.
o Clear and Predictable: Its behavior is easy to understand, allowing opponents to
quickly recognize the strategy and adjust accordingly.
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