CH-13-14 Personality and the Uniqueness of the Individual – Psychology: Perspectives and Connections : Chapter Notes

This Document Contains Chapters 13 to 14 Chapter 13: Personality and the Uniqueness of the Individual BRIEF CHAPTER OUTLINE Defining Personality The Nature and Nurture of Personality The Evolution of Personality Traits Genetics and Personality Temperament and the Fetal Environment Personality and Culture: Universality and Differences Challenging Assumptions in Animal Personality How Do Theorists Explain Personality? Psychoanaltic Theories Sigmund Freud Alfred Adler Carly Jung Karen Horney Neuropsychoanalysis Humanistic/Positive Psychology Theories Social-Cognitive Learning Theories Trait Theories Biological Theories How Is Personality Measured? Behavioral Observation Interviewing Projective Tests Personality Questionnaires Social Network Measurement of Personality Psychology in the Real World: Personality and Career Interest and Job Performance Bringing It All Together: Making Connections in Personality: Does Personality Change Over Time? Personality Consistency Personality Change Typical Personality Change Across the Lifespan Personality Change After Changes in Life Circumstances Chapter Review EXTENDED CHAPTER OUTLINE DEFINING PERSONALITY • Personality refers to the unique and relatively enduring set of behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and motives that characterize an individual. • There are two key components to this definition. o Personality is what distinguishes us and makes us unique from one another.  Personality is about uniqueness or individual differences.  Personality psychology is concerned with the fact, that in any given situation, people act differently. o Personality is relatively enduring or consistent.  Consistency across situations refers to the notion that people behave the same way in different situations and carry who they are into almost every situation.  Consistency over time is the extent to which people behave the same way over time. • Traits are dispositions to behave consistently in a particular way. o Don’t confuse this term with personality. Personality is the broader term because it is made up of traits, motives, thoughts, self-concept, and feelings. o Personality traits are normally distributed in the population. o Traits are directly connected to behavior. They lower behavioral thresholds or the point at which you move from not behaving to behaving.  A low threshold means you are very likely to behave in a particular way, whereas a high threshold means you are not. THE NATURE AND NURTURE OF PERSONALITY • The interaction between nature and nurture can be seen in at least four lines of reasoning and research: evolutionary theory, genetics, temperament and fetal development, and cross-cultural universality. The Evolution of Personality Traits • Human personality traits evolved as adaptive behavioral responses to fundamental problems of survival and reproduction. • Heightened anxiety would provide a signal of danger and threat; its absence would quickly lead to extinction of the species. Hypersensitivity, however, would be debilitating and disruptive to everyday functioning. • Naturally selected traits are favored if they increase one’s chances of survival and reproductive success. • Sexually selected traits make one more attractive to the opposite sex. Genetics and Personality • Behavioral genetics researchers use two major methods to study the relationship among genetics, behavior, and personality. o The quantitative trait loci (QTL) method looks for the location on genes that might be associated with particular behaviors. It is quantitative because there are markers for behaviors that are expressed on a broad continuum, from very little to very much.  QTL research points to genetic markers for novelty- or thrill-seeking, impulsivity, and neuroticism/anxiety. o The second method is to study identical and fraternal twins who have been raised together or apart. This allows researchers to obtain estimates of how heritable personality traits are. If a trait is genetically influenced, identical twins should be more similar on that trait than fraternal twins. If genetics plays no role, identical twins will be no more similar on that trait than fraternal twins. These studies have found that most basic personality traits have heritability estimates of between 40 and 60%.  Roughly 50% of the variance to be explained by three nongenetic sources: shared environment, unshared environment, and error. • Shared environment consists of what siblings share in common, such as parents or household. • Unshared environment consists of things like birth order, different friends, different teachers, and different social groups. • Most of the environmental effects are unshared and almost no variance is explained by shared environment.  CONNECTION: Many people think genes affect behavior by means of a single gene, a gene for “aggression.” For example, any given behavior or personality trait is never the result of single genes but rather many genes (Chapter 3). Temperament and the Fetal Environment • Temperament and personality differences are manifest even before birth. • One outcome of prenatal environment is birth weight. Correlational data show low-birth-weight babies are more cautious, shy, and risk aversive. • The amount of stress the mother experiences during pregnancy changes the infant’s permanent stress response. • CONNECTION: Are some babies and toddlers temperamentally fussy and more difficult to care for than others? As we explain in the chapter on human development, with very little influence from the environment, some newborns are fussy, unpredictable, and get upset in new situations, whereas others are generally happy, predictable, and curious in new situations (Chapter 5). Personality and Culture: Universality and Differences • Environment and culture modify temperament and make certain traits more likely in some societies than in others. • Research confirms the existence of traits of extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and psychoticism in Western, Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Pacific Rim cultures. • People in Asian cultures exhibit qualities that fit a dimension of “interpersonal relatedness” (behaviors such as respect, obedience, and a belief in saving face) that is rarely seen in Western cultures. Challenging Assumptions About Animal Personality • Until the 1990s, most psychologists would have argued that the term personality only made sense as a term applied to humans. • From the 1190s, a body of research challenged the assumption that personality was only a human characteristic. • Gosling and Oliver John (1999) reported evidence that personality traits exist in at least 14 major nonhuman species (see Figure 13.3). • Ratings were made using one of two behavioral observation techniques: (1) animal trainers who had extensive knowledge of the individual animals; or, (2) trained observers with no history with the animals, who were trained until they could reliably evaluate the dimensions in question. • Primates and other mammals tend to share the largest number of personality traits with humans. Only chimpanzees have a distinct “conscientiousness” dimension. This suggests that conscientiousness is the most recently evolved personality trait. • With the exception of chimps and horses, no other animals possess the required brain structure to control impulse and organize and plan activities in advance. • Wild birds, fish, and even octopus possess human-like personality traits. HOW DO THEORISTS EXPLAIN PERSONALITY? Psychoanalytic Theories • Sigmund Freud o Psychoanalysis is the idea that the unconscious is the most powerful force in our personality.  There are three layers of consciousness: the unconscious, preconscious, and conscious. • The conscious layer is simply what we are aware of at any given moment of time. • The preconscious is just below the surface of awareness. It is not currently conscious but can become so relatively easily. • The unconscious contains all the drives, urges, or instincts that are outside awareness but nonetheless motivate most of our speech, thoughts, feelings, or actions. o Freud believed that much of what we do and the reasons that we do it are hidden from our awareness and revealed to us only in distorted forms, such as slips of the tongue and dreams. o Freud developed an elaborate system for interpreting the meaning of dreams, because they were the best way to understand a person’s unconscious. o Slips of the tongue are defined as saying, writing, or typing one thing when you mean another. o Three distinct “provinces,” or regions, involve control and regulation of impulses.  The first province, developed in infancy, is the id. The id is the seat of impulse and desire. The id works on the “pleasure principle” and operates on the “do it” principle.  By the end of the first year of life, a sense of self, or ego, begins to emerge. It is the only part of the mind that is in direct contact with the outside world, and it operates on the “reality principle.” In a healthy person, the ego mediates this conflict between impulse and control.  The last part of the mind to develop, around ages 2 or 3, is the superego, the part of the self that monitors and controls behavior. It operates on the “moralistic principle” and gives us a sense of what we should and should not do.  CONNECTION: Cognitive psychologists refer to mental processes that occur outside awareness as “implicit” or “automatic.” Much of what we learn and remember is implicit (Chapters 7 and 8). o Defense mechanisms are tools the mind uses to protect itself from harmful, threatening, and anxiety-provoking thoughts, feelings, or impulses. All defense mechanisms share two qualities: (1) they operate unconsciously; and (2) they deny and distort reality in some way.  Repression underlies all the other defense mechanisms. It is the unconscious act of keeping threatening or disturbing thoughts, feelings, or impulses out of consciousness.  Reaction formation occurs when an unpleasant idea, feeling, or impulse is turned into its opposite. This often results in exaggerated or compulsive feelings and behavior.  In projection, we deny and repress particular ideas, feelings, or impulses, but project them onto others.  Sublimation involves expressing a socially unacceptable impulse in a socially acceptable and even desirable way. o Freud is a very complex figure in the field of psychology o Many research-oriented psychologists have dismissed Freud as a pseudoscientist, but his insights as a clinician still have merit. o Freud's ideas about consciousness, unconsciousness, and the importance of early childhood have had lasting impact. • Alfred Adler o Adler, the first to break away from Freud, disagreed with him on the major motives underlying behavior. o His first major assumption was that humans strive for superiority and this is the major drive behind behavior; that is, they naturally strive to overcome their inherent inferiorities or deficiencies, both physical and psychological.  Adler believed that all people begin life as young, immature, and helpless. As they grow, they strive toward growth and completion. In the process, they attempt to compensate for their feelings of weakness or inferiority. • Some develop an inferiority complex, an unhealthy need to dominate or upstage others as a way of compensating for feelings of inferiority. o Adler also examined birth order.  First-born children tend to have strong feelings of superiority and power. They can be nurturing of others but they are sometimes highly critical and have a strong need to be right.  Second children tend to be motivated and cooperative, but they can become overly competitive.  Youngest children can be realistically ambitious but also pampered and dependent on others.  Only children can be socially mature, but they sometimes lack social interest and have exaggerated feelings of superiority. • Carl Jung o Jung’s signature idea was that the unconscious has two distinct forms: personal and collective.  The personal unconscious consists of all our repressed and hidden thoughts, feelings, and motives. This is similar to Freud’s notion of unconscious.  The collective unconscious consists of the shared experiences of our ancestors (e.g., God, mother, life, death, water, earth, aggression, survival) that have been transmitted from generation to generation. • Jung decided that there must be some kind of collective unconsciousness that would explain the many instances in which dreams, religions, legends, and myths share the same content even though the people who created them have never directly or even indirectly communicated with one another. • The collective unconscious is made up of archetypes. Archetypes are ancient or archaic images that result from common ancestral experiences. o The shadow is the dark and morally objectionable part of ourselves. o The anima is the female part of the male personality. The animus is the male part of the female personality.  All people possess characteristics and traits of both genders, but men tend to deny and repress their feminine side, or anima. Women likewise tend to deny or repress their masculine side, or animus. Full personality development requires acknowledging and being receptive to these unconscious or less well-developed sides of one’s personality. • Karen Horney o Horney was one of the first major females in the psychoanalytic movement. o Compared to Freud, Horney focused more on the social and cultural forces behind neurosis and the neurotic personality (psychoanalytic social theory). o The essence of Horney’s theory is that neurosis stems from basic hostility and basic anxiety.  Basic hostility is anger or rage that originates in childhood and stems from fear of being neglected or rejected by one’s parents.  When hostility toward one’s parents is so threatening that it is turned inward, it is converted into basic anxiety. Basic anxiety is a sense of being alone and helpless in a hostile world. o Horney argued that all people defend themselves against basic anxiety by developing particular needs or trends. If these needs become compulsive and the person is unable to switch from one need to another as the situation demands, that person is neurotic. The three neurotic trends or needs are moving: toward others, against others, and away from others. 1. Moving toward others (the compliant personality) • This is neurotically moving toward others involves consistently needing or clinging to other people, belittling oneself, eliciting feelings of pity from others, and repressing feelings of anger and hostility. 2. Moving against others (the aggressive personality) • This is neurotically moving against others involves puffing oneself up in an obvious and public manner, competing against others at almost everything, and being prone to hostility and anger. 3. Moving away from others (the detached personality) • This is neurotically moving away from others involves developing a detached and “cool” demeanor by not responding emotionally, not caring, and being “above it all.” a. Compared to Freud, Horney focused more on the social and cultural forces behind neurosis and the neurotic personality (psychoanalytic social theory). • Neuropsychoanalysis o Neuropsychoanalysis is a new movement (started in the 1990s) that combines Freudian ideas with neuroscientfic methods. o By combining the subjective insights into the mind made by Freud with the objective insights of the mind gained by neuroscience, neuropsychoanalyists are closing the divide that existed between Freud’s ideas and science. o Neuropsychoanalysts argue that there is evidence that at least seven core assumptions made by Freud have received recent scientific support:  importance of early childhood experience on later personality development,  unconscious motivation,  repression and defense mechanisms,  pleasure principle,  primitive drives,  dreams as wish fulfillment, and  thinking and perception are guided by unconscious motives and emotions Humanistic/Positive Psychology Theories • The humanistic approach is optimistic about human nature, believing that humans are naturally interested in realizing their full potential. o The term humanism is not commonly used today because these theorists did not conduct empirical research. • The humanistic movement now operates under the name positive psychology. o This view embraces and generates empirical research while theoretically staying in line with Maslow and Rogers. • Abraham Maslow o Self-actualization refers to people’s inherent drive to realize their full potential. Very few people achieve this level of need fulfillment (i.e., are “fully human”). o Maslow described 15 characteristics of self-actualized individuals that were based on self-actualized historical figures. Five of these characteristics are: 1. spontaneity, simplicity, naturalness, 2. problem-centered (have a “calling”), 3. creativity (self-actualizing rather than specialized), 4. deep interpersonal relations, and 5. resistance to enculturation. o CONNECTION: A truly starving person is not concerned with art and beauty. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs describes how the basic needs (e.g., hunger, thirst) must be satisfied before one can pursue the higher needs, such as self-actualization (Chapter 11). • Carl Rogers o Rogers developed a form of psychotherapy based on the assumption that people naturally strive toward growth and fulfillment and need unconditional positive regard for that to happen. o Unconditional positive regard is the ability to respect and appreciate another person regardless of their behavior. o In contrast to Maslow, Rogers had a specific, measurable way of defining the self-actualizing tendency and psychological adjustment: by comparing the real self (ourselves as we really are) and our ideal self (who we would like to be).  Rogers then defined psychological adjustment as congruence between the real and ideal selves. o Positive psychology came about in the late 1990s. This theory focuses on positive states and experiences, such as hope, optimism, wisdom, creativity, spirituality, and positive emotions (e.g., happiness).  In contrast to the humanistic psychologists, however, positive psychologists are more likely to base their ideas in research than in speculation, clinical practice, and observation. Social-Cognitive Learning Theories • The social-cognitive learning perspective is exemplified Walter Mischel. • Mischel believes that people change their behavior based on their current situational constraints. What qualities a person brings to each situation interacts with the situation to make one person act somewhat differently when the situation changes. Trait Theories • The trait approach assumes that traits or dispositions are the major force behind personality. • Today, it is commonly accepted that there are five universal dimensions of personality called the Big Five or five-factor model. o The five dimensions are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (OCEAN). • Robert McCrae and Paul Costa developed a theory around the Big Five made up of two components: basic tendencies and characteristic adaptations. o Basic tendencies are aptitudes, talents, and cognitive abilities that correlate with the Big Five personality traits. o Basic tendencies are due to internal/biological factors. Biological Theories • The biological approach assumes that differences in personality are partly based in differences in structures and systems in the central nervous system, such as genetics, hormones, and neurotransmitters. • Hans Eysenck argued for the fundamental importance of biology in shaping personality. o He proposed three fundamental dimensions of personality (PEN): extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism (a combination of openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness) (PEN). o Eysenck developed a model in which differences in personality are caused by the combined influences of genes, neurochemistry, and certain characteristics of the central nervous system. o Connections exist between CNS arousal and personality traits such as introversion-extraversion. • Differences in cortical arousal (how active the brain is at a resting state as well as how sensitive it is to stimulation) and sensory thresholds lead to differences in extraversion-introversion. o Introverts have a higher baseline level of cortical arousal and therefore require a lower stimulus level to arouse them and reach their “comfort zone” than do extraverts. HOW IS PERSONALITY MEASURED? Behavioral Observation • The most direct and objective method for gathering personality data is to observe behavior and simply count specific behaviors that are associated with particular traits, such as aggression, hostility, friendliness, anxiety, or conscientiousness. • It is important that raters of behavior are highly trained because they define what behaviors constitute each trait. In other words, there needs to be evidence of inter-rater reliability. This is when two or more raters accurately rate and agree upon their ratings. • The researchers must first establish an exact definition of the trait. • They need to then identify the behaviors that make up that trait. • They then need to practice rating it against experienced, expert, and reliable raters. The new raters are deemed “reliable” if their ratings compare well with established norms or expert ratings, usually a correlation of .80 or higher. • When children, animals, or others who cannot evaluate and/or report on their own personalities are being assessed, behavioral observations are required. • Pros: These measures are desirable because they do not depend on people’s view of themselves, as self-report measurements do. They are direct and objective. • Cons: They are costly and time-consuming; not all personality traits can be observed by other people, and coding issues. • Self-reports can be carried out in three different ways: interviewing, projective tests, and questionnaires. Interviewing • Interviewing is a self-report measure. • Sitting down with another person face-to-face is probably the most natural and comfortable of all personality assessment techniques. • From the participant’s perspective, interviewing is usually more engaging and pleasant than filling out a questionnaire. • Pros: The advantages of this technique include the open-ended nature of the interview. • Cons: In this technique, as with behavioral ratings, coding is an issue. Projective Tests • Projective tests are another type of self-report measure. • Projective tests present an ambiguous stimulus or situation to participants and ask them to give their interpretation of or tell a story about what they see. These techniques are based on the assumption, stemming from psychoanalysis, that unconscious wishes, thoughts, and motives will be “projected” onto the task. • One of the most widely used projective tests is the Rorschach Inkblot Test. • In the Rorschach Inkblot Test, a series of ambiguous inkblots are presented one at a time, and the participant is asked to say what he or she sees in each one. The responses are recorded and then coded by a trained coder as to how much human and nonhuman “movement,” color, form, and shading the participant sees in each card. Personality Questionnaires • Questionnaires are self-report measures. • The most common way of measuring personality is asking participants to summarize their own behavioral tendencies by means of questionnaires. • Personality questionnaires consist of individual statements, or items; respondents indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with each statement as it applies to their personality. • Responses are usually arranged on a Likert scale, which uses response categories such as “completely disagree,” marked 1; “neither agree nor disagree,” marked 3; and “completely agree,” marked 5. • Questions are based on either the rational or the empirical method. • The rational or face valid method involves using reason or theory to come up with a question. The problem with such questionnaires, however, is that because the questions are transparent, participants might give socially desirable or false answers rather than honest ones. • The empirical method focuses instead on simply whether a question distinguishes groups it is supposed to distinguish. A standard way to empirically validate questions on an anxiety measure would be to develop a series of questions and then administer them to people known to suffer from anxiety disorders (as diagnosed by a therapist) and to people known to not suffer from anxiety disorders. If the questions are answered differently by the two groups, they are valid and should be included in the questionnaire. If they are not answered differently, they do not distinguish anxious from non-anxious people and should be discarded.  Two of the most widely used personality questionnaires: The Minnesotoa Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and California Personality Inventory (CPI) were developed using this method. Social Network Measurement of Personality • Psychologists can’t use your SNS footprint to measure personality just yet. They are, however, getting close. • Content of personal websites, musical preferences, online profiles, and number and density of SNS friends predict personality traits. • What you “like” on Facebook predicts personality, intelligence, race, age, sexual orientation, and political affiliation. PSYCHOLOGY IN THE REAL WORLD: PERSONALITY AND CAREER INTEREST AND JOB PERFORMANCE • Personality traits predict what kind of majors and careers we select, what kinds of employers select us, how people perform at jobs, and how likely they are to leave them once they get them. Personality and Career and College Major Interest • The first stage of job selection is picking a major. • Pulver and Kelly (2008) used the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to look at major selection and personality type. o The MBTI consists of opposing types: Extraversion-Introversion, Thinking-Feeling, Intuition-Sensing, and Judging-Perceiving. o Pulver and Kelly (2008) found that extraverts preferred social and enterprising majors (such as psychology, social work, elementary education), whereas thinking types preferred realistic and investigative majors (such as mechanical engineering or archeology). Feeling types preferred artistic and social majors (such as art, music, and theater). • Larson et al. (2010) used the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) and found that: o Education majors scored higher than engineering majors on social closeness. o Business majors scored significantly lower on agreeableness than humanities and architecture/design majors. Architecture majors were more absorbed than business majors. o Elementary education majors scored highest on harm avoidance (avoiding situations where one can get hurt) and social closeness than other majors tested. Personality-Environment Fit and Job Performance • Holland (1985) calls the fit between personality and job congruence. I/O psychologists refer to this as “person-organization fit” or how well a person is matched to his/her work environment. • The better the fit, the more satisfied people are with their jobs, the less likely they are to leave their jobs, and the more successful they are. • People who are conscientious, agreeable and emotionally stable are less likely to engage in counterproductive behaviors. Personality and Switching Jobs • People high in openness to experience and low in agreeableness are most likely to switch jobs/companies. BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER: MAKING CONNECTIONS IN PERSONALITY: DOES PERSONALITY CHANGE OVER TIME? • Although it shows considerable stability over our lifetime, personality also changes and develops between our infant and adult years. Personality Consistency • Keep in mind that personality consistency is relative. o Recall Mischel’s work on how qualities and traits of a person’s qualities interact with the specific situation to bring about different behavior across different situations. • Longitudinal studies, those that examine the same people over a period of time, reveal high levels of stability of personality traits. • Block, Block, and Keyes (1988) conducted some of the first long-term studies of human temperament and personality. They used most of the methods for assessing personality discussed in this chapter: interviews, behavioral observations, and personality questionnaires. They found that children who were impulsive, aggressive, and tended to cry at age 3 were most likely to use drugs during adolescence. • Genetics contribute to the personality consistency we see from adolescence to adulthood, whereas environmental factors contribute to both stability and change in personality traits. • CONNECTION: Children who are rated by their parents as not being controlled at age 3 are more likely than other children to have drinking problems, get in trouble with the law, and even attempt suicide by age 21 (Chapter 5). Personality Change • Typical Personality Change Across the Lifespan o Research supports some degree of personality change as we move from adolescence through adulthood as well as from changes in life circumstances. o People become steadily more agreeable and conscientious from adolescence to late adulthood. o People tend to become more assertive or dominant and emotionally stable from adolescence to middle adulthood and then level off on these personality dimensions. o People become more sociable and open from adolescence to early adulthood, level off, and then decline in these traits in older adulthood. • Personality Change After Changes in Life Circumstances o Living Abroad and Personality Change  Living abroad does seem to change personality.  Personality traits that are most likely to change are showing an increase in agreeableness and a decrease in neurotism. o Parenting and Personality Change  Becoming a mother affects personality differently, depending on the woman’s evaluation of motherhood. • If a woman likes being a full-time mother, then having children can lead to an increase in her flexibility, self-esteem, adjustment, resourcefulness, and control, and a decrease in her dependence and fearfulness. • If a woman does not especially enjoy being a full-time mother, the opposite personality changes are observed.  Self-concept in general seems to stay the same for both mothers and fathers. Self-esteem goes down and irritability goes up in mothers, but not in fathers.  The gender of the parent interacts with the temperament of the child. • Compared to having a child with an “easy temperament,” having one with a “difficult temperament” is more likely to increase the father’s but not the mother’s anxiety. • Neither easy nor difficult temperament type changed the overall rate of depression in mothers or fathers. • The biggest personality change seems to come from increases in a personal sense of control and mastery if parents have an “easy” child, and decreases in these dimensions if they have a “difficult” child. o Brain Injury and Personality Change  Based on behavioral observations, Rorschach Inkblots, and semi-structured interviews’ ratings of personality, children and adults who suffer brain injury often lose the ability to control impulses, are socially inappropriate, have a temper, and are more prone to anger. o Alzheimer’s Disease and Personality Change  Alzheimer’s disease is a major degenerative brain disease whose hallmarks are severe dementia and memory loss. It eventually affects personality and ultimately leads to death. • Neuroticism increases, and openness and conscientiousness decrease after the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. • Two studies have suggested that extraversion decreases. • There have been mixed results about agreeableness changes (some show no change, others show a decrease). KEY TERMS anima: according to Jung, the female part of the male personality. animus: according to Jung, the male part of the female personality. archetypes: ancient or archaic images that result from common ancestral experiences; often expressed in dreams, hallucinations, and myths. basic tendencies: the essence of personality: the Big Five personality dimensions, plus talents, aptitudes, and cognitive abilities. behavioral thresholds: the point at which a person moves from not behaving to behaving. Big Five or five-factor model: a categorization scheme for personality that includes five dimensions: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (OCEAN). collective unconscious: according to Jung, the shared experiences of our ancestors that have been passed down from generation to generation. cortical arousal: how active the brain is at a resting state as well as how sensitive it is to stimulation. defense mechanisms: unconscious strategies used by the mind to protect itself from harmful, threatening, and anxiety-provoking thoughts, feelings, or impulses; they deny or distort reality in some way. ego: Freud’s term for the sense of self; the part of the mind that operates on the “reality principle.” empirical method: a method for developing questionnaire items that disregards theory and face validity and focuses instead on simply whether a question distinguishes groups it is supposed to distinguish. id: Freud’s term for the seat of impulse and desire; the pleasure-seeking part of our personality. inferiority complex: an unhealthy need to dominate or upstage others as a way of compensating for feelings of deficiency. inter-rater reliability: measure of how much agreement there is in ratings when using two or more raters or coders to rate personality or other behaviors. mechanisms: adaptive solutions to problems of survival and reproduction. neuropsychoanalysis: theory which combines Freudian ideas with neuroscientific methods. personal unconscious: according to Jung, all of our repressed and hidden thoughts, feelings, and motives. personality questionnaires: self-report instruments that consist of individual statements, or items; respondents indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with each statement as it applies to their personality. projection: a defense mechanism in which people deny and repress particular ideas, feelings, or impulses but project them onto others. projective tests: method of measuring personality traits by presenting an ambiguous stimulus or situation to participants and asking them to give their interpretation of or tell a story about what they see. quantitative trait loci (QTL) approach: a technique in behavioral genetics that looks for the location on genes that might be associated with particular behaviors. rational (face valid) method: a method for developing questionnaire items that involves using reason or theory to come up with a question. reaction formation: a defense mechanism that turns an unpleasant idea, feeling, or impulse into its opposite. Rorschach Inkblot Test: a projective test involving a series of ambiguous inkblots presented one at a time; the participant is asked to say what he or she sees in each one. shadow: according to Jung, the dark and morally objectionable part of ourselves. striving for superiority: according to Adler, the major drive behind all behavior, whereby humans naturally strive to overcome their physical and psychological deficiencies. sublimation: a defense mechanism in which a socially unacceptable impulse is expressed in a socially acceptable and even desirable way. superego: Freud’s term for the part of the mind that monitors behavior and evaluates it in terms of right and wrong; the conscience. trait: a disposition to behave consistently in a particular way. unconditional positive regard: in Roger’s approach to psychotherapy, the ability to respect and appreciate another person regardless of his or her behavior. unconscious: the level of consciousness containing all drives, urges, and instincts that are outside awareness but nonetheless motivate most behavior. MAKING THE CONNECTIONS (Some of the connections are found in the text. Other connections may be useful for lecture or discussion.) Defining Personality CONNECTION: Would you shock someone to unconsciousness if an authority figure told you that you had no choice? Extreme situations can push people to behave in ways we would not expect from their personalities (Chapter 14). • Discussion: Ask students to consider what situations dominate their behaviors; for example, being in class. There are set scripts outlining how you behave: you sit down, take out paper and a pen, take notes, etc. If you go to a funeral, job interview, etc., you act in a particular fashion. Some situations, though, allow more flexibility (e.g., the beach, a coffee shop, a park, etc.). CONNECTION: Many people think genes affect behavior by means of a single gene; a gene for “aggression,” for example. Any given behavior or personality trait, however, is never the result of single genes but rather many genes. • Discussion: Ask students to think about what aggression is and the behaviors that make it up. Have them then label traits that may lead to such behaviors. This activity can help them see how multifaceted “traits” are. CONNECTION: Are some babies and toddlers temperamentally fussy and more difficult to care for than others? As we explain in the chapter on human development, with very little influence from the environment, some newborns are fussy, unpredictable, and get upset in new situations, whereas others are generally happy, predictable, and curious in new situations (Chapter 5). • Suggested Activity: Have students contact their primary caregiver and ask them about the type of temperament they displayed as a child. Have them provide at least three specific examples. How Do Theorists Explain Personality? CONNECTIONS: Cognitive psychologists refer to mental processes that occur outside awareness as “implicit” or “automatic.” Much of what we learn and remember is implicit (Chapters 7 and 8). • Discussion: Have students compare these two concepts. Ask them to image that Sue broke up with her boyfriend of two years two months ago. A couple of weeks ago she started dating someone new. On her way to pick up her new guy she “goes on automatic pilot” and drives to her ex’s house. How would a cognitive psychologist explain her behavior? What about Freud? CONNECTION: Some people compulsively clean or wash; others check to make sure doors are locked. Present-day clinical psychologists refer to such “anal fixations,” when they disrupt someone’s life, as obsessive-compulsive disorder (Chapter 15). • Discussion: Use the example of Monica from the TV show Friends. You can use this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ4YQjSHQiQ to demonstrate some of her quirks. Ask students how Freud would diagnose Monica. You can then preview how a clinical psychologist would discuss Monica’s behaviors. CONNECTION: A truly starving person is not concerned with art and beauty. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs describes how the basic needs (such as hunger, thirst) must be satisfied before one can pursue the higher needs, such as self-actualization (Chapter 11). • Suggested Site: Use information and images of Maslow’s hierarchy from http://www.businessballs.com/maslow.htm to refresh students’ memory on Maslow’s theory. Bringing It All Together: Making Connections in Personality: Does Personality Change Over Time? CONNECTION: Children who are rated by their parents as being undercontrolled at age 3 are more likely than other children to have drinking problems, get in trouble with the law, and even attempt suicide by age 21 (Chapter 5). • Discussion: Ask students about their childhood friends. Knowing what they know now, could they predict who would have problems in adolescence? INNOVATIVE INSTRUCTION 1. Ask students about their opinions on Freud’s theories. Do they think they are scientifically valid? Ask them why they think it is still important to study Freud. Should Freud be given much space in textbooks? Why or why not? 2. Ask students if they think Adler’s theory on birth order fits their own personalities. Ask them if they believe the “spread” affects birth order. For example, if you are 10 years younger than your sibling are you still considered a first born? Ask them to defend their answers. 3. After covering humanistic theories, ask students their perceptions of the overlying theme that humans are inherently good. What are some potential problems here? Is this too naïve of a perspective? 4. Ask students if they feel personality is based more on nature or nurture. Have them use their own experiences and personalities to back up their opinion. You can use the CPS clickers to pole the class on this to get the discussion under way. 5. Ask students what relationship, if any, they think exists between one’s level of introversion/extraversion and how much they drool. Most students will think that extraverts drool more. Then discuss Corcoran’s (1964) research in this area (see Suggested Readings), which say introverts drool more because of their higher baseline of arousal. You can link this to Eysenck’s theories. 6. Ask students which theory of personality they find most “correct.” You can use the CPS clickers to poll the class on this to get the discussion under way. 7. The evolution of personality traits demonstrates how our bodies, brain, and behavior can be shaped by environmental forces over long periods of time. Nurture shapes nature. Your book discussed how anxiety can be evolutionarily advantageous. Ask your students what other personality traits could be (e.g., extraversion, conscientiousness, etc.). 8. Have students write a summary of Adler’s theory of birth order. Then have them write a brief psychobiography of someone they know well, or themselves, applying Adler’s theory to that person. 9. The authors mention that Darth Vader is a good example of Jung’s shadow archetype. Ask students to come up with a list of other examples in literature, movies, and television. 10. Have students take the five-factor personality test at http://similarminds.com/bigfive.html. What did their results say about them? Do they feel their results are valid? 11. Have students take Eysenck’s personality test at http://similarminds.com/eysenck.html. What did their results say about them? Do they feel their results are valid? You can have students do both activities three and four and compare their results. 12. Show students Rorschach Inkblots and TAT images and ask them what they see. Students really get into this (e.g., http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/rorschach.php). 13. Use the CPS clickers to ask students a series of Likert scale items so they get a feel for how personality questionnaires are used. You can also demonstrate this by using the suggested sites for innovative instruction items 10 and 11. 14. Have students get into groups and create a face valid questionnaire for different personality traits. The number of traits you may wish to use will vary depending on your class size. 15. Ask students in what ways is Adler’s individual psychology more optimistic than Freudian psychology. 16. Ask students to pick five or more traits that they think describe themselves. Have them think about where these traits came from. Are they inherited? Are they biological or environmental in origin? What has shaped their personality? Do they think personality is more nature or nurture? Suggested Media 1. Star Wars (1977) 2. Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back (1980) 3. Star Wars: Episode VI—Return of the Jedi (1983) 4. Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace (1999) 5. Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones (2002) 6. Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith (2005) 7. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) 8. Mary Reilly (1996) 9. Freud (1962) 10. Face to Face with Carl Jung—Part 1 of 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLJsiQ4h3fY 11. Face to Face with Carl Jung—Part 2 of 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6D6N6U6Hjg 12. Face to Face with Carl Jung—Part 3 of 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD-W-1z_qco 13. Face to Face with Carl Jung—Part 4 of 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90VXHjQREDM 14. Carl Rogers discussing his form of psychotherapy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HarEcd4bt-s 15. Rorschach Inkblots: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31Fe2OIpJMI 16. Discovering Psychology—The Self (Annenberg) 17. Extreme Sports and Teens: The Psychology of Risk Addiction (discusses the T-Type personality) Concept Clip (McGraw-Hill Connect for Feist and Rosenberg, 3rd ed.) 1. Psychoanalytic Theory Suggested Websites 1. Sigmund Freud and the Freud Archives: http://www.freudarchives.org/ 2. Neuropsychoanalysis: http://www.neuropsa.org.uk/ 3. The New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute: http://www.psychoanalysis.org/ 4. International Karen Horney Society: http://plaza.ufl.edu/bjparis/ikhs/index.html 5. Adler School of Professional Psychology: http://www.adler.edu/ 6. The Jung Page: http://www.cgjungpage.org/ 7. PEN Model: http://www.personalityresearch.org/pen.html 8. Walter Mischel’s homepage: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/indiv_pages/mischel.html 9. The Rorschach test: http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/rorschach.php 10. Some TAT images: http://web.utk.edu/~wmorgan/tat/tattxt.htm 11. Students often enjoy taking personality tests: http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/ 12. Locus of Control Scale: http://www.mccc.edu/~jenningh/Courses/documents/Rotter-locusofcontrolhandout.pdf 13. Defense mechanisms and examples: http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/defenses.html Suggested Readings Baumeister, R. F., Dale, K., & Sommer, K. L. (1998). Freudian defense mechanisms and empirical findings in modern social psychology: Reaction formation, projection, displacement, undoing, isolation, sublimation, and denial. Journal of Personality, 66, 1081–1124. Blatt, S. J., & Auerbach, J. S. (2000). Psychoanalytic models of the mind and their contributions to personality research. European Journal of Personality, 14, 429–447. Cain, S. (2012). Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking. Crown. Corcoran, D. W. J. (1964). The relation between introversion and salivation. American Journal of Psychology, 77(2), 298–300. Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Four ways five factors are basic. Personality and Individual Differences, 13, 653–665. Cramer, P. (2000). Defense mechanisms in psychology today: Further processes for adaptation. American Psychologist, 55, 637–646. Eysenck, H. J. (1990). Genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences: The three major dimensions of personality. Journal of Personality, 58, 245–261. Eysenck, H. J. (1991). Dimensions of personality: 16, 5, or 3?—Criteria for a taxonomic paradigm. Personality and Individual Differences, 12, 773–790. Freud, S. (1910). The origin and development of psychoanalysis. American Journal of Psychology, 21, 181–218. Jaffe, E. (2013). The link between personality and immunity. APS Observer, 26, 27–30. McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. (1997). Personality trait structure as a human universal. American Psychologist, 52, 509–516. Norman, W. T. (1963). Toward an adequate taxonomy of personality attributes: Replicated factor structure in peer nomination personality ratings. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66, 574–583. Stelmack, R. M. (1990). Biological bases of extraversion: Psychophysiological evidence. Journal of Personality, 58, 293–312. Chapter 14: Social Behavior BRIEF CHAPTER OUTLINE Group Living and Social Influence Conformity Minority Social Influence Obedience Social Perception Attribution Detecting Deception Schemas Stereotypes Exclusion and Inclusion Prejudice and Discrimination Challenging Assumptions in Social Behavior Psychology in the Real World: The Social Psychology of Social Networks Connecting Psychology to Your Life: Are You Implicitly Prejudiced? Attitudes and Behavior The Nature and Nurture of Attitudes Attitude Change Cognitive Dissonance Persuasion Social Relations The Nature and Nurture of Aggression Social Influences on Aggression Prosocial Behavior The Bystander Effect Altruism Empathy Liking, Attraction, and Love Familiarity, Similarity, and Attraction Physical and Chemical Attractiveness Sexual Attraction and Mate Selection Love Types of Love Love as Attachment Bringing It All Together: Making Connections in Social Behavior: Analysis of the Jonestown Cult Chapter Review EXTENDED CHAPTER OUTLINE • Social psychology is the study of the effects of the real or imagined presence of others on people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. GROUP LIVING AND SOCIAL INFLUENCE • Group living offered many advantages in the evolution of our species, such as increased safety in the presence of danger, cooperation with others to complete challenging tasks (e.g., hunting), and rearing children. • Today we work hard to maintain our relationships, going so far as to modify our behavior when we are in the presence of others. • The effect of the presence of others can depend on the situation or task at hand, how easy or difficult the task is, and how excited you are. • Social facilitation occurs when the presence of others improves our performance. o Triplett (1898) noticed that people bicycle faster when riding with others. In a laboratory he asked children to wind a fishing reel as fast as they could. He found that children wound faster when other kids were present o This usually occurs for tasks that are easy, we know well, or we can perform well. • Social loafing occurs when the presence of others causes one to relax one’s standards and slack off. • CONNECTION: Our level of arousal also affects our performance according to the Yerkes-Dodson law. People perform better on an exam if they are slightly anxious than they would if they were totally relaxed or very anxious (Chapter 11). Conformity • Societal or culturally imposed rules about acceptable behavior are called social norms. They can vary by culture as well. People often conform to social norms. • Conformity occurs when people adjust their behavior to what others are doing or adhere to the norms of their culture. o Informational social influence occurs when people conform to the behavior of others because they view them as a source of knowledge about what they are supposed to do. This type of conformity is most pronounced in ambiguous or novel situations. o Normative social influence occurs when people go along with the behavior of others in order to be accepted by them. • Asch (1951) conducted a now classic study on conformity. He assembled several groups of six to seven people, all but one of which was a confederate in the study, in the lab. He told them he was interested in visual acuity. Asch then showed the participants two cards: one with a standard line and the other displaying three lines of varying length. The participant’s job was to pick the one line from the card with three lines that matched the standard line. This comparison process was repeated 18 times and on each occasion, participants said their answers out loud. o The one real participant was always seated in the last chair, so he heard the judgments of all of the other group members before he made his own choice. o On the first six trials everyone gave the obvious and correct answer. Starting on trial seven, however, all the confederates started giving wrong answers. o Not every participant agreed with the group all of the time, but more than three-fourths of the participants went along with the group even when the group answer was clearly wrong. o When participants worked alone, they rarely made any errors. • Groupthink occurs when the thinking of the group takes over, so much so that group members forgo logic or critical analysis in the service of reaching a decision. • Culture also influences conformity. o In collectivist cultures, groups matter more than the individual, so any group-preserving behavior (such as conformity) would be valued and encouraged. • CONNECTIONS: In an individualistic culture, behavior is determined more by personal goals than by group goals; whereas in a collectivist culture, behavior is determined more by shared goals (Chapter 13). Minority Social Influence • In social psychology, a single person or small group within a larger group is called a minority, while the larger group is referred to as the majority. o Minority can push for independence and uniqueness while the majority pushes for group unity. o Minority opinion generally shifts majority opinion by means of informational social influence. If a group encounters a situation in which the members are unsure about what to do and a minority carefully presents a well-thought-out position to the majority, then the majority might accept it. Obedience • Obedience is a type of conformity in which people yield to the social pressure of an authority figure. • Milgram recruited people from the community to participate in an experiment at Yale University. A participant arrived at the lab and sat down next to another supposed participant, who was a confederate. The experimenter told them that they would be participating in a study of the effects of mild punishment on memory. He then randomly assigned them to be either a teacher or learner by asking them to pull a note that said either “teacher” or “learner” from a bowl. The drawing was rigged so that the real participant always landed the “teacher” role. o Then the experimenter showed both the teacher and learner to the adjoining room where the learner would be seated. The learner’s task involved learning and repeating strings of words. He was told that every time he made an error he would receive a mild electric shock, delivered by the teacher. With each mistake, the shocks would increase in intensity. Both teacher and learner were shown the chair where the learner would sit with restraints to make sure the electrodes had a good contact when he received the shock. The teacher then received a sample shock of very low voltage to get a sense of what the learner would be experiencing. In actuality, this was the only real shock ever administered during the experiment. o Then they went to the teacher’s room. The teacher sat at a table behind a panel of little switches. Under each switch was a label indicating voltage level. The levels started at 15 volts (“mild shock”) and increased in 15-volt increments all the way up to 450, with 315 volts designated as “danger: severe shock” and 435–450 (end of scale) as “XXX.” The teacher was reminded that if the learner made any mistakes he would have to deliver a shock, and with each mistake, he should increase the level. In fact, the experiment was rigged, as the learner played a prerecorded tape of his responses to the shock. o As the teacher moved up the shock scale and the learner supposedly made more errors, one could hear a yelp of pain from the learner with each shock. At this point, many teachers would ask the experimenter if they should go on, and he would say, “The experiment requires that you go on.” o The results indicated that at 150 volts there was a drop in obedience, from 100% to about 83%. Some participants stopped, but many went on with the experiment, albeit uncomfortably. Sixty-five percent of participants went all the way to 450 volts. Men and women were equally likely to reach the 450-volt level. • Milgram’s participants clearly experienced mental anguish while taking part in the study. The study sparked a fierce debate about ethics in research. Milgram contacted his participants later and less than 2% reported regretting having participated. • CONNECTIONS: Do you think participants were treated ethically in the Milgram study? What are the obligations of researchers to ensure the ethical treatment of participants in research? (Chapter 2) • Burger (2006) conducted a modified version of Milgram’s original study with college students. An important change from the original study was that when the participants began to protest, they were told to continue rather than told that they had to continue. Also, once participants passed the 150-volt range, the experiment stopped. By making these changes, the researchers were able to obtain permission from the American Psychological Association to conduct the experiment, which otherwise would not meet standards for ethical treatment of human participants. o Burger ALSO reported two-thirds of participants obeyed the authority figure and continued. SOCIAL PERCEPTION • Our social perception is how we make sense of our social world. Attribution • Attributions are the inferences we make about the causes of other people’s behavior. • Heider (1958) made an important distinction between two types of attributions. These are dispositional and situational attributions. o Internal, or dispositional, attributions occur when one thinks that someone’s behavior is caused by something within them, such as their personality, motive, or attitude. o External, or situational, attributions occur when one thinks that something outside the person, such as the nature of the situation, is the cause of his or her behavior. • The tendency to make situational attributions for our own failures but dispositional attributions for our successes is known as a self-serving bias. • The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to explain other people’s behavior in terms of dispositional attributions rather than situational ones. o There is a cultural difference in just how fundamental this error is. People living in Asian cultures, such as India and Japan, are much less likely to make the fundamental attribution error than are European Americans. o CONNECTION: Cultural differences in big-picture processing versus detailed processing are seen in performance on visual perception tasks, too (Chapter 4). Detecting Deception • According to the research, most of us are pretty poor lie detectors (performing no better than chance). • We are bad at detecting liars because we rely too much on misleading cues. We often rely too much on what people are saying and over-interpreting ambiguous nonverbal cues. We should instead focus on inconsistent behaviors such as shaking the head while saying yes and signs of emotion that don’t match what people are saying. • The best lie detectors attend to nonverbal information more than verbal information. In fact, Secret Service agents and psychologists with a special interest in deception can pick liars at a rate significantly above chance. Schemas • Schemas are like lenses through which one filters perceptions. They are ways of knowing that affect how we view our social world. • We rely on schemas when forming impressions of other people. These are especially likely to color our interpretations when we encounter ambiguous information. Stereotypes • Schemas of how people are likely to behave based simply on the groups to which they belong are known as stereotypes. With stereotypes, we have formed conclusions about people before we even interact with them based on the fact that they are of a certain ethnicity or live in a certain place. As such, we end up not judging people by their actions, but by our notions of how they are likely to act. • We rely on stereotypes because they allow us to make easy, fast, and often inaccurate judgments. This is especially true when we don’t know someone well. o The human mind has a tendency to categorize and understand all members of a group by typical characteristics of the category, so if we meet someone new and learn that they belong to a particular group (e.g., ethnic, social), we use what we know about members of that group for how this new person might behave. o When people avoid thinking in this stereotyped way, their prefrontal cortex, an area involved in inhibiting inappropriate responses, is activated. • Stereotypes are often linked to something factual, which does not represent the group as a whole. • CONNECTION: Another name for mental shortcuts we use in decision making is heuristics. Heuristics can be adaptive but also can lead to flawed thinking (Chapter 9). Exclusion and Inclusion • Judgments of “us” versus “them” stem from defending against other groups and competing with them for limited resources. • Perceiving others as different from us has several consequences: 1. we may evaluate and treat people differently because of the group they belong to, 2. these actions are based on in-group/out-group distinctions, and 3. it hurts to be excluded from our group. • When we show positive feelings toward people who belong to the same group as us, and negative feelings toward those in other groups, we are displaying in-group/out-group bias. • The out-group homogeneity effect is our tendency to see all members of an out-group as the same. • One result of the human tendency to include and exclude others is that sometimes we get left out. Prejudice and Discrimination • A prejudice is a biased attitude toward a group of people or an individual member of a group. o Prejudicial thinking often stems from stereotypes and a lack of information. o Prejudices about race are called racism; those about sex are called sexism. • Discrimination is preferential treatment of certain people that is usually driven by prejudicial attitudes. o Discrimination can also result from institutionalized rules. • Prejudicial attitudes are learned early in life and even if they are formally abandoned later in life, these reactions can become quite automatic. o Prejudiced attitudes operate outside conscious awareness and they sometimes stand in stark contrast to one’s conscious beliefs. o There may also be evolutionary reasons underlying some of this automatic responding, the mechanism of recognizing group members that may have evolved to preserve group harmony, cohesion, and close alliances as means to enhance the survivability of individuals. Challenging Assumptions in Social Behavior • Prejudice operates both inside and outside of a person’s awareness. o Explicit prejudices are plainly stated. o Implicit prejudices are indirect or unconscious. • Banaji and Greenwald were interested in in implicit social thoughts and attitudes. • Greenwald and his colleagues developed the Implicit Associations Test (IAT). The IAT is a technique for measuring implicit biases, and decided to apply it to racial words. He took European-American and African-American names and paired them with both pleasant and unpleasant words. • There are four steps involved: o First, participants had to press a computer keyboard letter with their left hand for one category and a different key with their right hand for a second category. o Second, they had to do the same for pleasant words (left hand) and unpleasant words (right hand). o Third, the first category and pleasant words were combined (left hand) and second category and unpleasant words were combined (right hand). o Finally, the combinations were reversed (first category and unpleasant words, second category and pleasant words). • Greenwald and Banaji applied this technique to the study of race and ethnicity. Faster response times would indicate that people more readily associate two concepts; slower response times would indicate a less automatic association. o European Americans tend to respond more slowly to pairings of “black” (words or faces) with positive words than they do to pairings of “black” with negative words.  This is true even for people whose questionnaire responses seem to indicate that they do not hold racist attitudes. o The reverse is true for African Americans. They respond slower to pairings of “White American” with positive words than they do to pairings of “White American” with negative words. • In just over 20 years, more than 600 published papers, in areas ranging from marketing to neuroscience, have used the IAT technique. • The IAT scores can predict suicidal tendencies, consumer and political preferences, sexual orientation, and drug and alcohol use. • The IAT is an excellent teaching tool for anyone confronting his or her own implicit prejudice. • Results from the test can be used to reduce prejudice and sensitize individuals and groups to the fact that these prejudices operate in subtle yet powerful ways PSYCHOLOGY IN THE REAL WORLD: THE SOCIAL PSYCHOOGY OF SOCIAL NETWORKS • Networks are defined by associations among people that branch and spread, beyond those people one knows directly. Social networks form among people who share interests and eating and drinking habits, smoking, happiness, and loneliness can be spread in them. o Spreading means that behaviors are more common among members of a network than among people who are not in the same network. • Christakis and Fowler (2009) argue that attitudes, behaviors, or habits move through social networks via the three degrees rule; that is, we are influenced by and influence our friends within three degrees of separation. o Your behavior affects a friend’s behavior (one degree) and their friends’ behaviors (two degrees), and their friends’ friends’ (three degrees), etc. • Mimicry, the process by which we mirror the actions of others, may be one means by which our emotional behavior can impact another. Here, however, the behavior gets distorted as it moves out ward toward others. • Social networking sites (SNSs) use contributes to perceptions of quality of social interaction and supports socialization. o In these sites, ideas and preferences (“likes”) are spread faster than in a real-world social network. o The degrees rule may not apply to SNSs. o Personality plays a factor in usage.  People who score higher on measures of conscientious have more friends.  Those who score higher on openness to experience are more expressive in their personal profiles.  Introverts have smaller social networks than extraverts.  People who score either low or high on neuroticism share more information than people with moderate levels of neuroticism. • There are cultural differences in use of SNSs. o Differences in social capital. Social capital is the value or payoff one gains by connecting with others. This may be socially or professionally. o Korean and Chinese users rely more on searching and friending functions to build bridges with others. o American users use direct communication (such as wall postings) to foster more intimate relationships with online friends in their networks. o A payoff for SNS is reinforcement for one's own views (e.g., the number of likes on Facebook). ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR • An attitude is a person’s favorable or unfavorable beliefs, feelings, or actions toward an object, idea, or person. • Attitudes have affective, cognitive, and behavioral components. Attitudes differ by how heavily each component is weighted. • The affective component includes the feelings or emotions associated with the belief. • The cognitive component consists of the rational thoughts and beliefs that make up the attitude. • The behavioral component includes the motive to act in a particular way toward the person or object of the attitude. The Nature and Nurture of Attitudes • Certain negative attitudes and emotional responses (e.g., fear of snakes or revulsion for bodily waste and decaying) may be so important for human survival that they are part of our genetic heritage. o Evolutionary pressures to preserve group membership favor in-group bias (fear of those who are different). o The tendency to automatically make quick good–bad and like–dislike assessments is a fundamental cognitive process which may have helped people make quick decisions in life-threatening situations. • Many of our attitudes come from experience. o People around us teach us their attitudes through both direct and indirect instruction. o The direct experience with an object, idea, or person increases one’s overall preference for it. This is called mere exposure. • Conditioning can also play a role in the formation of our attitudes. An attitude can become paired with a pleasant or unpleasant feeling in classical conditioning, leading to attitude change. Attitude Change • There are many reasons for attitude change. Cognitive dissonance and persuasion are discussed. Cognitive Dissonance • Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of discomfort caused by information that is different from your conception of yourself as a reasonable and sensible person. When two cognitions or beliefs conflict, especially those that threaten our images of ourselves, it creates discomfort. Because we don't like feeling uncomfortable, we are motivated to try to reduce the discomfort. There are three options to decrease discomfort. 1. We can change our behavior to make it consistent with dissonant cognition. 2. We can attempt to justify our behavior by changing one of the cognitions to make it more consistent with our behavior. 3. We can add new cognitions that are consistent with the behavior and thus support it. • People experiencing cognitive dissonance may go extreme lengths to reduce it and maintain our self-esteem. We often end up behaving very irrationally and rationalizing our behavior to reduce cognitive dissonance. Persuasion • Persuasion occurs when a person or group attempts to change our opinions, beliefs, or choices by explaining or arguing their position. • How successful persuasive attempts will be depends on three things: who they are (source), the method they use to convey the message, and who we are (audience). • The more prestigious and trustworthy the persuader, the more likely he or she is to succeed in persuading us. If the persuader is also attractive and familiar, so much the better. • The use of fear can be very persuasive (e.g., dentists showing you pictures of what will happen to your gums if you don’t floss). Fear works only if the ads actually create fear. • Not all people are equally malleable in their opinions or behavior. The more people know about a topic and the firmer their prior opinions are, the less likely they are to change them. SOCIAL RELATIONS The Nature and Nurture of Aggression • Aggression refers to the violent behaviors that are intended to cause psychological or physical harm, or both, to another being. • Aggression is deliberate and often, but not always, provoked by anger. • Hostile aggression stems from feelings of anger. • When aggression is a means to achieve some goal, it is called instrumental aggression. • When genetic factors combine with an abusive and neglectful environment, the likelihood of violence increases dramatically. • Research on murderers points to a cluster of traits that interact with certain environmental influences to make aggressive behavior more likely. This cluster is being male, growing up in an abusive and neglectful household, having at least one psychological disorder, and having experienced a head or brain injury can lead one to become antisocial and prone to violence. • Several brain areas are involved in aggression, including the hypothalamus, the amygdala, and the frontal cortex. • The part of the frontal lobe cortex responsible for impulse control is often malfunctioning in aggressive and violent people. • Being in a constant state of fear can lead to neural systems that are primed for unusually high levels of anxiety, impulsive behavior, and vigilance, or a constant state of alertness. • Two hormones are consistently related to high levels of aggression: testosterone and serotonin. • The importance of testosterone in aggression may be related to one of the more consistent gender differences: boys are consistently more aggressive than girls at most ages. • In adults, the great majority of people arrested for criminal offenses are men. • Relatively high levels of testosterone, whether in men or women, positively correlate with a propensity toward violence. • Low levels of serotonin were found in criminals who had committed violent acts but not in criminals who had committed nonviolent crimes. • CONNECTION: How does hostility differ from anger? Hostility is a personality characteristic that sets the threshold for the emotion of anger (Chapter 11). Social Influences on Aggression • Situations that frustrate us and prevent us from obtaining our goals are likely to make us aggressive. Moreover, the closer we are to our goal when we become frustrated, the more aggressive we are likely to be.  Harris (1974) had confederates cut in front of people in lines for movies or crowded restaurants. Sometimes they cut in front of the second person in line and at other times they cut in front of someone further back in line. The response of the person standing behind the intruder was much more aggressive when the confederate cut in front of the person second in line or closest to the goal. • Situations that lead to anger stimulate aggression, especially hostile aggression (e.g., threats to personal safety and the safety of our families). • Observing aggressive people and the consequences of their action can make us more aggressive.  The more violence people watch on TV when they are children, the more violent behavior they exhibit as adults.  Experimental findings also suggest that watching TV violence leads to aggressive behavior in children.  Results from a recent meta-analysis suggest, however, that the effects of watching violence on aggressive behavior have been exaggerated. It seems many of the studies fail to consider how other factors (e.g., sex, personality, family violence) may also play a role in aggressive behavior.  In a study of desensitization to violence in kids who play violent video games, the researchers randomly assigned over 250 male and female college students to play either a violent or a nonviolent video game for 20 minutes. Then they measured their physiological responses to films of real-life violence, such as courtroom outbursts, police confrontations, shootings, and prison fights. The students who had played the violent video games showed less evidence of physiological arousal while watching the films of real people being stabbed and shot than the students who had played the nonviolent games. • CONNECTION: Social learning theory offers and explanation of modeling, the kind of learning in which we imitate the behavior of others (Chapter 8). Prosocial Behavior • Prosocial behavior refers to behavior that is beneficial to others. The Bystander Effect • The bystander effect states that the greater the number of bystanders who witness an emergency, the less likely any one of them is to help. • Darley and Latané (1968) applied the scientific method to try to understand why no one came to help Kitty Genovese.  Research participants heard over an intercom a neighboring subject choking (or so they thought). The researchers led some of the participants to believe that they were the only ones hearing the choking subject, while others thought many people heard the choking incident. Of the participants who thought they alone heard the choking man, 85% tried to help. Of those who thought many people (including them) heard the choking, only 62% tried to offer help. • Diffusion of responsibility occurs when there are many people around and the responsibility of any one person to act seems lessened. • A number of factors influence whether or not someone will intervene in an emergency.  One is whether people actually notice the event.  When many people are present and doing nothing, people are less likely to interpret an event as an emergency.  The individual must decide that it is their responsibility to do something about the emergency. Altruism • Altruism is selfless concern for and helping of others. • Because altruists often expose themselves to greater danger than those who selfishly protect themselves, helping is a disadvantage to personal survival so it doesn’t make a lot of evolutionary sense. • Two evolutionary explanations for altruistic behavior exist:  Kin selection is the evolutionary favoring of genes that prompt individuals to help their relatives or kin.  Reciprocal altruism occurs when you help others in the hope that they will help you in the future. This clearly promotes cooperation. • Social exchange theory argues that in our relations with others we try to maximize our gains and minimize our losses. We help others because such behavior can be rewarding, but we will help only if the rewards will outweigh the costs.  According to this perspective, then, truly selfless altruism does not exist.  Psychological science is discovering more evidence of the benefits of helping: (1) helping feels good, (2) it may help buffer stress, and (3) it may be more likely that people will change their own behavior if change is for the general good. Empathy • Empathy is the ability to share the feelings of others and understand their situations. • Batson’s empathy-altruism hypothesis states that people will offer selfless help only when they truly empathize with the victim. • Two different motivations exist.  Egoistic motivation is helping in order to relieve one’s own distress.  Empathic motivation may spring from an altruistic desire to reduce the distress of the person in need.  Singer and colleagues (2004) examined brain activation during one’s real pain experience and when witnessing the pain of a loved. They created an experiment to study one’s response to a loved one’s pain in the confines of an MRI scanner. Singer obtained measures of functional brain activity in the female partner of couples while a woman received a painful stimulus to her hand and then while she witnessed her partner receiving the same painful stimulus. • The actual pain stimulus activated a well-known pain circuit in the brain. • When her partner was experiencing pain, only those structures in the pain circuit that are the emotional aspect of the pain circuit showed activation. o Compassion is a state of relationship in which one feels kindness toward another who is suffering and one feels motivated to help relieve that suffering. Liking, Attraction, and Love Familiarity, Similarity, and Attraction • People with similar ideas, values, and interests are more likely to like one another and share satisfying, long-lasting relationships.  Randomly assigned roommates become real friends if they have common backgrounds, similar majors, and share similar political viewpoints.  People report they like and want to help out others who have similar personalities, attitudes, or beliefs.  People tend to be attracted to and partner with people of a similar level of attractiveness to themselves. This is a phenomenon known as assortative mating. Physical and Chemical Attractiveness • Humans all over the world value physical attractiveness in partners. • People rate average and symmetrical faces as more attractive than less average and symmetrical faces.  Note the average means that that the size, location, and shape of each feature of the face is mathematically average in the population. • Average faces tend to be more symmetrical, and people seem to prefer symmetry when they provide ratings of attractiveness of faces. Symmetry is a rough indicator of genetic fitness. • Pheromones are scents produced by animals that have an effect on other members of the same species. They can communicate sexual and organizational measures. Whether they work in humans is still up for debate, but scent does play a role in sexual attraction for us.  In a study by Miller and Maner (2010) men smelled women’s t-shirts while their testosterone levels were measured. Men released more testosterone when exposed to the scent of ovulating women than non-ovulating women.  CONNECTION: Men are more likely than women to be interested in casual sex (Chapter 11). Sexual Attraction and Mate Selection • Sexual strategies theory suggests that men and women face different problems when they seek out mates, and so they often approach relationships in very different ways. • In virtually all societies, men and women engage in both short-term matings (affairs, one-night stands) and long-term matings (marriages, extended companionships) under certain conditions. Both are effective ways to increase one’s reproductive fitness, but each strategy has strengths and weaknesses. • Sex differences in attraction arise because parental investment is greater for women than for men. As such, men devote a larger portion of their total mating effort to short-term mating than do women. • Men value qualities that may signal fertility and accessibility (e.g., large breasts, wide hips compared to waist, youth), especially in short-term partners. This is less true in evaluating long-term partners. • Women value men who can provide resources to support their offspring. Mate selection factors might drive sexual partnerships, but it is love that keeps us together. Love • Types of Love  Sternberg’s (1986) triangular theory of love proposes that three components, in various combinations, explain all the forms of human love. • Intimacy refers to close, connected, and bonded feelings in loving relationships. • Passion refers to the drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, sexual consummation, and is accompanied by physiological changes and arousal. • Commitment refers to both the decision to love someone or not as well as to the decision to commit to it long-term.  These three components exist in different amounts for different kinds of love. • Companionate love exists when intimacy and commitment are high and passion is low. • Passionate love exists when intimacy and passion are high and commitment is low. • Lust exists when there is a lot of passion but no intimacy or commitment.  Love as Attachment • Attachment is an affection-based bond between infants and their primary caregivers that serves to protect infants from threats to their survival. • Hazan and Shaver (1987) argued that the infant-caregiver attachment system underlies many of the important dynamics and individual differences observed in adult romantic relationships. The attachment system is first established when we are infants, in which our relationships with our main caregiver form a template in how we attach with others as adults, including our intimate partners. They found that: o Securely attached adults report that they easily get close to others, readily trust others, and have more satisfying romantic relationships. o Anxious/ambivalent adults tend to have less satisfying relationships, are more preoccupied with them, and fear that their partners do not want to be as intimate as they desire to be. o Avoidant adults are uncomfortable being close with others, and have less satisfying relationships. • CONNECTION: Attachment is a bidirectional relationship requiring the active participation of infants and caregivers (Chapter 5). BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER: MAKING CONNECTIONS IN SOCIAL BEHAVIOR: ANALYSIS OF THE JONESTOWN CULT • The tragic mass suicide of hundreds of members of the People’s Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, occurred in late November of 1978. Under the direction of the Reverend Jim Jones, members of this cult fed a poison-laced drink to their children and then drank it themselves. More than 900 adults and children died; most were found lying together, arm in arm. • A cult is an extremist group led by a charismatic, totalitarian leader in which coercive methods are used to prevent members from leaving the group. Jim Jones and the People’s Temple • Jim Jones founded the People’s Temple in 1958, preaching a message of brotherhood, racial integration, and freedom from poverty. • His group helped feed and employ the poor. Temple members included whites and blacks and many were poor. • Throughout the 1960s, the group grew in size and popularity. As its popularity grew, rumors surfaced about coercive methods Jones used to keep people in the cult. • In the mid-1970s Jones and a large percentage of the cult’s members moved to a jungle outpost in Guyana, in South America. He named this community Jonestown. • In 1978, U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan heard reports that the People’s Temple was holding members against their will. He and a delegation of government officials, reporters, and concerned relatives went to Jonestown to talk with cult members about how they liked living there. Most of the community’s residents praised the settlement, expressed joy at being there, and indicated that they wished to stay. • Two families secretly informed Ryan that they wanted out. As Ryan’s party and these two “defector” families tried to board their plane, Temple gunmen ambushed and killed five people, including Congressman Ryan. This ambush led to the mass suicide. The Role of Persuasion • Jones was a charismatic figure. He sought out people who needed to hear his message, such as the urban poor, the elderly, ex-addicts and convicts, and minorities. • Potential members first encountered an almost idyllic scene in which blacks and whites lived, worked, and worshiped together in total harmony. Guests were greeted warmly and invited to share a meal. • Jones also gave them “miracles.” • Members were motivated to believe in Jones. They appreciated the racial harmony, sense of purpose, and relief from feelings of worthlessness that the People’s Temple provided. • Jones carefully managed his public image. He used letter writing and the political clout of hundreds of cult members to praise and impress the politicians and reporters who supported the People’s Temple as well as to criticize and intimidate its opponents. Most important, Jones limited the information available to members. The Role of Conformity and Obedience • Getting into the group was not easy. People underwent a severe initiation process that actually drew members more firmly into the group. As they became increasingly involved in the People’s Temple, they committed themselves more strongly to the group because they were required to donate their property and 25% of their income to the church. • Before they entered the meeting room for each service, they wrote self-incriminating letters that were turned over to the church. If anyone objected, the refusal was interpreted as “lack of faith” in Jones. • As he gradually increased his demands, Jones also exposed cult members to the concept of a “final ritual,” mass suicide. Rehearsals of this ritual served to test followers and their faith in Jones. • Jones was making use of the foot-in-the-door technique by getting people to agree to a moderate request (i.e., rehearsal). Once cult members had agreed to engage in frequent rehearsals of mass suicide, it became less difficult for them to go through with the real thing. • The suicides at Jonestown can be viewed as the product of obedience. Whatever Jim Jones commanded, the members did. • Jones used threats to induce the discipline and devotion he demanded, and he took steps to eliminate any behavior that might encourage resistance among his followers. • Jones worked to dissolve marital bonds by forcing couples into extramarital relations, thereby working against kin selection. The Role of Cognitive Dissonance • Cognitive dissonance helps explain why cult members believed Jones to the end and why so few defected. • People did not become cult members all at once. Rather, the process of justifying their choice and becoming committed to Jones unfolded slowly over the course of weeks and months, sometimes years. • These acts were the product of a situation that made dissent impossible and faith in Jones and the Temple absolute. Once they were isolated from the rest of the world at Jonestown, escape was impossible. When escape is impossible, people rationalize their predicament (using dissonance). KEY TERMS aggression: refers to the violent behaviors that are intended to cause psychological or physical harm, or both, to another being. altruism: a selfless concern for and giving of aid to others. attitudes: an individual’s favorable or unfavorable beliefs, feelings, or actions toward an object, idea, or person. attributions: the inferences we make about the causes of other people’s behavior. bystander effect: the greater the number of bystanders who witness an emergency, the less likely any one of them is to help. cognitive dissonance: the feeling of discomfort caused by information that is different from your conception of yourself as a reasonable and sensible person. compassion: a state of relationship in which one feels kindness towards another who is suffering and one feels motivated to help relieve that suffering. conformity: occurs when people adjust their behavior to what others are doing or adhere to the norms of their culture. cult: an extremist group led by a charismatic, totalitarian leader in which coercive methods are used to prevent members from leaving the group. discrimination: preferential treatment of certain people that is usually driven by prejudicial attitudes. empathy: sharing feeling and understanding about another person’s situation. empathy-altruism hypothesis: hypothesis that people will offer selfless help only when they truly empathize with the victim. fundamental attribution error: occurs when people tend to explain others’ behavior in terms of dispositional attributions rather than situational ones. groupthink: occurs when the thinking of the group takes over, so much so that group members forgo logic or critical analysis in the service of reaching a decision. informational social influence: occurs when people conform to the behavior of others because they view them as a source of knowledge about what they are supposed to do. in-group/out-group bias: when we show positive feelings toward people who belong to the same group as us and negative feelings toward those in other groups. kin selection: the evolutionary favoring of genes that prompt individuals to help their relatives or kin. normative social influence: occurs when people go along with the behavior of others in order to be accepted by them. obedience: occurs when one or more people follow the direct commands of another person. out-group homogeneity: the tendency to see all members of an out-group as the same. persuasion: when a person or group attempts to change our opinions, beliefs, or choices by explaining or arguing their position. prejudice: a biased attitude toward a group of people or an individual member of a group based on unfair generalizations about what members of that group are like. prosocial behavior: behavior that is beneficial to others. reciprocal altruism: when you help others in the hope that they will help you in the future. self-serving bias: the tendency to make situational attributions for our failures but dispositional attributions for our successes. sexual strategies theory: suggests that men and women face different problems when they seek out mates, and so they often approach relationships in very different ways. social exchange theory: a nonevolutionary explanation of altruistic behavior that says we help others because such behavior can be rewarding, but we will help only if the rewards will outweigh the costs. social facilitation: occurs when the presence of others improves our performance. social loafing: occurs when the presence of others causes one to relax one’s standards and slack off. social norms: the cultural context in which we live imposes rules about acceptable behavior. stereotypes: schemas about people based on what they are likely to do or be like based simply on groups to which they belong. triangular theory of love: three components (intimacy, passion, and commitment), in various combinations, can explain all the forms of human love. MAKING THE CONNECTIONS (Some of the connections are found in the text. Other connections may be useful for lecture or discussion.) Group Influence and Social Living CONNECTION: Our level of arousal also affects our performance, according to the Yerkes-Dodson law. People perform better on an exam if they are slightly anxious than they would if they were either totally relaxed or very anxious (Chapter 11). o Discussion: Ask students to relate this to test performance. If they are bored with a task, they tend to lose focus and make silly mistakes. If they are too nervous/aroused when taking the test, they will experience test anxiety. They perform best when there is enough arousal to keep them focused but they are not too aroused to perform. CONNECTION: In an individualistic culture, behavior is determined more by personal goals than by group goals; whereas in a collectivist culture, behavior is determined more by shared goals (Chapter 13). • Discussion: Ask students what they recall from the 2014 Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia. What cultural differences did they notice about how athletes competed? Did they compete for themselves and their own goals? For their country? For their family? CONNECTION: Do you think participants were treated ethically in the Milgram study? What are the obligations of researchers to ensure the ethical treatment of participants in research? (Chapter 2) • Discussion: Remind students about APA’s ethical rules for experimentation. Ask students if they think that this study, exactly as it was conducted, would be allowed today. Why or why not? If they feel this was unethical, how would they suggest studying obedience? Attitudes and Behavior CONNECTION: Cultural differences in big-picture processing versus detailed processing are seen in performance on visual perception tasks, too (Chapter 4). o Discussion: One reason we may make the fundamental attribution error is due to where our visual attention is drawn. When we are acting in a situation, we are visually focused on our current situational demands. Subsequently, when asked why we did what we did, we make situational attributions. When we are watching others, however, we are focused on them and not their situations. For this reason we make dispositional attributions when we describe others. Ask students to consider how this is different in collectivist cultures. CONNECTION: Another name for mental shortcuts we use in decision making is heuristics. Heuristics can be adaptive but also can lead to flawed thinking (Chapter 9). • Discussion: If heuristics are types of schemas and they are error-prone, remind students that algorithms always result in the right answer. Ask students what the relative “algorithm” would be for stereotyping. Social Relations CONNECTION: How does hostility differ from anger? Hostility is a personality characteristic that sets the threshold for the emotion of anger (Chapter 11). • Discussion: Just because you feel anger does not mean that you will act on it (i.e., be aggressive). Ask students how they manage anger and avoid aggression. CONNECTION: Social learning theory offers and explanation of modeling, the kind of learning in which we imitate the behavior of others (Chapter 8). • Discussion: Remind students of Bandura’s Bobo Doll study. Ask students to relate that to video game violence. CONNECTION: Men are more likely than women to be interested in casual sex (Chapter 11). • Discussion: Ask students how many children a woman typically can have in a year (one) versus how many a man can have (sky’s the limit). Explain how this difference in reproductive potential influences the type of sexual strategy each gender utilizes most often. INNOVATIVE INSTRUCTION 1. Students get a kick out of hearing about Zajonc, Heingartner, and Herman’s (1969) social facilitation study with cockroaches. See Suggested Readings for a full citation. 2. Ask students for examples of when they have loafed or have been the victim of someone else’s social loafing. Have them think about group work and group projects in class. Do they like this type of work? Why or why not? 3. Have students brainstorm about different societal norms in their culture. This is a good opportunity to talk about norms and culture. 4. Ask students for examples of when they might have been the victims of prejudice or discrimination. A common example that students may have experienced is poor service at a restaurant because the wait staff did not think they would be good tippers, or trying to rent an apartment with a management company that does not allow cosigners. 5. Ask students how many of them have taken CPR classes. Ask them about the first thing they are taught to say to the “victim” (i.e., the dummy). Usually it’s “Are you alright? Are you OK? YOU call 911” (said while pointing to one person). Why do we specify that one person is responsible for calling 911? Because if you don’t, then people tend to look around for who is supposed to act, leading no one to act. This uncertainty is the result of diffusion of responsibility. 6. Ask students when the last time they helped someone was. Today? Yesterday? A week ago? Who did they help? Why? What did they do? You can also ask when the last time they received help was. 7. Ask students if they think altruism really exists. Ask for examples. 8. Ask students whether they think “opposites attract” or “birds of a feather flock together.” Ask why and then explain that usually it is the latter. 9. Advertising makes use of classical conditioning to pair products with things we like. Ask students which advertisements most clearly make use of classical conditioning to generate attitudes toward their products (examples can be beer commercials, car commercials, soap products, etc.). If you have Internet access, ask students to pull up illustrations. 10. Aggression results from the interaction between genetic and social forces. Ask students what environmental factors have led them to aggressive actions. 11. Evolutionary forces explain certain inborn attitudes, but many of our attitudes come from experience. Ask students what attitudes they may have that they learned from others and which are evolutionarily predisposed. Ask students to share their experiences. 12. Watching someone you love experience pain activates components of physical pain circuitry in the brain. Ask students what they would find more painful: having each one of their toes broken or watching the person they love most in the world having his/her toes broken. 13. Ask students if they think that American society overemphasizes physical appearance and thinness. Ask them to defend their answers. If they answered yes, ask them how these values are conveyed to children, adolescents, and adults. What pressures might young men and women experience if they do not conform to the idealized image? 14. What is conformity? Why do you think some people conform and others do not? Can you think of a time when you conformed? Can you think of a time when you did not conform? 15. Have students violate a standard cultural norm; for example, invading someone’s personal space, standing backwards in a crowded elevator, etc. Ask them to describe the reaction they received from others and how they felt in the process. 16. Have students discuss what a typical member of each of the following categories is like: men, women, teenagers, Republicans, Democrats, and any other category you feel is relevant. Explain to them that all their answers represent stereotypes which can potentially lead to prejudice and discrimination. 17. Come into the classroom to prepare for the day’s lecture. Then tell the students you forgot something and will be back in a few minutes, leaving your purse or briefcase on the desk or lectern. Have an accomplice then come in and take what you left. Return to the room and see how long it takes students to report the theft. 18. Begin your lecture for the day. About 10 minutes into the lecture, arrange for an accomplice to make noises outside the classroom as if they fell off their skateboard/ tripped, etc., and hurt themselves. Continue lecturing as if nothing happened and see how long it takes for students to respond. 19. If you’d like to find out if you hold subtle and implicit prejudices, go to the website developed by Banaji, Greenwald, and Nosek: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/ and go to the “Demonstrations Tests” link and read the general information and follow the “I wish to proceed” link. Choose one or more from many different forms of the IAT: race, religion, gender-science, sexuality, Arab-Muslim, age, and skin tone. Each one takes only about 10 minutes to complete. After you complete one version of the test, you will be provided with general results of how you did. Ask them if they think it is accurate. 20. Ask students if they think smartphones are helping or hindering helping. You may want to have students read the following article: http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304402104579151850028363502 Suggested Media 18. 12 Angry Men (1957) 19. Milgram’s obedience study and Ghostbusters introduction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB_lljnqkDw 20. A reenactment of the Asch study: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRh5qy09nNw 21. The Simpsons; Moe takes a lie detector test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-TZ8Z5S9rI 22. Mean Girls (2004) is a good example of social rejection. 23. Disclosure (1994) is a good example of sexual harassment, but there are scenes with graphic sexuality and cursing. There are some great legal scenes that discuss what sexual harassment is, though. 24. The Great Debaters (2007) 25. A Class Divided (a PBS special on Jane Elliot’s blue-eye/brown-eye research): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html 26. CBS news coverage on Wesley Autry, the New York subway hero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9JcX2X7XnM 27. Darley and Latané’s smoke-filled room study reenacted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE5YwN4NW5o 28. Jonestown—The Life and Death of the People’s Temple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY3cx3U0gYE 29. Paul Ekman—Why We Lie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGQf9O61cww 30. Discovering Psychology—The Power of the Situation (Annenberg) 31. Persuasion in Everyday Life (Learning Seed) 32. Jonestown: The Life and Death of the People’s Temple (PBS) 33. The Kindness of Strangers (ABC) 34. Lookism (ABC) 35. Lab Conformity (ABC) 36. Discovering Psychology—Constructing Social Reality (Annenberg) 37. Bystander Effect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JozmWS6xYEw 38. Crash can be used as an example of attitudes, prejudice, and discrimination. 39. American History X can be used as an example of prejudice, discrimination, and attitudes. 40. Herd Mentality (McGraw-Hill Connect for Feist and Rosenberg, 3rd ed.) 41. Rudeness and Group Reactions (McGraw-Hill Connect for Feist and Rosenberg, 3rd ed.) 42. Conformity, Asch’s Experiment Revisited (McGraw-Hill Connect for Feist and Rosenberg, 3rd ed.) 43. Candid Conformity (McGraw-Hill Connect for Feist and Rosenberg, 3rd ed.) 44. Milgram Obedience Experiment Revisited (McGraw-Hill Connect for Feist and Rosenberg, 3rd ed.) 45. Stereotype Threat (McGraw-Hill Connect for Feist and Rosenberg, 3rd ed.) Concept Clips (McGraw-Hill Connect for Feist and Rosenberg, 3rd ed.) 1. Fundamental Attribution Error 2. Cognitive Dissonance Suggested Websites 14. Groupthink example: http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htm 15. How to Detect Lies: http://www.blifaloo.com/info/lies.php 16. Antipolygraph.org: http://antipolygraph.org/ 17. Jane Elliot’s homepage: http://www.janeelliott.com/ 18. Wesley Autrey’s story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16469039/ 19. Bibb Latané’s homepage: http://latane.socialpsychology.org/ 20. John Darley’s homepage: http://darley.socialpsychology.org/ 21. APA Monitor—Lessons from Jonestown: http://www.apa.org/monitor/nov03/jonestown.html 22. Kitty Genovese story: http://nypost.com/2014/02/16/book-reveals-real-story-behind-the-kitty-genovese-murder/ Suggested Readings Cook, K. (2014). Kitty Genovese: The murder, the bystanders, the crime that changed America. Norton. Darley, J. M., Lewis, L., & Teger, A. (1973). Do groups always inhibit individuals’ responses to potential emergencies? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 26, 395–400. Ekman, P. & Davidson, R. J. (1993). Voluntary smiling changes regional brain activity. Psychological Science, 4, 342–345. Ekman, P., Friesen, W. V., & O’Sullivan, M. (1997). Smiles when lying. Ekman, P. & Rosenberg, E. L. (Eds.) What the face reveals: Basic and applied studies of spontaneous expression using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) (pp. 201–216). New York: Oxford University Press. Hardy, C., & Latané, B. (1986). Social loafing on a cheering task. Social Science, 71(2–3), 165–172. Latané, B. (1981). The psychology of social impact. American Psychologist, 36, 343–356. Latané, B., & Darley, J. (1969). Bystander “apathy.” American Scientist, 57, 244–268. Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help? New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Latané, B., Williams, K., & Harkins, S. (2006). Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing. In J. M. Levine & R. L. Moreland (Eds.). Small Groups (pp. 297–308). New York: Psychology Press. Layton, D. (1998). Seductive poison: A Jonestown survivor’s story of life and death in the People’s Temple. New York: Anchor Books. Moore, R. (2009). Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Westport, CT: Praeger. Morris, K.A., & Ashburn-Nardo, L. (2010). The Implicit Association Test as a class assignment: Student affective and attitudinal reactions. Teaching of Psychology, 37, 63–68. Nisbett, R. E., Caputo, C., Legant, P., & Marecek, J. (1973). Behavior as seen by the actor and as seen by the observer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27(2), 154–164. Psychology Today article on social rejection and physical pain - http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20031017-000001.html Riggio, H., & Garcia, A. L. (2009). The power of situations: Jonestown and the fundamental attribution error. Teaching of Psychology, 36, 108–112. Steele, C. (2011). Whistling Vivaldi: How stereotypes affect us and what we can do. Norton. Young, L., & Alexander, B. (2012). The chemistry between us: Love, sex, and the science of attraction. Penguin. Zajonc, R. B., Heingartner, A., & Herman, E. M. (1969). Social enhancement and impairment of performance in the cockroach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13(2), 83–92. Zajonc, R. B., & Sales, S. M. (1966). Social facilitation of dominant and subordinate responses. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2(2), 160–168. Instructor Manual for Psychology: Perspectives and Connections Gregory J. Feist, Erika Rosenberg 9780077861872, 9781260397031