6 1 15 7 6 15 Psyc221 Notes 1 Week 5 a Group Behavior i The tragedy of the commons people are torn between immediate selfish benefits taking as much of the resource as possible and doing what is beneficial for the group as a whole which is usually the more prosocial behavior 1 Public goods dilemma ii Inverse mechanism 1 Research shows that people often overlook their own selfish tendencies and instead tend to focus on other people s selfishness as the primary cause of depleted resources an example of motivated reasoning 2 Furthermore people are more likely to behave selfishly after witnessing other people behave selfishly an example of modeling iii How to decrease selfishness 1 Increase identifiability 2 reduce deindividuation 3 Utilize positive role models 4 Altruistic punishment a Help stop other selfish behavior iv Pluralistic ignorance 1 Assume things because of the way the group is behaving v Social facilitation and social inhibition 1 People do things faster or better when others are around vi Arousal 1 The number of the audience 20 ir 1 million the status a few friends or the president and or immediacy of the audience if they are right in front of you or far off in the distance can all influence arousal 2 Too much arousal can cause performance anxiety vii Leadership experiment 1 Can change people s behavior in dramatic ways Prison 2 Can change the relationship between people 3 Leaders are more attentive to rewards punishments as 4 methods for controlling or guiding people s behavior Leaders are less likely to engage in critical thinking they are more prone to automatic processing rather than controlled processing 5 Leaders have decreased inhibitions and a tendency to approach rather than avoid potentially risky situations 6 Prosocial leaders a People value altruism in their leaders it s a desirable quality to have research shows that people most of the time don t choose leaders based on altruistic tendencies b People choose leaders based on other qualities such as whether they are attractive funny charismatic communicate well extroverted gregarious and confident i Psychologists theorize that this is another example of the halo effect ii Essentially it s a social prosocial heuristic people implicitly assume that attractive charismatic leaders will be more altruistic once they come to power 7 Breaking social norms is associated with people being perceived as better leaders b Stereotypes Prejudice Discrimination i Minimal groups or nominal groups groups in name only 1 The minimal group paradigm a An experimental method in which people are assigned to arbitrary groups and then required to allocate rewards to members of their group or another group b The surprising result of these studies is that ingroup favoritism is elicited under these conditions ingroup outgroup bias ii 1 Those in your group are more similar to you and those not in your group are more dissimilar iii The tendency people have to associate groups with conflict and competition may be innate 1 After all we see very similar patterns of inter group violence in closely related species iv However another explanation is that this behavior is learned and acquired through observation From an early age children are taught to associate groups with competition v Robbers Cave study 1 In this experiment twenty two 11 year old boys were taken to a summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park Oklahoma little knowing they were the subjects of an experiment Before the trip the boys were randomly divided into two groups It s these two groups that formed the basis of Sherif s study of how prejudice and conflict build up between two groups of people vi A stereotype is a type of schema and it is often used to categorize someone quickly based on group membership 1 People are more likely to use stereotypes to make a quick first impression of someone they just met when they are under high cognitive load 2 People will be motivated to keep their stereotypes even in the face of counter evidence cognitive miser a If proven wrong People create a sub type which is basically a smaller group within the group that shows the exception to the rule vii People s behavior can be altered merely by the knowledge awareness of a stereotype because of the Self fulfilling prophecy or behavioral confirmation 1 When people are made aware of a stereotype associated with their social group e g African American students performing worse than Caucasian students on standardized academic tests this creates additional anxiety and people perform worse if they are in the stigmatized group This is known as stereotype threat 2 Stereotype lift happens when people s performance increases as a result of a positive stereotype viii ABC ix IAT 1 Affect emotion a Prejudice 2 Behavior actions a Discrimination 3 Cognition thought process a Stereotypes 1 e are better able to understand why people who say they are not prejudiced will still behave in a way that appears to be racist and destructive toward outgroups 2 Automatic biases a Weapon bias b Shooter bias c Emotion perception bias x Colorblind approach 1 To pretend that inter group variables like race ethnicity do not exist 2 This is a terrible approach as research shows it does not work and often makes the problem worse xi Multicultural approach 1 Suggests that we should understand recognize and appreciate inter group cultural differences 2 But there is mixed evidence for whether this effectively reduces prejudice xii Poly cultural approach 1 It is very similar to the multi cultural approach except also with the understanding that cultures have a positive influence and impact on each other 2 This seems to promote positive feelings toward outgroups more so than other approaches xiii Jigsaw classroom procedure 1 A cooperative learning technique that reduces racial conflict among school children c The Psychology of Groups i Intro 1 Most of us live out our lives in groups and these groups have a profound impact on our thoughts feelings and actions 2 Many psychologists focus their attention on single individuals but social psychologists expand their analysis to include groups organizations communities and even cultures ii The psychological significance of groups 1 The need to belong a A pervasive drive to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting positive and impactful interpersonal relationships i And most of us satisfy this need by joining groups ii When surveyed 87 3 of Americans reported that they lived with
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