Introduction to Psychology Lecture Notes

• You think that everyone notices you… The spotlight effect
• One of the hardest things and greatest things to realize is that nobody cares
• How good are you as a student? A teacher? A driver? A chess player?
• Lake Woebegone effect: “All the children are above average”

        -Nature of feedback, different criteria for feedback

• People want to make sense
• Festinger – cognitive Dissonance theory

• When we experience an internal inconsistency between two thoughts

1. Avoiding inconsistent Information: We attend to info in support of out existing view rather than info that doesn’t support it
2. Insufficient- Justification effect – Gave subjects a boring task then asked subjects to lie to the next subject and say the experiment was exciting paid half $20 and other $1 – those paid more claimed it was more exciting

• Cognitive dissonance really matters, it’s the end of the world and you know it… If the world doesn’t end, we find reasons to excuse it rather than realize that we had been wrong… Distort it to be right.
• Hazing – Immoral, but is not irrational. Exploits cognitive dissonance… Joining a group that allows you to enter without restrictions is less enjoyable… When we endure hazing, we feel like we must like the group a lot, because why else would we endure it? What does it say about us?
• Jobs and Therapy – investing in something limits the chances that we will not pull through
• Ben Franklin’s advice on how to make an enemy love you… Get them to give you something.. Great favor… they feel like they did you a huge favor so they must like you
• The dangers of rewarding children… if reward too much, children begin to do actions for the rewards, not because they believe that they like them
• Person bias in attributions – peeps give too much weight to personality rather that situational variables a.k.a fundamental attribution error

• Game show study… Ask someone to ask someone else questions they know the answers to… Asked ridiculous Q’s… Other doesn’t know the answer… and is labeled dumb… You are blamed for things beyond your control

• Actors turned down gay roles as they did not want people to believe they were gay
• Why do we like other?

• Familiarity – we tend to like people we encounter most often ‘mere exposure effect’ – the more you see something, the more you like it
• Experiment where someone wrapped in a purple blanket came and sat in the class everyday, same place…. At first peeps found it weird… At the end of the class peeps love purple blanket
• We tend to meet people on line… lessens familiarity... Tinder

• Similarity – the more a like a couple ism the more likely the are to stay together
• Attractivness – physically attractive people are rated higher on intelligence, competence, sociability, morality

• The matthew effect- if you have a lot of stuff the more you get… If you don’t… shame the rich get richer

• The power of First impressions – Speaker came, half of told he was warm, other half was told he was cold… both reported they felt the same
• What effect do these perceptions have on the people we are judging? Sometimes our beliefs and expectations create reality

• Pygmalion Effect – How someone treats you does shape you
• Studies of self-fulfilling prophecy – Rosenthal & Jacobson study on IQ’s

• Bias and prejudice – “prejudice is the child of ignorance”
• NO! It reflect natural bias’… We naturally take groups seriously
• Age Sex Race (triad) – More likely to misattribute what an Asian woman say to another Asian woman than to a black man… When we bump into peeps we may be likely to forget everything about them except the triad
• Language… Powerful marker – Tend to appreciate those with similar accent than others
• Tajfel study on dots and Klee and Kandinsky – Maximum Difference
• Babies have strong preferences based on those of others… they like people who like the same things as them
• Some biases we see are wrong and some as right… Favoring your country or friends over others is not wrong… Favoring your race however is!
• We make generalizations especially about people… wouldn’t ask toddlers for directions… why? Generalizations… May be a really smart toddler
• We categorize people…
• Stereotypes tend to be positive and accurate
• But not always
• Stereotypes tend to get distorted
• Media distorts stereotypes deliberately
• Moral Problems – peeps should be judged as individuals, not as group members, debate over profiling… Not through stereotypes
• Negative stereotypes can lead to a lot of problems such as stereotype threat… You may be unique from you usual stereotype… but when reminded of their stereotype, you tend to become like that e.g. smart black kid gets worse grades when reminded that black peeps stereotypical aren’t smart.
• Implicit stereotypes… use of priming.

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