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<Conformity>
Sherifs Basic Finding of Autokinetic effect: divergent but groups
eventually converged (power of the norm), wheter its settled,
people go with the group norm, group norm can be maintained
arbitrarily
Conformity can be explained in two different reasons:
o Informational
Useful consensus info
Taking norm as an input from ones consensus
o Normative
Conforming due to fear of rejection
Informational influence- the group adds additional information
beyond what is provided by your senses
Normative influence- fear of being ostracized by the group
Informational- tends to yield true (persuation) private
acceptance of majority view
Normative- tends to yield superficial, public acceptance of
majority view
o Driving force
Group size, awareness of norm (high possibility of pluralistic
ignorance), moderates the effect
Case Study (Princeton Drinking Study)
o Students thoughts on their alcohol range was significantly
lower compared to what they have told the others to be
o This showed that men were bigger conformist than women
when it comes to binge drinking
o The lesson: people want to conform to the norm, but
sometimes they mis identify the norm and engage in
misguided conformity
Misguided Conformity- nonexistent conformity
<Obedience to Authority>
Authority- the power to influence or control based on social
norms, traditions, values and rules that prescribe that one has
the right to such power
Refer back to the Milgram data
o No gender differences were present in this study, are we
closet nazzis?
o Refer to the graph from class
Legitimacy immediacy personal response
Refer back to milgram and the holocaust
<Altruism>
Is there such thing as true altruism?
o People help because: learning, arousal, norm
<By
Lecture Notes
Stimulus Behavior
Social cognition: Stimulus Cognitive, affective, Behavior
Motivational mechanisms
Mind information processor how far can we push this
analogy?? What are the building blocks of social thought?
Social cognition (borrowing heavily from cognitive psychology)
has become the dominant paradigm in social psych in the past
20 years.
Concept: A unit of knowledge (usually about a category)
o One of the building blocks that has been isolated, its also
one way to extract meaning of our world this is also
considered as a schema
o These are not accurate example of this would be
stereotype
Concepts do
o Reduce the amount of processing we need to do
when there is too much information available.
o Add information when there is too little available.
o Guide attention, interpretation.
Human Beings are cognitive namer
Results of Bransford & Johnson (1973): when a concept is
given, it is easier to understand
o # Of ideas recalled when there are [Encoding vs.
Retrieval]
No instructions: 2.8
Washing clothes (before reading): 5.8 this also
boosted memory because it occurred while
encoding information
Washing clothes (after reading): 2.7
o Bottom line: Category guides your interpretation and aids
in comprehension.
Different concepts applied to the same stimulus input can lead to
dramatically different interpretations & behavior:
o E.g., features of a house from the perspective of
homebuyer vs. burglar.
o E.g., Man crying (did a loved one die or did he win the
lottery?
o Ambiguous behavior of African-American vs. Caucasian
person.
Duncan (1976):
o White subjects watched videotape of two men in a
discussion. The discussion gets heated. They begin
shouting. One man shoves the other.
Results:
Sweater
Bathing Suit
Men
4.9
5.5
Women
4.0
2.4