Group think o A certain set of conditions is present The group is under pressure e g during war when competing with a different business etc Perception of external threat Biased in a particular direction Dissent is discouraged Group members assure each other they are doing the right thing To avoid group think and bad choices leaders should play devil s advocate then people will be less likely to conform o E g Holocaust mob rioting etc Cognitive dissonance o The perceptual incongruity that occurs when there is a contradiction between two attitudes or between an attitude and behavior o We are most happy when our attitude matches our behavior o Discrepancies lead to dissonance E g Leon Festinger proposed that cognitive dissonance occurs when there is a contradiction between two attitudes or between an attitude and a behavior Dissonance causes anxiety and tension which motivates people to reduce the dissonance People reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes or behaviors Or they rationalize or trivialize the discrepancy Study people were asked to perform a tedious and boring task and at the end of the study they were either paid 1 or 20 to tell people in the waiting room that the study was interesting Later they were asked to rate how enjoyable the study was People who received 1 said the study was more enjoyable than those paid 20 Our brain changes its attitude because it doesn t like the idea that we wasted our time with a boring study and only received 1 o Postdecisional dissonance people tend to be sure about their decisions after they have made them because they like to think that they are happy with the o Justifying effort we justify things that make us cognitively or emotionally choices they have made uncomfortable E g hazing if you have gone through a lot to become part of a fraternity you will be very committed to the group otherwise you will feel like it was all for nothing E g cults you gradually give up more and more from your life your house your children etc and you can t stop following what the cult wants you to do because you are so invested and don t want your time and effort to have been wasted Behaviors are consistent with attitudes o An attitude is more likely to predict behavior to be consistent over time and to be resistant to change The stronger it is The more personally relevant it is The more specific it is If it is formed through direct experience o Attitude accessibility predicts behavior that is consistent with the attitude o Explicit vs implicit attitudes what you show are aware of vs attitudes you are unaware of A view of classic research social situations related to social psychology concepts o Self fulfilling Prophecy theory by Rosenthal 2002 o Rice s 3rd graders Stereotypes Prejudice o Asch s Conformity Research o Milgram s Obedience Research o Stanford Prison Study o The Real World Self fulfilling Prophecy theory by Rosenthal 2002 o One person s expectations for another person s behavior comes to serve as a o The behavior expected actually came to pass because the expecter expected it o What we expect to happen happens because our expectations influence the self fulfilling prophecy outcome o Video on a teacher s expectations and IQ A group of children was randomly chosen to be the smart group the teacher expected these children to be smarter These children ended up showing greater intellectual gain than the rest of the class IV teacher s expectations DV IQ Rosenthal s analysis 4 purported causal factors mechanisms Climate the teacher was kinder to the smart children both verbally and non verbally Input the smart children were given more material to learn Response opportunity the smart children were given more and longer opportunities to answer questions Feedback the smart children were given more feedback both praise and criticism compared to the other children because the others had lower expectations and the teacher was pleasantly surprised if they did well and didn t offer good criticism o Video on welding students The instructor was told that 5 men in his welding class were good at welding although they were actually chosen randomly IV teacher s expectations DVs Welding abilities Learning speed Attendance How the 5 were described by others The 5 good welders were better at welding faster at learning had better attendance and were described as good welders by others at the end of the class o Labeling theory labeling individuals a certain way has an effect on people s expectations of them which in turn influences their behavior o Implicit attitudes shape behavior we do not realize that our attitudes and expectations affect the world around us How we socially construct prejudice o Video on prejudice The Social Construction of Differences and the Formation Internalizing of Biased Stereotypes There is a lot of power in cognitive control we all have different beliefs about situations and we believe that we see the world accurately This leads to prejudice We dislike and fear others because they are although we don t always different E g Jane Elliot s 3rd grade experiment in Riceville Iowa 1968 Conducted after Martin Luther King Jr s assassination Jane Elliot a 3rd grade teacher told her class that brown eyed people were inferior and blue eyed people were superior The brown eyed people had to wear collars so people could distinguish them from a distance this is quite like the Jews having to wear stars during the Holocaust During recess the children separated into blue eyed and brown eyed groups and some fought with each other Confirmation bias the teacher shared biased evidence with her class She said that George Washington had blue eyes and that one of the children s parents who had brown eyes kicked his son People attend to and then store in memory social information consistent with existing schemas o Stereotypes are based on automatic categorization Self fulfilling prophecy Stereotype threat Theory of why there is decreased performance 1 physiological stress affecting prefrontal functioning 2 a tendency for people to think about their performance which can distract them from the task and 3 attempts to suppress negative thoughts and emotions which require a great deal of effort When a stereotype is activated even if you don t believe it it is fulfilled o E g the stereotype that girls can t do math is activated when you fill out your gender on a math test and their performance becomes consistent with the stereotype Video o A study was conducted