Chp 13 Social Psychology Physical attractiveness has been recognized as a powerful social cue (Berneburg & others, 2010). Judith Langlois and her colleagues found that even infants as young as 3 to 6 months of age showed a preference for looking at attractive faces versus unattractive faces, as rated by adults (Hoss & Langlois, 2003; Ramsey & others, 2004). Attractive individuals are generally assumed to have a variety of other positive characteristics, including being better adjusted, socially skilled, friendly, likable, extraverted, and likely to achieve superior job performance (Langlois & others, 2000). Th ese positive expectations for physically attractive individuals have been referred to as the “beautiful is good” stereotype.Th at fi rst impression can have lasting eff ects (Ambady & Skowronski, 2009). Recall theprimacy eff ect from Chapter 7—people’s tendency to attend to and remember what they learned fi rst (N. H. Anderson, 1965). Th e power of fi rst impressions is likely due to just such an eff ect. How quickly do we make these initial impressions of others? In one study, judgments made after just a 100-millisecond exposure time to unfamiliar faces was suffi cient for individuals to form an impressionAttribution theory views people as motivated to discover the underlying causes of behavior as part of their eff ort to make sense of the behavior.Internal/external causes: Internal attributions include all causes inside and specifi c to the person, such as his or her traits and abilities. External attributions include all causesoutside the person, such as social pressure, aspects of the social situation, money, the weather, and luck. Did Beth get an A on the test because she is smart or because the test was easy?Attitudes are our feelings, opinions, and beliefs about people, objects, and ideas.Cognitive dissonance , a concept developed by Festinger (1957), is an individual’s psychological discomfort ( dissonance ) caused by two inconsistent thoughts. According to the theory, we feel uneasy when we notice an inconsistency between what we believe and what we do. Cognitive dissonance is at the root of that uncomfortable feeling of being a hypocrite (McConnell & Brown, 2010).college students to engage in a series of very boring tasks, such as sorting spools into trays and turning wooden pegs. Th ese participants were later asked to persuade another student (who was in fact a confederate) to participate in the study by telling him that the task was actually interesting and enjoyable. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to be paid $1 for telling this white lie, and the other half received $20. Afterward, all of the participants rated how interesting and enjoyablethe task really was. Curiously, those who were paid only $1 to tell the lie rated the task as signify cantly more enjoyable than those who were paid $20. Festinger and Carlsmithreasoned that those paid $20 to tell the lie could attribute their behavior the high value of the money they received. On the other hand, those who $1 experienced cognitive dissonance. Th e inconsistency between what they tell a lie) and what they were paid for it (just $1) moved these individuals to change their attitudes about the task (“I wouldn’t lie for just $1. If I said I liked the task, I must have really liked it.”). We can reduce cognitivebystander eff ect , the tendency of an individual who observes an emergency to help less when other people are present than when the observer is alone. Most bystander studies show that when alone, a person will help 75 percent of the time, but when another bystander is present, the fi gure drops to 50 percent.Conformity is a change in a person’s behavior to coincide more closely with a group standard. Conformity takes many forms and aff ects many aspects of people’s lives, in negative and positive ways. Conformity is at work, for example, when a person comes to college and starts to drink alcohol heavily at parties, even though he or she might have never been a drinker before. Conformity is also at work when we obey the rules and regulations that allow society to run smoothly.Asch’s Experiment Put yourself in this situation: You are taken into a room where you see fi ve other people seated along a table. A person in a white lab coat enters the roomand announces that you are about to participate in an experiment on perceptual accuracy. Th e group is shown two cards—the fi rst having only a single vertical line on itand the second having three vertical lines of varying length. You are told that the task isto determine which of the three lines on the second card is the same length as the line on the fi rst card. You look at the cards and think, “What a snap. It’s so obvious which is the same.” What you do not know is that the other people in the room are confederates who are working with the experimenter. On the fi rst several trials, everyone agrees about which line matches the standard. Th en on the fourth trial, each of the others picks the same incorrect line. As the last person to make a choice, you have the dilemma of responding as your eyes tell you or conforming to what the others before you said.Obedience is behavior that complies with the explicit demands of the individual in authority. We are obedient when an authority fi gure demands that we do something, and we do it. Note that in conformity, people change their thinking or behavior so that itwill be more like that of others, while in obedience, there is an explicit demand to comply.Milgram experiment shows obedience in humans. His experiment had people in one room and they had a button through which they could give the shock to the person in the other room, if the person in the other room does a mistake. After a while the experimenter increased the voltage, but the person was still giving the person to give the shock to the person even when the voltage was high.Affective component: this involves a person’s feelings / emotions about the attitude object. For example: “I am scared of spiders”.Behavioral (or conative) component: the way the attitude we have influences how we act or behave. For example: “I will avoid spiders and scream if I see one”.Cognitive component: this involves a person’s belief / knowledge about an attitude object. For example: “I believe spiders are dangerous”.There is negative correlation between number of people and bystander intervention meaning if there are